Round Pink Bird

Playing around with cheap watercolors, pastels, and ink. You know, the kind of stuff your aunt gives you for christmas after she found out that you "like art", and it was a big wooden suitcase with a combo pack of colored pencils, pastels, and watercolors....Oh yes.

New Studio & A 15 Minute Pigeon

I know its been a while. Yeah. Lame. But at least I've been doing some cool things right? Like for example, renting a new studio workspace!

It is right smack in the middle of downtown, so on late nights I can walk to my studio through the bustling crowds of loud women in short skirts and drunken men sporting Chargers jerseys. yeah! It is a pretty good size for me and what I want to do, I've even set up my record player in there and everything. The other night I was painting a watercolor of a pigeon to the sounds of Billie Holiday...what a great way to spend an evening yes?

"Holiday" Vacation is coming, so there will be another short break in my blogging, but I will surely post one more happy gubba delight before I fly out to eat ham and mashed potatoes (mmmmmm).

<3gubba

First Review Ever!!!

I sent a copy of my comic to Optical Sloth, a blogger who reviews mini-comics and zines for a living I suppose (which is pretty cool), and he reviewed mine. Go read it, yeah!

Pigeon-Toad Comics: In Store Now!

I officially have my comic on sale at Bluestocking Books in Hillcrest!

This is really cool, because it is an independent bookstore that is located right in the heart of the 'good' shopping area, adjacent to that great vintage store "Wear It Again Sam", (for those of you who know the area).

It's only 3 bucks so go pick up a copy and then I can feel cool by having to come in and restock their supply with more Gubba comics! I am beginning Issue #2 shortly, which will be released in January some time, so keep an eyeball out. The show went so well last night that I very much would like to display art there again...and hopefully that will be in the end of January, which, I can time perfectly with the release of the next issue! High hopes on my part of course, but I have to keep my mind working or else my talent gets rusty.

Gubba Art Show!!!!

ALSO featuring the art of: Brandon Bullen, Jesse Gammage, Ryan milner, Tyler Alderson, Garry Booth, Ash Thorp, Mike Knife, and Hydeon.
AND featuring music by: Motel Monster, Shrunken Wool Sweaters, Mira La Luz, and Henari Nannon

Presented by Community Work Effort (communityworkeffort.com) and Mixed Media Gallery/The Kava Lounge

Progression....

Thanksgiving at Mane's house was delicious. Please note Sake reading one of my comics in the corner...
Today I am focusing all my energies on finishing the Dumproach painting for the show on Sunday, procuring a decent stack of cute business cards hand drawn by me of course, and deciding whether or not I shall attempt a third piece for the show. I need one more canvas if I am to attempt painting the Fly in his stinky glory, so I will get a one tommorow and see if I can try to complete a third piece for the show on Sunday.I really ran out of time so quickly, I hardly recognized it going by. I was quite focused on my comic, and am still mostly excited about that at the show than anything else I am doing. Most of my friends have read it so far, and the reactions make me happy, so I am hoping the general public will find it just as enjoyable/amusing. So, off to the studio to paint and get frustrated and then blotch it all out...then get some coffee and start over.

Lizard Gubba in Action

Just playing some sports, you know, the cool kind. Mikey made a special little video when he captured sight of me in the wild at my friend sake's house

Pigeon-Toad Comics

Pigeon-Toad Comics: Issue Number One is officially done. Enjoy 8 pages of twisted humor drawn by the one and only Gubba.

How do you get your hands on this little guy? Well, if you are one of my friends, you have probably got one on the way via post. If you are a stranger and would love to get one, here is how you should do it:

Mail me 3 (that's right, just three!) US dollars to:
PO BOX 122735
San Diego, CA
92112-2735

OR

Come to the KAVA LOUNGE (2812 Kettner Blvd, San Diego, CA), SUNDAY NOVEMBER 25TH at 7PM and get it yourself. It will be a group show with music and art. I will be debuting the new comic, and featuring some new guoche ink paintings as well. A flyer will be posted soon.

And last, some thank you's....
Lee Lavy via TardCore Comics: for helping with layout stuff by flipping through pages of alien nudity and disgust Trista: For sewing together my first rough draft and thinking my cartoons are funny in the first place Mikey: For all of the suggestions, especially making me redraw the first turd to make him even better Joey: Not letting me get away with the first version of the cover totally sucking, and for being cool all the time Storm: For not letting you see the comic until it was done - it made me want to finish it faster....and Kinko's for totally screwing me on the pricing. Yeah!

thinking of a name...

