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Warm-Up Drawings Reach 100

As you can see from the previous entry, I’ve reached 100 in my series of warm-up drawings.  Check ‘em out on Flickr or in my portfolio.  It seems like just yesterday the series reached 50. 

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100 Gymnastigator

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Design Inspiration interview

Oops, I keep forgetting to link to this. Jeff Andrews interviewed me a while back for the Design Inspiration website, and the interview is now online.  LEARN! Startling facts. DISCOVER! The secret to long life. BEHOLD! My hairy face.

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099 Grampire

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Huffington Post on Excelsior

I’m tickled by this surprisingly thoughtful review of Excelsior 1968 by Jeremy Axelrod of the Huffington Post. Some choice quotes:

On its own terms, though, the project is evocative. Something about sampling that convergence of lives—a Venn diagram of bygone adolescence—has always had a voyeuristic (even poignant) appeal, and this is no less true of Martz’s blandly exact adaptation.

And:

Martz bills his mass-portraiture as an exercise, but it’s also a prodigious visual study of a small universe of personalities, now long dissipated to cubicles, fortunes, graves.

Well, golly.

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098 Jig

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097 Bait

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096 Worm Time

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095 Astro-Joust

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In Bruges

A pair of hitmen, hiding out, and waiting for their cues is
about to find themselves at odds, and, dare I say, in bruises.

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Shine a Light

Ode to a 50-foot Keith Richards

Keith! Oh Keith! Your craggy face,
I bet it could be seen from space --
all pock-marked, creased, and krinkled.
IMAX-size, you fill the skies
with planetoidal bloodshot eyes
as massive as they’re wrinkled.

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Links on a Thursday

Some quick links for this Thursday afternoon

More Yearbook Projects
I’m thrilled with the positive reception to my crazy yearbook project. I mailed nearly 40 books today, each with a drawing inside, and the orders continue to roll in slowly, so thanks to everyone! Now, I am not the first person obsessive compulsive enough to attempt an exercise like this.  John Ralston’s The Liner, was the first such project I was aware of, and here are two others: Joshua Bienko’s The Girls of Delta Zeta, and most recently, The Beauty of Graduation by Justin White.  I’m glad I’m not the only one with this obsession.

Cardiggins
Looking for greeting cards? My good friend Becca has started making cards with calm, reflective photographs on them: Cardiggins.  Perfect for when you want to say, “Happy Birthday,” but also, “Relax, pal.”

Logo Design Love
I helped judge the Logo Design Love Awards, a competition for blog logos, and you can check out the winners, and read my commentary.

Plagiarized Illustration Book
This is disgusting: Darren Di Lieto was tipped off that hundreds of illustrators’ work and the interviews he conducted with them for the LCS have been plagiarized in a book. I’ve been interviewed by Darren as well, but it looks like the book was published before then, so my work escaped the poaching. Darren has photos of each page of the book. Ugh.

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094 Coffee Ghost

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Yearbook Project: Excelsior 1968

Last year I redrew my mother’s entire high school yearbook from 1968—over a thousand heads. Good cartooning, to me, is all about simplification, and this was a fun experiment in distilling each person’s likeness down to a simple cartoon version and learning to draw efficiently, with both speed and as few details as possible.

I’ve published the project as a book called Excelsior 1968, which I debuted at last summer’s Toronto Comic Arts Festival. You can buy the book from my new online shop, and you can see entire thing over at Flickr.

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Bee Movie

With a title like this, there are tons
of reviews that are littered with puns.
Could anything be more unfunny
than “Buzz Kill!” or “Show Me The Honey!”?
Myself, I’m not prone to such junk;
I simply thought Bee Movie stungk.

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