So last week was Beat About's one year anniversary show. I got asked to do a poster for it by Sir Jesse Mutter of Ungodly Hour Aftermath. I'd been itching to revisit the Metal Zombies of Mars, so I busted this out for them:
In case you haven't seen it or had forgotten, here's the original appearance of the Metal Zombies, for an illustration assignment where we had to do a fake pulp magazine cover:
Ahhhhh, memories.

Next Saturday is the final punk show at the Bristol Grind House, and I did a poster for it as well, using an old photobooth pic I found on the side of the road at work:
I've been listening to the Shirks A LOT this week. I'm so excited. I hate that the Grind House is closing, but the good news is that Sterlin is still bringing punk bands to our sleepy little town of Bristol, with Colleen Green coming to Machiavelli's on the 17th.

I plan on writing a longer, more thoughtful thing about these shows, the Grind House, and Sterlin's efforts. Probably next week or something?

In other local news, Burst Reach, Burst Reach 2, and the Distinguished Gentlemen comics are all available now at the Purple Loon downtown! Once I get the first chapter of Other Sleep reprinted, I believe it will be sold there as well! Exciting, yes? If you haven't gotten a copy of either of the Burst Reaches or the Distinguished Gents, better hurry and head over there or talk to me, because I don't have too many left, and I have no plans on reprinting them again. I MIGHT do a pay-what-you-want pdf kind of thing, if only so that I can read them myself on my new Kindle Fire. We'll see.

Other stuff I've been into:
I've been sketching pictures of some friends of mine as Embrace Infection style mutants. Zombie portraits are kind of popular at conventions and things these days, so this my alternative take on that. I'm hoping it's neat enough that people will want to give me money to turn them into something out of a David Cronenberg movie.

If all goes well, I'm doing THREE conventions this year: ETSUcon (which is a new anime convention), Heroes Con, and of course, Bristol's own Rob-Con. On top of that, Rob is putting together something big for Free Comic Book Day. The street that his shop is on is going to be closed off to traffic, with dealers and artists outside selling our wares. 

Oh, ALSO!
I HAVE BUTTONS!! And they're awesome! All the credit goes to Haley and Steve at Self Destruct Buttons, they did an amazing job. I look forward to selling these babies...
Finally, I just finished up a 4-page silent comic for an upcoming Pizza Flag zine. No clue when it's coming out, but I'll of course let you know when it drops. I also did a...poem/narrative/comic/photodistortion thing for a Pizza Flag/William Birdcock zine that I think is dropping some time in April. Can't wait to post that. The owl comic will also be in Burst Reach 3, which I'll be releasing...um...sometime this summer. I'm still working on it, but trust me, it's gonna be great. I feel like Burst Reach 2 was a little bit of a misfire, not quite as frantic and entertaining as the first one, so I'm trying to make up for that.

That's all for now. Lots of stuff going on, considering we're only now just a quarter of the way through the year. It's just going to get better, hopefully. Stick around!

[Brett]

HAPPY NEW YEAR!! I kind of had a slight nervous breakdown earlier today, maybe. Over my art. Heh.

I've been working on some paintings for this art show that starts next week at the Bristol Grind House. Here's the flyer I put together for it:
Watercolors and Microns on canvas is what I'm doing, because I'm a masochist. I've been working on them for two weeks now maybe. Well, two of them anyways, the other two I started on just last week. It's a narrative, but uh, I didn't really know what the narrative was until the other day? Yep. It was supposed to be just three canvases, then it ballooned into four. When I do things, I have to go about doing them in the most punishing way possible.

Anyways...I had them all in what seemed to be a finished state this morning, and I sat them all side by side, and...and I hated them. And I started to think, "fuck, this was a terrible idea, why did I do this, I should've done something else, fuck fuck fuck." And I contemplated painting over at least two of them, abandoning the narrative and just doing something more thematically tied together? Or throwing all but one out and maybe trying to do something different over the next few days.

I spent three and a half years in the graphic design program at ETSU, and in that time I sat through way too many critiques that would go on for literally two or three days sometimes. I failed my portfolio review three times and shouldn't have gotten another chance. Why they gave me four tries, who knows, but I passed that fourth. What I'm getting at here is that school was really rough on me, my pieces were never really terribly notable during critiques, and a small group of professors I was unfamiliar with mostly thought my work was lousy and I just really had to fight in order to graduate.

So all of these memories were going through my head as I was staring at these paintings, thinking about how they'll be up for a good two or three weeks, seen by dozens of people, people I've never met, never will meet. And they'll be judging them, judging ME based on them, even if they never do meet me or see any of my other work ever again. These four paintings are all I have to make a good impression, to convince these people I've never met that I don't suck. And I'm absolutely blowing it, only ONE of the paintings was really strong, the rest were flat and vague and ugly.

I gave myself a bad head rush and a case of the hiccups as I paced around, panicking, trying to think of what to do. I didn't want to throw them all out and try to do something new when everything has to be done by Sunday for Sterlin to hang. And I didn't REALLY want to paint over the canvases, but I was getting desperate and thinking that was the only way out, I was tired of looking at these crappy paintings.

I told a friend on Facebook that I wish I could just erase three and a half years of art school critiques, to which she responded "Keep this in mind: You're an artist, not an art student...and a really good artist at that."

And that...kind of snapped me out of it. I kept thinking about all the lousy critiques I sat through, being told by professors that my portfolio wasn't good enough for the BFA program, all that negative stuff. And her comment reminded me that people DO enjoy my art, and then I remembered this guy who wrote me on deviantART last week, telling me my gallery was his favorite that he'd seen in years.

So I stopped, took some deep breaths, collected myself, once again looked at the paintings, this time more objectively, and set about working on them once again, all afternoon, until once more they looked like they were pretty much finished.

And I was satisfied this time. I was able to figure out how to strengthen each painting and make them stand on their own while still telling a complete story. All it took was a kind word from a friend to help me step back and clear the black clouds out of my brain.

I guess the moral here is, if you like someone's art? TELL THEM. Let them know you appreciate what they're making. Because artists, we're neurotic as fuck. I often find myself in this hole, hating my work, hating myself for hating my work and not being any good, and it's discouraging. But a comment or two is all it takes to get me back on my feet. 

Anyways. Show goes up on Sunday. I'm gonna take pictures of the individual paintings tomorrow once I've deemed them complete, and post them some time next week. Stay tuned.

(originally posted on my Tumblr)