Wednesday, June 15, 2016

The Paris Metro!


Yeah, it's been nearly a month since my last post. Been too busy for anything except Facebook and Twitter posts. 



Been slogging along on The Baron of Prospect Ave. webcomic. Thirty pages and counting now up for your enjoyment HERE.

And the TRASHED promotional tour continues. I just returned from two weeks in Flanders and Holland and an appearance at the Haarlem Comics Festival. It was all great fun. Next up... gulp.... San Diego Comicon! I'm an invited guest and this will be my first Comicon. I'm a little nervous, since mainstream cons aren't my thing and this is the Lord God of mainstream cons. I'm also up for an Eisner Award and appearing on (so far) FIVE panels!




Here's another project I was working on. The Rock en Seine festival in Paris hired me to draw one of the 40 posters for the fest. I requested the American band Clutch, who I've long been a fan of. Conceptual poster art is not really my thing either, and frankly, I struggled with the poster. I work well when I have a concept to wrap a drawing around, but just coming up with an image out of the ether? Never been able to do that. Here in Cleveland, we have a tremendous tradition of great rock poster artists, from Derek Hess to Jake Kelly to John G.

Took me over a week to come up with an image I was ok with, and another week to finally land on a color scheme I thought would pop. Here it is:




Subtle it is not! I decided to go for it with a really radical color.  As is normal with pieces I struggle with, I wasn't sure if this was good or shit when I finished it. But I simply ran out of time. The deadline was here and I emailed it to the Fest art director with just minutes to spare.

Well, I'm happy to report it's apparently NOT shit, because Rock en Seine selected my poster as one of the ones they would plaster on walls in the Paris Metro! I just received this photo, my poster blown up HUGE, on the wall of the Duroc Station (on line 11 and 13, for those of you familiar with the Paris Metro). The first picture above comes from that station. Below is a friend of mine in Paris who was kind enough to take these shots for me. NIce re-enactment!



Ten years ago I was toiling away in a dying genre in a dying business, losing papers and income in bunches, and losing interest in my own work, too. I thought then: Time to try my hand at books. What have I got to lose? Now I've got giant posters hanging in the Paris Metro and just finished my 15th European Tour in the past four years! If I think too much about tall his, I just start laughing in disbelief.

The final photo (below) is from the massive Les Halles station in central Paris. These will only be up for a week. Wish I could have seen them in person.