Monocles & Moustaches

Hey everybody,
I am working on this illustration in pen turned into digital for coloring style, and it is very comics-looking. I could be perfectionistic, but that seems to be incompatible with fun, so I am opting for fun and flaws. Here is a big dude in a suit. Sorry to not be blogging so much, things are accelerating to get up to speed for school, and that I think means there won't be a whole lot of blog going down for a while. Thanks for reading!
Keep living.


love, megacat.

One of those reasons I can't sleep at night

I have made a poster this week, found below. It is a day late, but it was pretty involved, so be chill. Last week was as involved as this week, but in the end, the comic strip I had done posted looking like trash, so I took it down. Ultimate frustration, but I think this week's looks pretty good. I wanted to try one with black instead of all the jarring blue linework , but attempting this crashed illustrator twice and I took the computer's word that that it would look bad. I am working on a new style portraying people as all uniform, with really restricted and forced positions. They are more iconic stand-ins than actual people, that's the point. It's an odd and different poster/style.

About the poster:
COINTELPRO stands for "counter intelligence program" and was initiated by J. Edgar Hoover when he was director of the FBI (a position he held from May 1924 until May 1972). I have been reading a book by Jack Olsen called Last Man Standing, which is essentially a biography of (former?) black panther Geronimo Pratt. The book documents some of the actions the FBI took against the targets of the program; anyone Hoover deemed "subversive." Techniques were underhanded and deceitful, unconstitutional and unethical. Their goals included breaking up marriages, encouraging gang warfare, disintegrating social organizations, falsely labelling activists as police informers and driving leaders (namely Martin Luther King Jr) to suicide. Needless to say, all of the specific objectives were not met, but the scale of these actions was enormous and the people that were unjustly targeted suffered a lot because of what happened. I blame COINTELPRO for a lot of the trouble the United States has with race, though I understand race is a difficult issue for many societies everywhere to negotiate. COINTELPRO is one of those examples of what humans are capable of doing to each other that leaves me dumbfounded and depressed. That being said, learning about these things humanity does to itself is essential in dispelling our naivete and insuring that we are not caught off guard by its capacity for those things we'd rather not think about. It makes us better citizens.

Do you frequent your local public library? When I studied abroad, I got a real appreciation for them, because all of Oman has only one public library, which is in the state-run mosque in the capitol. Use it or lose it, you know? Anyway, I hope that you are all well.

I just want to say I am thankful for the police sometimes, but that guns just scare me generally, so cops do, too, and the FBI and CIA have a pretty frightening history. But thank you to the police that are well directed in their application of force!

Megacat


I wish I knew how to indent paragraphs in these posts. That would be awesome.

Lac

In 1958 my grandparents were spending their summer with their children in rural Idaho. The cabin they built on Lake Coeur d'Alene still stands today, and the families of their three children continue to use the cabin to this day! Early in July, 2008, I decided to try my hand at woodblock printing. I drew a contour image of the view from a front window at the cabin, divided the shapes into three colors, and then transferred the color-coded shapes onto three pieces of wood.

I didn't have the appropriate tools to be carving wood... instead I used a flat-head screwdriver and some kitchen tools. It was a struggle, but considering this is my first wood block carving, and my first multicolor print, I'm fairly proud of the result.

Party Time!

Hello readers,
I was writing some rhymes with my friend Joey today, and we discovered that we both have blogs that we actually update regularly. He is doubtlessly a better and more focused writer, but I know that's not what you're coming here for anyway, so I am not exactly worried about the competition. Here's Joey's blog. He's a smart guy who writes about Twin Cities politics, and he's who I'm reading.

The new image is one that I hoped would be accompanied by some well thought-out political commentary, but the deadline is upon me, and I guess I hope that you will be held over with some links about campaign finance and an understanding of my frustration with both presidential candidates' plans if they are elected. I think I'm partial to some sort of IRV alternative to our current situation. Here's a goofy poster.



Good luck to everybody representing down at Tacoma's port, regardless of intimidation tactics and abuse from the police, I hope you all do alright and that nobody is injured.
Charlie