Children With Globe
Posted by David Heatley at 1:03 pm on June 23rd
I got asked to be part of a show in Edinburgh where artists were asked to reinterpret images from Carl Sagan's Golden Record, as launched into space in 1977 with the Voyager missions. There were originally 116 images describing life on earth encoded into a gold phonograph record. I have to admit I'd never heard of this project. In my defense, I was 3 when this was taking place (my daughter's age now, come to think of it). It's a pretty great idea though. And a great idea for a gallery show.
I chose "Children with Globe." Original photograph is below. My interpretation was done in pastels and ink on bristol collaged onto cardboard (inked and then scratched).
I agreed to contribute to the show months ago, but didn't get around to making the image until last month. The timing turned out to be perfect. I was asked by my nephew in New Jersey to come speak to his second grade class and talk about my job as a cartoonist. It was a total joy. Watching the kids draw stories about swimming, or staying in bed with fever, or turning into "supercat" and scaling a building was really inspiring. On father's day my nephew showed up to my in-laws' house with 22 thank you cards from his classmates, all drawn very carefully with markers, some detailed with little comic strips. One strip read "He's here. I'm happy. He leaves. I'm sad." A lot of them wrote "You have a lot of talent." One kid wrote "You're great at doing comics. I'm great too!" Adorable. I need more of this in my life, I think.
PS - The blonde girl in the drawing is loosely based on my daughter, the brown haired boy is my son. Can't avoid the autobio.
Spotlight at MoCCA
Posted by David Heatley at 10:01 am on June 3rd
I'll be giving an hour presentation on my comics and illustration work from the last 10 years as part of MOCCA this weekend. I'll also be signing free promotional samplers from my upcoming book My Brain is Hanging Upside Down.
My talk follows right after Chip Kidd's discussion of BatManga, his upcoming Pantheon book. So come on down for both!
Here's all the pertinent info:
SUNDAY, JUNE 8 2:30 PM (Chip's talk is at 1:20) MoCCA Gallery, 594 Broadway (Suite 401), just below Houston.
My Brain is Hanging Upside Down
Posted by David Heatley at 12:16 pm on May 19th
"My Brain is Hanging Upside Down," my 128-page full-color graphic memoir is now finished and is off to the printer. It comes out from Pantheon this fall. I'll be posting about upcoming events soon, but wanted to post today about the process of working on it. The book has taken me about 5 and half years to complete.
I started out drawing comic strips about my dreams in a self-published pamphlet called Deadpan in 2002. Once that started reaching stores and I started getting some responses and feedback, I decided I wanted to explore other parts of my story. At film school, I had done "portrait films," which were kind of cubist in nature. I would project 4 quadrants of the same person, shot from different angles, but doing the same activity. I got to thinking about trying to do a "portrait comic strip." Something I hadn't really seen. Ron Rege, Dan Clowes and Chris Ware were starting to do these multiple-strips-on-a-page comics, emulating a newspaper funnies section, but with narratives that connected to one another. I thought I would focus my pages around a single person. The various vignettes would add up to a portrait. I drew "Portrait of my Dad" for McSweeney's #13.
Next I wanted to try a good old fashion autobiographical diary strip, in the tradition of Aline Kominsky, Joe Matt, and Julie Doucet. I liked Jeffrey Brown's first book "Clumsy" a lot and was definitely inspired by his doodly line quality. But I felt like I could probably pack my entire sex history into one comic strip and leave it at that. I didn't want to be a cartoonist who was endlessly telling the same story about longing or heartbreak. I also thought it would be compelling to start at the very beginning and include all my early childhood sexual experiences, since it's all one big continuum. I drew my Sex History in about 6 months. And then I took 6 more months to painstakingly paint every panel with gouache. I think it elevated the strip beyond slapdash diary and closer to something an obsessive outsider artist might do. Sammy Harkham published the strip in Kramer's Ergot 5.
In 2004, I got a Xeric grant to self-publish Deadpan #2, which consisted of "Sex History," "Portrait of My Dad," and some dream comics. Even though most of the work had already appeared elsewhere, I wanted to see how the 3 sections spoke to each other, hoping it would comprise a kind of self-portrait. I think it worked okay, but realized I had a lot more I wanted to say to fully round it out.
I met Michael Homler, an editor from St. Martin's Press at a party in 2005 and he asked if I was working on any book-length comics. I immediately thought that I could expand what I'd done in Deadpan to fill a softcover collection. I pitched him a book called "I'm Open, " suggesting a few supplemental strips to round out the contents of Deadpan 1 and 2. I worked on this book for the next 2 years. But by the end of 2006, I realized that the book had changed completely. It became obvious that the scope of what I now had in mind didn't fit the original vision of the book I'd pitched to Michael. We parted ways amicably in 2006, and I'll always be grateful to him for his initial enthusiasm and support for my work.