The comic is almost done, I finally thought of a name for the comic, but not for the issue, if that makes any sense. I'm going with "Pigeon-Toad Comics" as the name, and the issue....well I am just not sure what to name it. I've made lists among lists of the key words of what my art reminds me of, or inspires in me, like this for example:
poop/butts/smoking/creatures/characters/tubes/cute/kawaii/socks/gestures/animals/cockroach/dump/ dumping/piles/junk/yard/junk/heap/junk/stink/smells.....
Yup. And once I really think super hard maybe it will come to me. Well it better damn well come to me because the deadline for the comic is about 2 weeks from now, so I better figure it out. I would give a sneak preview again like before but I am just so excited to present it as a whole piece of something rather than....piece it out before its done? Alright!
Also it smells like pork chops in my house because I just made some really good food. Maybe I should add 'pork' to my list because that's pretty funny to me also.

PORK.

Halloween! Photo Stories Are Cool!

This is my lizard costume for Halloween. Based off of my frequently drawn lizard characters, often holding beverages, wearing sleeves and pockets, Trista made this for me and did a better job of it than I could have ever imagined. We went fabric shopping and got the material for a total of 10 bucks, and then she went to work...and in two days she finished it. The best 3-D rendition of my art that I have encountered (and probably the first actually...), it's just perfect!

Mouth-Breathers

Some mouth breathing animals of the assorted kind. Here we've got a tadpole, a beaver, a small bear (maybe?), a frog, and one mole. And what looks like an eyeball I never finished attaching a body to. The shadows are of course the bleed-through.

Some Flying Animals

Excuse the bleed-through from the other page. Thin paper, you know.

Customized Target Packaging Via Gubba

A little addition I made to some new sheets from Target.

mmhm!

New stuffs and things

Amongst the lazy days of an ending summer I have been involved in some very fun events. I went to Portland to visit my brother for a few days, enjoyed some rainy weather, excellent coffee, and the company of some very special people. My dad flew up with me as well so I enjoyed drawing pictures of gorillas and dinosaurs on the plane whilst discussing his life as a bouncer at a downtown club. He is a very interesting man. I did a lot of drawing in Portland once I rediscovered the magic of some vintage (printed in 1955) Golden Press school books I had bought at a garage sale about 10 years ago. They had been packed away in a box from when I lived in Portland in 2005, and when I got there I immediatly shoved them back into my suitcase to bring the damn things home, because they are so cool. I am currently using them as a reference for my animal characters...more on that later -

Sneak Preview

For those in doubt, or simply curious, I have almost completed the first comic in my mini comic book. 'Almost' because the title has yet to be worked out..and a few other minor details need to be finished. You only get a sneak preview of course because I've got to save the real deal for later, when the whole thing is done. This excerpt is from the debut of the Smoking Cockroach.

Some Droolings on Life and Comics?

So I have decided that it is time to set aside momentarily the character catalogue (yes after two submissions), and turn my attention to actually producing a comic of sorts that would be just as effective at introducing my characters. The point of the mini-catalogue in the first place was to introduce and describe my characters as if they were new friend of sorts, so after reading a rather informative article about making mini comics, as usual I have been super inspired. The only thing stopping me from 'doing art' as a living is myself, and I must admit that with Mikey getting busy with his new site and three blogs, I am seeing that it will require work, but fun work (not the work I am about to go to in less than an hour, mehk!). I've already familiarized myself with the world of Kinko’s, so it seems perfectly suitable that I spend a bit more time there trying to produce a few copies of a mini comic. Which first of course, requires that I actually produce a comic in the first place? SO! Where to begin? A crap load of drawing lies ahead. Not to mention a really cool contest that I read about on the same sight where the mini comic blog was posted. (youngamericancomics.com), that I would like to participate in. And thankfully the contest has a deadline which always helps an anal retentive organizational freak like myself.

And in other news, I've decided that Work is a sort of boring tragedy of American job culture (thanks for the article Storm) and that the lack of personal discipline turns into a homicidal maniac barrier when pursuing personal desires of the creative mind and soul. My disillusionment with a day job and all that that implies has begun to border a sense of frantic desperation! And on top of these feelings I have been having immensely vivid dreams that in capture Youth in its most full essence, an imaginary perfect Youth, and when I awake I am filled with a sad and reminiscent feelings for a past only procured from dreams! Strange images of people and faces I once knew or never knew at all, mixed atop a background of school campuses or towns that are forever Young, very strange indeed

Smoking Cockroach

*Note: The spelling of alcohol is wrong. Damn!

