Anders Nilsen's Blog, page 33

Sara goes to Cambodia

The inimitable Sara Drake is going to Cambodia this Fall to teach comics, literacy, and a DIY ethic to young women there who have historically been left out of the educational system. And to drink a lot of coconut water. She's doing comics about the project as well, and is raising money on Kickstarter. She rules. Give her a hand.

Just to reiterate

The Lula Big Questions release party is NOT TONIGHT. It's on the 30th. Three weeks from now. Awesome. Oh and by the way, John Porcellino and Kyle Beachy are reading and Zak Sally is playing songs.
Here are some pictures from Genevieve Castree and Phil Elverum's house and church/studio in Anacortes, Washington. I stayed there on my way from Seattle to Vancouver, and it was awesome. Genevieve gave me a little jar of the most delicious tart cherry jam she'd made, gave me a tour of town, and told me the craziest story about Phil's great grandmother adopting a chimpanzee. Anacortes is great. I liked it there.


Collage of photographs of clouds and trees.
Spider Webs for Halloween, by Genevieve.
A small sample of Genevieve's studio. The one original page she had out (she's working on a book for D&Q) was kind of mind bogglingly beautiful. Nobody has such a thin, delicate yet confident line. And she pencils in orange.



The house reminded me a little of people's deceptively small, but liveable houses in New Hampshire, where my Dad lives. It might have partly been the residual smell of wood smoke.
Their flat files are nicer than mine.
Globes
Readying for a show the next day.
Some Croatian Neighbors had commissioned this painting of a seaside Village in Croatia, and then didn't like it. So they gave it to Genevieve and Phil. They have so far resisted the urge to paint a sea monster attacking the town.
My studio is smaller than this.

Chicago Multi-Media Comixplosion, Lula Cafe, Tuesday August 30, 7-10

Contrary to what got printed on the poster, the Chicago Big Questions Release Party and Comix-plosion is not next week. There were issues – a few of which had to do with me being better at drawing pictures of birds than I am at event planning – that forced a switch. The event is still taking shape, but there will be several special guests doing readings, some music, finger food (we're working on, among other things, doughnuts, in honor of everyone's favorite bird food), cheap beer, slightly pricier cocktails, original art on the walls, and Quimby's will be there selling books. It'll be at Lula Cafe off Logan Square. Details to follow. Here's the announcement on Quimby's site.

Home. Next Stop: Toronto

I'm back home. The first leg of the tour was amazing. Sold some books, sold some art, drove a thousand miles and managed to get a bit of skating in at pretty much every stop. Props to Portland and Vancouver for a couple of super good little skate plazas. One thing I was bad about was documenting the events... but I swear, people came out. Here's a shot from Needles and Pens site. They were better about it.

By the way, they mention on their site that they plan to make the work from the show available online in the next week. I'll try to keep tabs and make a note here as well.

I didn't document the events, or the skating for that matter, but I did get some photos of some of the places I stayed. In Portland that was at Nate's house. He's a friend of my brother-in-law from way back, he's in Witch Mountain and has a rad roommate named Matt who does kind of amazing metal cover art. Here's some stuff from Nate's house:









He also had an amazing super-old poster in his room, a sort of pinup style painting of the "women of the X-Men" with Rogue, the mohawked Storm and Kitty hanging out by the pool. from the late 80's probably. Amazing. And apparently super rare as the image doesn't seem to be anywhere on the web.

Lastly, I should probably mention Brian Ralph's diary comics from ComicCon. They're awesome. And not just because I'm in them.

Lastly, huge thank yous to all the shops that hooked me up: Family, Needles & Pens, Pegasus, Floating World, Fantagraphics and Lucky's.

Next up: Seattle

Holy crap, people keep coming out to see me read comics. It's awesome. Portland rules. Floating world rules. Massive Thank Yous. Tonight I'm at the Fantagraphics store in Seattle starting at 6. Gonna try to get some skateboarding in before hand, so apologies to my audience if I'm a little sweaty.

Here are Batman and Robin at the D&Q booth:

And some zombies that aren't really trying that hard:

Some minor superhero character in blue that no one has ever heard of (plus the Joker):

A dragon that is also a...carpenter?

And some sort of weird Japanese Mickey Mouse frog face dude in a suit. Awesome.

Tomorrow: Voltron

Next: Floating World, PDX

Friday. 6-9. And here's one of the famous smoking clowns of Comic-Con.

This Just In

The East Bay Express just posted this with respect to tonight's event.

Next: Pegasus, Berkeley

Finishing up a few things in SF today, including a quick roll around Potrero Skatepark, and breakfast at Just For You where I learned to flip eggs, before heading over to Berkeley to do my thing at Pegasus. The event at N+P was amazing. All kinds of people showed up and stood, sat and laid on the floor to watch the slide show projected high up on the fifteen foot walls. The slide show even convinced a couple of Swedish holiday goers to buy the book they'd earlier deemed a bit heavy to carry with them on their plane ride home. So I must be doing something right. Here are a couple of pics of the N+P show itself from before the people showed up. My eternal gratitude to Andrew and Breezy for hooking this up and doing such a beautiful job framing and hanging the work.

Next: Needles & Pens

Heading up to San Francisco this morning (Tuesday) for the reading and opening at N&P, 7-9:30. The show features several originals from Big Questions, including two covers, a bunch of full pages and several single panels and other scraps. It's the first time I've actually made any material from the book available since around 2005.

San Diego

Drawings from the San Diego Convention Apocalypse. The last one is something I did in someone's sketchbook. Each page had a made up name. I was supposed to pick one and draw them. Next stop Needles and Pens in SF!