Author: Kelci

This past weekend (March 30th to April 1st) I had the pleasure of leaving with BGSU’s Arts Village to stay in Chicago, and BOY did I have a blast!

The first night there we went and saw Second City perform, and if you ever find yourself in Chicago, see them. ASAP. Seriously. To tell you how funny it is, let’s just say that a lot of Saturday Night Live cast members (including Tina Fey and John Belushi) got their start with Second City. Their humor can switch almost effortlessly between skits from sweet to politically-charged to absolutely raunchy. Go find them when you’re in town.

We saw a lot of other sites, including Michigan Avenue, the Disney store, the Hershey’s store, and the Marylin Monroe statue! We also went to the Chicago Institute of Art, Millenium Park (and the Jelly Bean) and the Museum of Contemporary Art. The MCA’s current exhibit actually covers art from the 1980s, which is….interesting. Better than their fashion sense, I’ll give them that.

AND WE FOUND QUIMBY’S BOOKSTORE! Holy snood was that freaking amazing! And the taxi driver who took us there was even nice! (Not the guy on the way back. He was presumptuous and demanded a tip.) Literally half of all of my souvenirs came from this bookstore because they have the coolest and best self-published comics and zines and independent/underground comics I have ever found in a book store so far! This is also a go-to place if you find yourself in Chicago, even if you don’t like comics: some friends who came with me to Quimby’s don’t even read comics, and they still found stuff they liked…..mostly smut….

I WOULD include pictures of all the places I saw in Chicago, but 1) those pictures were all taken on my phone, and the quality is crap because I don’t have an iPhone like all of my other peers, and 2) I’m trying not to spam this blog.

Instead, I shall include pictures of all the souvenirs I got from that marvelous city.

Ta-da!

The Jack Skellington Shirt came from the Disney store. I’m going to be gifting that to someone soon.

A delightful shirt from the Chicago Institute of Art.

All the books I found at Quimby’s are here.

Postcards and a Bookmark from the Chicago Institute of Art.

Found this Sticker at Quimby’s. It now decorates my Sketchbook.

My other souvenirs not Quimby’s-related. The shirt came from the Museum of Contemporary Art and says “Fear No Art.”

By the way, if you didn’t notice, I also got both volumes of Maus while in Chicago. If you haven’t read it yet, why the fuck haven’t you? This is probably the best damn graphic novel I’ve read for a long time in terms of brutal and raw emotions.

That’s all for now. Next week I hope to post a comic I’ve finished recently, but if not, expect some sketches!

Don’t Forget to Be Awesome.

Before I show any work-in-progress, and before I go off to Chicago for the weekend, I would like to show to you a two-page original comic I call, “The Reunion.”

The first page is, I believe, ten inches by seven inches. The second page is four and a half feet tall by two feet wide.

As you can imagine, it won’t be easy to make prints of these. But here on the internet, you can enjoy this brother and sister duo meeting again after the brother’s year of absence.

Please click on the images to enlage them. They’re best seen when they’re larger.

I enjoyed making this, every minute of the way.

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.