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EXTRA EXTRA: Prepare to face thy Doom
On Thursday, January 21 in Toronto a new cover I designed for Eye Weekly will hit the stands. On it is a portrait of rapper MF Doom, an off-beat artist who wears a menacing mask while he performs, and who (for those of you not geeky enough to know), borrows his name from a famous comic book villain, one Dr. Doom of the “Fantastic Four” titles (MF DOOM is still apparently earning his PHD).
Super Heroes, particularly those who are sucked into the mundane realities of our own universe, are something of a recurring trope of mine (in the past I’ve been known to handle such heady subjects as Cat Woman clutching grocery bags and petting an alley cat and Superman flipping through an iPod) so I knew that whatever image we decided upon, I wanted the hero, a villain in this case, to be placed firmly within the reality of our own world and not the world of comics.
Somewhat revealed to us is that the legendary rapper is in fact something of a stocky, middle-aged bald man, yet not all is given away: Doom’s hands still protect his identity, though this gesture might in itself reveal a story of playfulness, self-loathing, and a nagging hangover. — Read the Article.
DEPT OF ROMANCE: From meeting to marriage in just four dates!
Here’s an interesting piece on dating that I worked on while going through a recent break up of my own. Good thing I had my old friend irony to keep me company, otherwise that could have been extremely depressing. Thanks Toronto Life! I plan to use the money from this job to buy love. Precious, irreplaceable love. — JD
CITY LIGHTS: Chalk of the Town
Not wanting Christmas to be over and with no real New Years plan as usual, I decided that I would finish up the rest of my holidays in our nation’s flagship city: Toronto. I’ve been mingling with the colour of the city and searching for the perfect Boxing Day sale for the perfect camel skin coat, which is really beyond my budget, and probably more than I deserve anyways, but what the hell, I do need a jacket. (A question to our readers: How warm is camel hair? The desert gets cold at night, does it not? So the camels must need protection. But of course it’s hot during the day. Does that mean that camel hair will self-regulate? Is the coat worth the dough? Or am I just liable to spill coffee on it? Any advice is appreciated.)
The base of my operation is a swell apartment on Queen Street West, right in the heart of the matter, and the most central location I’ve ever enjoyed in this city. A very inspiring mess. Its caretakers (tenants–I’m their guest, they’re my friends) are Pete Ryan and Jill Wood, two terrific artists in their own right. For my first three nights in the place I was by myself, the happy couple was out of town, so I used their apartment as a place to go to in between coffee, sushi, and the movie theater. When they finally came in from their excursion, they brought with them a blackboard that they had snagged as a Christmas present. Meanwhile I was busy looking for ways to avoid work, so I figured I’d start by drawing this blackboard picture to commemorate the occasion. Kind of a neat style for an illusion, perhaps I’ll market it into an entire portfolio some day, schedule permitting.
Happy New Year, by the way.
JD
THE CURRENT SEASON: “Christmas Time has Come”
Above is a poster/cover for a little holiday comic I’ve been working on. I hope to have it done before x-mas and will post it up here, so stay tuned “true believers.”
Note: This is not yet completed.
AT THE MOVIES: “The Bless of Evil” — The Bad Lieutenant
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“Why is he so evil, why is he so bad? Is it cocaine, is it Hurricane Katrina, is it the corruption in the police force, is it his childhood? I said no, let’s not talk about all of these conceptual things and all this heavy stuff that goes on between directors and actors, I said let’s skip all this, we go for one thing: There is such a thing as the bless of evil, let’s go right for that.”
– Werner Herzog on Q, speaking on directing Nicolas Cage in the new film, Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans
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CITY LIGHTS: Seth at Drawn & Quarterly
One evening in the early days of November, a group of 50 or so admirers crowded into a small bookstore on Bernard street, quickly occupying its 30 or so chairs, filling up its aisles and then finally sitting on the floor when no more room could be found. The shop, The Librairie Drawn & Quarterly, is perhaps the last outpost of indie high culture that stands on guard along the northern border of Montreal’s Mile End before that neighbourhood, known for it’s Sesame-esque street life and thriving hipster population, extends into the decidedly un-gentrified Siberia of Parc Ex, where there are presumably no complete Peanuts anthologies in the window displays, no complete box sets of eclectic McSweeney’s postcards to purchase, and no 2ft high “Sof Boy” figurines that stare up at you like the most perfect embodiment of pure wonder and glee. The audience was an alchemy of those born after the year 1980, and those born in some mysterious time period prior to that, who looked remarkably similar to the 80’s group in dress though disturbingly altered somehow. They gathered there to sit at the heels of (or kneel in some cases) the cartoonist Seth.
THE CURRENT SEASON: Remembrance Day
To honour this November 11th, I’ve decided to create an illustration for the occasion. — Throughout the day, I posted the work in its progress: drawing, inking and colouring. Above is the finished piece, and below you can see it in its previous stages.
— Thanks to those of you who have commented here and on facebook.
EXTRA EXTRA: It’s a Wonderful Life
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Three weeks ago I received a call from Toronto Life magazine, asking me if I could create three, yes three, covers for their upcoming issue. — How it works is, you have you’re “cover cover” that’s the one everyone sees when they first look at the magazine, and then underneath that you have your second cover, and underneath that a third. And the idea was that I could use these covers to create a three part story, which features a day in the life of some creative Torontonians — “Sounds terrific.” I said, “that sort of thing is right up my alley.” — “Great,” they said. “But there’s just one thing. We need it in exactly five days.”
Then if my life were a movie, Journey’s “Ask the Lonely” would have kicked in, and there would have been a montage scene which condensed 120 hours of drawing, colouring and dripping takeout food on my keyboard, into one moment of triumph; in which I conquer my demons, rise to the challenge, and kick some major illustration ass. — But in reality, I had to play that song again and again, and eventually got sick of it on the third day. The rest though, all happened exactly like that. — I hope you enjoy.
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PORTRAIT RADIO: Boo Are You?
November 5th can be scary too! – Just because Halloween was officially over days ago and now your pumpkin is silently rotting on your porch, do not allow yourself to give into the notion that the season for scares is over. — This Halloween episode promises to be worth the wait. So much so that we are willing to wager that if you allow yourself to sit back and enjoy the entire thing, you will actually forget that you are listening to your friend’s amateur pod cast, and feel as though you’re not wasting your time. And there is nothing scary about that.
CLICK ANYWHERE ABOVE TO PLAY
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