Kelci D Crawford

For those of you who do not live in Ohio, there is a store that exists in Columbus, Cleveland, and a few other cities called Half Price Books. It’s a second-hand book store, so all the books have been previously owned (duh). They also sell used DVDs and VHS’s, and some stores also sell posters.

What makes these store AWESOME is their size and sheer breadth of subjects carried. Everything from Art History to Biography to Science Fiction to Popular Fiction to Teen Fiction is carried there, and their comics section is actually the best that I have seen in any used book store.

Case in point, these lovely titles that I found while I went shopping there:

I was especially ticked at having found BOTH volumes of Persepolis, a Seth (HOLY FREAKING BAZINGA you can’t find that even in a retail book store!), and Confessions of a BlabberMouth and Clubbing (I heard those books were out of print!).

I feel like my comics collection is now just that little more complete. It’s certainly getting there, at any rate.

If you have any of these books, you are awesome, because these comics are awesome. Understanding Comics has definitely helped me begin to see the possibilities within comics as an art form, broadening its artistic and literary scope and bringing all kinds of new thoughts and understanding to how comics works. I know practically everyone else has read this, but this is my first time reading this book. Please be patient.

Also, as a bonus for waiting for this post, here are two links that hopefully you will enjoy: one is gorgeous art, and the other is practical advice.

Sean Phillip’s Art Blog is always wonderful. His life paintings are beautiful to look at.

Plus there’s the Savvy Musician’s blog post, Why Most Artists’s Websites Fail. I really like this man’s work, because he has one of the few blogs out there that artists can use that contains actual helpful information, and makes it interesting to read. As an extra bonus, if you can get his book, The Savvy Musician, you should, especially if you are a musician. It’s pretty much like a bible of artistic entrepreneurship.

That’s all for this week. Next week, I’ll be sharing some of my sketches, works-in-progress, and finished art (and prove that I actually am what I say I am: a comic artist), plus a little surprise.

As always, Don’t Forget to Be Awesome!

Ok, so new promise: updating this blog will happen on a weekly basis, on Saturdays. That’s when my schedule is the least crazy.

We only have to put up with this until May, when I graduate from college. Once I’m out of school, things will return to some state of normalcy!

So the first thing I would LOVE to share is that there is a wonderful website that supports independent and international musicians called ThrillJockey.com. Thrill Jockey also has a lovely feature on their front page where you can download certain songs FOR FREE. It’s a great way to listen in to those musicians that you might like to hear, but are unsure you want to buy from. I can tell you, though, that Sidi Toure and Pontiak are sure bets.

Always support independent musicians like these guys. They have great music (that’s not dictated by big record labels), they write their own lyrics (which can be really damn good), and you can help an artist make a decent living (which, you know, as a fellow artist myself, I’m always trying to find a way to give back to other artists).

On another topic, I know last week I promised to post sketches and some titles of comics I had purchased during a splurge at Half Price Books. Well….not this week. Sorry! But be on the lookout for that list.

And on the artistic front, I will be taking photos of my current 8-page mini project in the works, and I will share my other 8-page mini I finished this week. Other sketches will follow after that.

In the meantime, if you want more regular updates from me, might I suggest you visit my Tumblr blog? It’s magicallikethat.tumblr.com. I don’t post my sketches there (yet), but I do reblog worthy artistic inspiration and other things I like. Hopefully you all may like it too. :D

So as always, Don’t Forget to Be Awesome.

Holy bazinga I haven’t updated this blog in a LONG while. I feel bad about that now.

There’s a reason for it, though! I lost my personal computer because the motherboard got fried, so now I’m stuck with using either public computers or using my mom’s if I’m home on college breaks. I’m not too pleased about it, but I’m hoping I can save up enough to get a new computer soon….or I could maybe get one for a graduation present…(I’m secretly hoping for the latter).

In the meantime, don’t fret! Due to a challenge by one of my art professors, I WILL be posting more sketches on this blog soon. Unfortunately, with no computer to hook my scanner up to, that means that I’ll have to take pictures of said art with either my camera or my phone, so I apologize in advance for any crappy picture quality that comes about due to this.

What kind of art will you see, you may ask? Well I’m making comics for Advanced Drawing and Painting class, so you’ll see sketches and in-progress works of those. I’ll also be sharing some pages from my sketchbook, which I haven’t done before! Won’t that be exciting? I may also share some of my graphic novel scripts still in progress so you can see how sloppy the process looks. :D Seriously, if I compare my graphic novel scripts to my finer work, it’s like comparing a Peanuts comic scratch to a Rembrandt.

I also got SO MANY COMIC BOOKS this past week. My next blog post will detail what I got during that excursion. Plus a few other things. >.>

I also bought a domain name for this blog! It won’t be active for another 24 hours (says Google), but after that, this blog can be found at kelcicrawford.com. Simple as that.

That’s all for now. This year I plan to definitely share more stuff with you awesome readers. In the meantime, Don’t Forget to Be Awesome.

I bring this update on a public computer:

The digital sketch challenge, where I draw a new sketch on the computer every day for 30 days, is on hiatus.

My laptop, which I used to make and store the sketches, is having issues with its power supply. Apparently it’s not recognizing its own battery. It doesn’t surprise me, because it’s really fracking old.

Hopefully this issue will be resolved soon! Wish me luck!

I’ve been watching too much Kai.

I can just see Cell taking this pose and saying sarcastically, “Of COURSE, because it wouldn’t be FAIR.”