I took some time to refocus the book and titled it "My Brain Is Hanging Upside Down," after a lyric from my favorite Ramones song. By 2007, with the book solidly structured and mapped out, I signed a contract with Pantheon. I was able to quit my long-standing day job that June.
The year of work on the book since then has been astounding. I've had every emotional experience possible. Rage so strong I needed to twist towels, scream, punch pillows (while my wife and kids were out for the day). A torrent of tears and grief. Unprecedented joy and a sense of my spiritual purpose on the planet. Most days have been simpler than that. Sitting in my chair and penciling, inking, or coloring. Day after day. Watching the pages slowly fill up with ink, then color. Watching the layout pages grow, then rearrange themselves until they landed in the correct order.
Here we are, almost June of 2008 and the book is done. Every last image and piece of text hand-drawn. I'm proud of this thing. It's a tome. It's an illuminated manuscript of my life. It's my statement to the world, broken into 5 chapters: Sex, Race, Mom, Dad, Kin. I've told it all. And now I'm spent.
I can't post too many images from the interior for obvious reasons, but I thought I'd post a visual tour through the process of finding my book's cover. That process alone spanned 2 years and generated countless sketches. I was looking at a lot of Tadanori Yokoo posters, trying to get a similar riot of graphic styles, clashing and coalescing. The images are roughly in chronological order and most are embarrassing. But I believe in leaving a trail of breadcrumbs. Hope this is helpful to someone out there.
I'm satisfied with what it turned out to be and so grateful to be finished. Thanks for looking. Stay tuned for more!
New Yorker Money Issue
Posted by David Heatley at 2:29 pm on March 24th
I have a "sketchbook" page in this week's New Yorker. It's the first time I made it onto the "contributors" page. Got a nice plug from my upcoming book "My Brain is Hanging Upside Down." Much more about that soon... Here's some detailed views. There's a lot of hidden narratives for the adventurous reader.
Jackson Heights Map!
Posted by David Heatley at 3:05 pm on March 5th
A real estate developer in my neighb saw my "Queens is the New Brooklyn" piece on drawger and commissioned me to draw a cartoon map brochure for my neighborhood, Jackson Heights. It was one of the best jobs I've ever gotten. A total blast to research, organize, design and draw. I started by posting to our local message board asking people for their favorite things about the neighborhood. Of course I had my own list of things I love and the piece is largely autobiographical (like everything I do). I did strive for a balanced portrait of JH, which includes Indians, Pakistanis, Italians, Irish, Peruvians, Mexicans, Columbians, Koreans, Phillipinos, etc. etc. etc. Hard to get all that into a 2-sided piece of 11 x 17 paper, but I did my best!
Here's a link for the front and the back so you can really see all the detail. It basically took me all of February.
There's 5,000 of these babies floating around the NYC area. I'm dropping a stack off at my favorite local cafe. Otherwise you might have to be resourceful to get your hands on one. By the way, my client Dan Robinson was ideal. How often do you get the feedback, "Can you make it a little more whimsical?"
Exhibitor Mag
Posted by David Heatley at 11:39 am on January 22nd
The exhibition space
Did this one for Exhibitor magazine this month. About some company who had a lot of success at a trade show by making their booth seem exclusive with large dark purple walls and a live jazz combo. They also gave away t-shirts and TVs and Starbucks coffee. Not a theme I feel terribly sympathetic to, but I managed to have some fun drawing all the characters at the event. I googled the word "people" in google's image search. The very first result was a page showing the staff of an entire astronomy department at the University of Florida. Perfect!
This was what the whole image looked like, with the line snaking across the page.
The jazz band, also based on a trio I found on google. It seemed like the right casting - these middle aged guys with cool haircuts. Probably playing some smoothed out stuff, but still swinging. I snuck my wife into the audience on the lower left there.
More of the folks on line. I drew myself in a dorky striped yellow shirt. Kind of my worst nightmare of who I'd become if I was stuck in a corporate job. My fashion sense would wither away. I'd stop getting regular haircuts (actually, even now that's kind of hard to maintain). I'd be complacent, bored and depressed, probably shrugging like this to strangers very often.
I was having fun imagining how these folks would be passing the time on line. So I had this tanned outgoing alpha male guy hitting on this cute indie rockerish chick. She's timid, but still into the attention she's getting. The older guy is saying something about the woman's shoes or something. He has a fatherly air, but she misunderstands it as creepy flirting and is having none of it.
And the stragglers at the end. I liked this guy telling the rest about the free coffee. I feel some affection for him. But I have to wonder, who gets this excited about some free coffee? Who goes to these events? Aren't they usually the people who slack off at work and jump at the chance to go to a free trade show for the day? Are they really the kinds of people you want to be generating lists for and marketing to? I don't profess to know. Just wondering...
I was commissioned by the New Yorker to do a 2-page strip for the 2007 Cartoon Issue. They wanted something about Queens being the new Brooklyn. So I came up with this. I really loved working on it and was looking forward to putting my neighborhood (Jackson Heights) on the national map. But... they yanked it at the last minute. I still got paid, so I didn't mind so much, plus they gave me the rights to print it someplace else. Any magazines out there want to run it? Here's a more readable version.