Character Catalog #1

I am starting a catalog of my most prized and special characters, so that I can reference them as if it were my own family album. This little project of mine is also meant to be part of a larger top secret project, not to be revealed until, well, its actually done. I have been known to talk about big projects too much and then never complete them, so I've decided to keep my mouth shut until I have something to show for it. This is Character Number One: Dazed Frog, and a few details you need to know about him.

Next Up - Character Number Two: Smoking Cockroach

Paul Rand!

Here's a guy that knows how to mix Cute with good clean Design. No surprise that he was born in 1920. There a quite a few things of his that I admit that I am not that into design wise, but that mostly starts around the 80's (i.e. IBM and some mainstream logos that he did). The childrens books he did, like Little One and Sparkle and Spin, aren't among my favorites either as far as 'cute' goes, but I do enjoy the design elements. These two advertisements are really great!

Both images taken from an autobiography titled Paul Rand, by Steven Heller. I was hanging on every word two years ago when I first read this book, and little bits and pieces of Rand's style will sometimes infiltrate my doodles.

new pen

Poop

There are many different kinds. I thought of four for now.

The Sick Poop. You know, too much fruit or fiber in one day..

The Nuggets. When the poop hasn't fully compacted...

The Basic Log. The regular guy in the poop world...

And finally, The Pile, who just keeps coming and ends up nicely piled up...

Sausage Embrace

I don't know why they got seperated, but they're pretty happy to be back together again, these two sausages.

for the lack of freshness

Yes, I am slacking in the department of drawing daily, and that is rather unfortunate! But be prepared! For I have finally, as of 8pm last night finished reading all of the Harry Potter books. Thats right, seven books in three weeks man. Thats probably about 5000 pages or something. Granted, those books are written for 'young adults' and are of course, rather easily read...but I digress. The important thing is drawing lots of cool things. If I devoted as much time as I did to reading all those books I could have published a short character sketch book by now! So for fun, here are a few oldies. And, I promise to myself, that there will be new art up soon...for the two people that read my blog. haha. These are both from 2005, when I first discovered the magic of Copic markers.

cartoon condoms

How about some birth control methods that are really really happy? I drew this today while thinking about a t-shirt contest.

toys! from Mitsuwa!

Here are a few of my most valued Japanese posessions...the Japanese are wonderfully ingenious when it comes to the essence of Kawaii. toys are cool man.

A quick bit about toys. In the 30's and 40's especially, my belief is that those who were designing kids toys and products were greatly in tune with the correct aesthetic of cuteness, or kawaii, in Japanese. You had Paul Rand, designing childrens books and Olympia typewriter ads with cartoons in them, appealing to both adults and children....And it's not necessarily because it was specifically "cute", it is that the shapes and elements involved take one back to a time, an aesthetic memory if you will, that for most brings forth pleasant emotions. The first handmade card you drew for your mom in third grade, of the collage you made in art class in sixth grade. The smell of paste glue and the sound of cutting paper and the texture of a finished product. For most American children, now grown adults, these things will bring forth a feeling of youthfulness (though passed) that encourages the eye to see even a more pleasing sight than it might have evoked without these elements. Perhaps this is merely a minute detail of the whole picture, but for me, it is what makes a toy worth buying. Because the simple truth is that when you get older, you can still appreciate toys but one doesn't actually play with them any more, we just admire them on our shelves or in boxes or in pictures on blogs. So to actually purchase a toy, means it is so great to just look at, without adding anything to it, and that is a great thing in life. Aesthetic appreciation without a serious purpose to it, enjoyment for the sake of enjoyment. Etc...

my first comic

On a whim, I was challenged by someone to see if I could make a three panel cartoon a few weeks ago. I had no idea how I could make something even remotely funny within the space of three panels...so my answer to the solution was to draw a peanut first, because, well, peanuts are funny. It's two nuts hanging out in seperate compartments- that's funny to me. Doin' some hanging out in shell? Anyway, this is what I came up with.

Gestures

I did this two years ago I think. It was when I first started drawing lizards for some reason. Oh, and that lizard in the back is supposed to be holding a gun...yeah....

Fixing and Sticking

Today I had the unfortunate pleasure of having to fix some pieces from my recent art show..."unfortunate" only because I feel that the originals were much better. Transferring this way, with a simple marker and burnishing technique, leads to many mistakes, because trying to keep the paper steady is very hard, and the fumes are annoying, and the pressure of the bone burnishing tool can sometimes rip the paper. Long story short, when the end product is nice and clean, one can breath a deep sigh of relief and really enjoy the way this technique results in a strange sketch-turned-photocopy-turned-screenprint-image. BUT..when one pushes to hard, or doesn't keep the paper steady, the image becomes blurred, very light, and just looks a bit lousy.

