Theo Ellsworth's Blog, page 84

collaborative doodling

I kind of fell off the map with posting for awhile, so I thought I'd jump back into this little room I keep in Internet-World by showing you this drawing I made with Joe Lambert and Sean Christensen while hanging out at the Secret Acres table at Stumptown last month. Sean's already my favorite dude to collaborate with and it was an extra treat to get to draw with Joe during his first ever visit to the West Coast.

Stumptown Comics Festival this weekend!

I'll be at the Stumptown Comics Fest all weekend helping run the Secret Acres table along with Joe Lambert and Sean Christensen. We'll have all kinds of great publications to check out and we'll be ready to converse with friends and strangers alike on a wide range of topics. Come on out and keep us company.

In other news, I'm painfully close to finishing The Understanding Monster, Book One! Really, I should be staying home all weekend to work on it. It feels pretty crazy finally be so close to delivering the pages to Secret Acres.

Grid Lords begins!

There's a new, monthly comics reading called Grid Lords at the Waypost in Portland Oregon. This first one is to kick off the Stumptown Comics Fest happening this weekend. I'll be reading some new work along with Jesse Moynihan, Malachi Ward, Maria Sputnik, and August Lipp.

Time Travel Postcard

I designed a postcard for 826 LA, a non-profit writing and tutoring center. Every city that has an 826 has a different themed gift shop in front. The Los Angeles one is Time travel themed. You can get my postcard and help support an incredibly awesome place here

inspiration

I've been collecting pictures that I love into a slide show that plays on my computer when it goes into screen saver mode. It's nice to be able to look up from my drawing table and see images that keep me charged. It's made my computer become less of a stressful object and more of an inspiration machine. Collecting these images has made me realize just how floored I am by native ceremonial costumes from all over the world. The Asaro River People, New Guinea.
Koskimo Dancer, North West Coast of America.
The Bapende People, Zaire

Griffin: Owl Ninja

Owl hat, hand made by Allie Tiedeman.

The Ghost Show

I have one piece in the Ghost Show that's opening at Pony Club Gallery in Portland, Oregon.
I brought my unfinished piece for the Ghost Show with me to my class at ArtFest. I discovered that a lot of students don't like having to introduce themselves at the beginning of class, but it helps me feel like I can put a name to their face, so I decided to pass my unfinished ghost around the class and have the students introduce themselves to my art instead. The fact that every one of my students has held this ghost and introduced themselves to it feels like an important part of the piece now.
I brought it home and colored it just in time to give it to the curator, Jennifer Parks, to hang in the show. It's the ghost of an Ancient Multi-Dimensional Earth Native, just in case you couldn't tell.

Imaginary School

I was really excited about how my workshop at ArtFest went this year. I had a room full of amazing students and they were a pleasure to spend the day with. In my Imaginary School, we covered such topics as Mind Technology powered Disbelief Suspension Suits, hand drawn Multi-Dimensional Doorways, and cut and paste as teleportation. They all did so well! A lot of people asked if I would be teaching this class again. I'd like to. Teesha and Tracy Moore are the ones who first encouraged me to teach and I took up the challenge as a way to get more involved in the amazing world they created with ArtFest. I haven't taught anywhere else. Now that ArtFest is ending, I'm not sure where I'd teach. They created the perfect environment and made me feel like I could put myself out there in that kind of way. I think it'd be fun to teach at their studio in Seattle, The ArtFest Annex sometime down the road. Getting to see my students drawings take shape and getting to know them all a little over the course of the workshop was truly thrilling. I wish I could've gotten better photos of everyone's projects. Here's a couple of the clearer photos I took at the closing gallery event:

Front and inside of Sylvan Bourgette's piece from my class.

Front and inside of Stephanie Arildson's piece from my class.

Off to ArtFest

The whole family is hitting the road tomorrow. We're heading to the final ArtFest up in Port Townsend, Washington. I'm teaching one all day workshop and setting up a table of my work at the vender's night. Then I'll get to spend the rest of the weekend exploring the hills and beaches, giving Griffin piggy back rides, and hanging out with everyone. There's so many people I can't wait to see up there. Teesha and Tracy Moore know how to put on amazing events, and their attitude and views on creativity are the most refreshing around. I'm sad that it'll be the final ArtFest, but I'm excited to see what they're going to do next. They're always up to something. The picture above has to do with the class I'm teaching, and it also has everything to do with my book. I'll write more about that sometime.

Sparkplug Forever!

Sparkplug Books is doing a fundraiser over at indiegogo.com to help them publish their next three books: www.indiegogo.com/sparkplugbooks I highly recommend going to the site and checking out the excellent short video they made about Dylan Williams and his vision for Sparkplug. Dylan died last September of Leukemia and his wife and friends are hoping to publish the three books that he was working on releasing as well as hopefully continuing on to publish more books in the future. Sparkplug is a publisher that's really important to me. It's done a lot to redefine what comics can be, and helped give voice to unique and unusual artists. Dylan's absence has left a huge hole in the world of art comics, but I love the idea that Sparkplug could keep publishing new books for years to come.