Two pieces in the NY Times today. One is in the Book Review. It's an illustration for that book which was supposedly written by Anthony Flew (a notorious British atheist and scholar), but was highly influenced and maybe ghost written by Roy Abraham Varghese, an oddball new age-y Christian from Texas (who believes in, among other things that some UFO sightings are actually evidence of visitations by the Virgin Mary). I love the subject and really poured myself into this one.
The other piece is a comic strip written by my wife, Rebecca Gopoian and "cartooned" by me (illustrated implies I dutifully added pictures to her text, but cartooned means I wrote with the pictures). It's about her experience of my wanting a creche in our home around Christmas time. As someone whose output consists mostly of drawing myself talking and thinking at various ages and in various locations, it was really refreshing to have my wife be the main character and put myself in the background. We both found it interesting how squeamish the editors were about including anything remotely cheeky in referring to Jesus. There were a few tweaks to appease the fundamentalists, but ultimately the piece survived intact. We're definitely planning on doing more of these, so stay tuned in 2008. Here's a readable version of the strip, up for the next week.
Holiday card
Posted by David Heatley at 11:02 am on December 19th
2007 holiday card
Hello, my drawgies...
Here's our holiday card, just finished today. I'll be posting some new things in the next couple of days. But in the mean time I hope everyone has a relaxing, peaceful and joy-filled holiday.
Dan Clowes is my favorite writer in comics. He's also one of my all-time favorite cartoonists. A lot of his art isn't beautiful in a stand-alone kind of way. In fact until Eightball Number 15 or 16, a lot of it is really garish and jarring and Mad magazine-ish. But even when his cartooning was at its most abrasive, the writing was better than anything else out there. And even the "ugly" cartooning was still great cartooning, meaning there's rarely anything extraneous that doesn't belong in a page by Clowes. In my own work I've been mostly interested in the storytelling which I spend at least 3 times as long on as I do the art. But recently I've been interested in finding pages of comics that function as self-containted works of art, the way paintings do. This is the first page of a 3-page strip from Eightball #8. It's based on a dream and was a big inspiration for me to start doing my own dream comics. I like the blankness of the character, the creepy Q-tip like object he discovers (which later turns out to come from the breasts of a squirrel), and the way Dan draws all the foliage. It's all so stiff like it was made from sheet metal. Gives the whole page a nice tension.
The original Ghost World hardcover is another of my favorites. I only wish it wrapped all the way around the book because the back cover is a little silly. Some things I love about it which keeps me staring at it all these years after I bought it. Beautiful, precise, painted line work. Gorgeous color choices and a strange and powerful eye-grabbing composition. The folk art-like details, which Dan might consider "mistakes," but for me make the picture warm, endearing, earnest and a little obsessive. I like that the blue flowers have unnatural hard lines which make them look like cut paper. I like the awkward yellow cloud between the girls's heads. All of the architectural detail in the top and bottom. The absolute emptiness of both scenes' physical spaces. The one giant insect in the background. The hatching shadow pattern on Enid's sweater which gives it a strange texture. Her banana-like left ear with no visible opening. The light spots on her glasses. Both of their flat red lips.You can really feel Clowes' adoration and love of these two girls and his trying to get it "just right."
Ice Haven is a perfectly executed book object in my opinion. The story is among the best ever written in comics, probably in prose too. Every page design is thoughtful and attractive and so is the book design itself. The title lettering of the front and back are just one example of how well thought-out this project was – how every page was an opportunity to expand on the themes and motifs of the narrative.
I think the prettiest stand-alone image of his is this Comics Journal cover he did in 2001. Line work, color, dialogue, even the tinted color of the page to make it look like weathered newsprint. All perfectly balanced. I find work like this very soothing and comforting. All the lettering is done by hand (as is standard with Clowes) and I was told that he painted this whole thing somehow. I was sure it was flat computer color, but I was mistaken. The funny thing about it is that it's basically a strip about how he hates the comics journal and doesn't want to be interviewed. He just wants to be left alone. It's fitting that he's alone in every single panel, talking to himself mostly.
Finally this stunning cover to Eightball #19. Has to be one of the greatest comic book covers ever. It's very much inspired by Crumb's "Weirdo" covers and Harvery Kurtzman's covers for "Humbug " before that. But it's closer to being a work of art for me than any of those other covers (maybe with the exception of Weirdo #1). The central image is so dramatic. Like a biblical painting about the main characters. David Boring looking off into the distance (day dreaming), while Wanda looks right at the viewer with a sphinx-like blank stare. There's natural disasters happening in the background with no other people in sight and the border surrounding the characters is a sea of microbes. Also the lighting on their bodies gives the impression that there's more fire or lighting happening in front of them (where the reader is standing). It tells a great deal of the story in a single image, something only the best book covers (and Renaissance paintings) achieve.
