Sketches from Creative Writing course this past summer

The summer seems so far away, and yet there was a time I rode my bike without a jacket to UofT for a terrific writing course for Graphic Novels, by Toronto based artist, Willow Dawson.

The class was amazing, the variety of what people were doing was so great, and I still had some time to do some stylized drawings...

Please check out Willow Dawson's website, she is about to launch her new book, 100 Mile House.

Social Media Darling

Here is a Little Shot that Olex sent me after the artist project.

Look at this kid! If I held Annie the whole time I am certain more people would have stopped by the booth.

Thanks Olex and Danaka for coming by the booth and for sending me this great shot!

Found Some Drawings From 2006

Trying to clear out some junk, and you know with me that is a major feat. But as they say, live in hope.

I tried to clear some stuff from the file cabinet and came across this pamphlet from 2006 when I was in London, UK. I went to White Chapel gallery which is at the end of Brick Lane, an incredible immigrant portion of London.

These drawings were made on the tube and I must have been passing Black Friars at the time.

Weird, I would have never remembered even doing these drawings but now that I look at this woman reading the paper I actually have a vague memory of this person, being in the manky tube. 

This show, Inner Worlds Outside, was full of outsider art and had images by current art darling, Darger, the Chicago janitor cum Art genius post 1970s death.



I love the cover image, it is at once Victorian and Cycladic at the same time, by Francis Picabia, definitely not an art outsider for reals.

Here is a close up of Darger's intense paintings of the Vivian Girls as they fight their epic battles.

Some of the artists in the show were also Madge Gill (a Clairvoyant), Dubuffet, James Ensor (Belgium's Famous Painter!!!yes, you TMBG fans) Miro and Adolf Wolfi. A real mix of established and outsiders who dealt with some similar issues.


here is that Wolfi guy, I like this image too.

If you wanna learn more about outsider art,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outsider_art   you can find a lot of artists to check out.

Its kinda a tricky thing as so many of the people who profess to be outsiders are part of the mainstream art world, obviously not your Darger types who are penniless insane hermits who get discovered after death.   Dubuffet, a "artist" coined the Art Brut or Raw Art term and that applied to the art of the insane, prisoners or naive artwork he collected. In today's 'nothing is really alternative' world, outsider art is kinda a genre- in this one man's opinion.