This is the Bandaged Man piece being laid down and gridded out very sloppily (the ink from the blender markers dries so fast I easily forget which parts I have transferred and those I have not), and ready for an inky rub down...

And this is the "Ejected Burnt Toast" piece taped down as well. No grid needed here, the lines are so few they're easily tracked...

And then the inky process begins, soaking the paper through...

And burnishing it (here with a bone burnisher) as hard as it seems the paper will take it to get a dark, clean image...

And the finished transfer, with the original mirror imaged photo copy above it, looking slightly damp and worn from the burnishing...

And that is how I did it. But of course, the originals just seemed to posess something greater than these, so I am sad that I ripped apart the originals to use the foamcore beneath it...just to save money on the process. Sort of scandolous of me, I think. It was interesting for me to see how much a difference the slightest movement or photocopy speck of dust can make in the final rendering...
My lesson has been learned. When using ten dollar spray adhesive instead of wheat paste (like everyone so fervently advised me to do after I had done the show, ahk!), make sure you wait the whole minute before applying to two parts, because it sticks better once it becomes tacky, not when it is still freshly wet. I am yet an amateur in the field of most art products, for example, barely learning last year that "matte" isn't simply a French term for 'paint'....okay, perhaps I am exaggerating, but one gets the point - I still have much to learn...I am still a young Gubba.

things i think aren't cool...

..like reading five books of Harry Potter consecutively the past two weeks to catch up with the movie currently showing in theaters. actually I still have 200 pages to finish before i see the movie tomorrow night, which I can do, but then I still have two more to read to actually finish the series before the dramatic ending is revealed through Harry Potter fans that surround me at work. Which is about....1600 pages or more? Meanwhile I've let this blog gather dust and the scanner I've borrowed from Storm to download some recent sketches also gathers dustballs....

AND I still have to fix two pieces from my show that got all bubbly and screwed up, so now I am almost two weeks late in delivering them to their proper owners. Talk about some slacker artist.

Comic Con

As usual, the plethora of small press artists making somewhat of a living selling pins, stickers, small zines and so on, left me feeling incredibly inspired and in reality, showed me how complacent I have been. The problem with this momentary feeling of inspiration, is that it is, in fact, more fleeting than I would like. If I don't produce something of value in these moments of artistic 'fullness', then it is back to the drawing board per se, without a thing to push me on except for my own encouragement. But alas! My head is swimming and I believe this event will not go unnoticed. I am very inspired and my brain is going a million miles an hour......

Labels

When thinking about the labels, which really came to me last minute, I was initially stumped. I didn't want to type up the labels on a computer and make them overly sterile and serious, nor did I want to get too artsy on everyone. I also figured that the labels were simply bearing the title and the price, so I should keep it simple. The final product came together as a result of a pile of old coin wrappers that I had kept for years because I simply thought they looked cool (and I never had any coins to wrap because I always use them on the stupid parking meters). I pulled out a typewriter for the sake of not having to pick a font on the computer (once again trying to avoid the overly sterile image of a label), and, it just looked great too.

a few more..

More goodies from the Gubba bag of art. The last one is titled "Suspicious Vegetables", and this seemed to receive the most positive response from the most varied amount of people. I really thought about this afterward to try to pinpoint what it is that makes it better to people than say, the Miserable HotDog (which is my favorite). My conclusion is that most likely, the fact that there are more characters in one picture to look at, and also, that a picture of vegetables seems more like a practical thing to buy than a miserable looking hot dog, if we're talking 'house' art. Meaning, everyone who liked the Suspicious Vegetables piece kept telling me how "it would look SO cute in my kitchen!". Not that that isn't understandable, but I think my point, if I'm even getting to one, is that vegetables are 'easier' to like if you are not 'into' art, as opposed to something supposedly abstract like a giant hot dog looking character, that doesn't really look that much like a hot dog.

And as another side note, the original Suspicious Vegetables was not colored, as you can see in the picture above the colored one, but the person who bought it asked me to color it. So I made a copy of the original, and colored it using a mix of cheap watercolors and fancy guoche ink, which, I'll admit, made me feel a bit bothered, since the whole point of the show was a bunch of black and white images of "super inky" stuff.