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

The Senior Senator from Alaska

Hello, world. I'm Andrew, and have joined the Staticalaska blog. Don't ask me what that's going to mean, though. And speaking of Alaska, I hear Mr. "The Internet is a series of tubes" got pwned by the federal government. I wonder if they've finally decided he's no longer useful?

In other news, I have been hard at work in sunny California experimenting with printmaking, using rubber, linoleum and woods. In the spirit of the anti-G8 actions, resistance to war from within the military, as well as the upcoming RNC/DNC actions, included are some prints I did almost a month ago.

a brief thing.

Hey Everyone,
I am back in Minnesota on Monday, I played around with images much of the day (unsuccessfully), but I have decided I can't get anything looking better than this ink sketch I did early in the week. Hopefully there will be something elaborate next week. I love that you can kind of see the texture in the shadow I got overly excited about with a brush and ink.
Charlie

Ideas! Hit me with them!

I have realized that this site might often come off as horrible self-promotion, which is not the intention. The thing is that I often want to play with script or illustrating or layout stuff, and my default subject matter often has to do with Flock (this week) or staticalaska itself (last week). So, anyway, I was thinking that I could do design for people in exchange for actually having something printed, or because we are friends, or for any other number of reasons. This blog is mostly an outlet for experiments with visual art stuff, but I would happily dedicate myself to some sort of project somebody wants help or input or collaboration on. I will design a poster for you if you'd like!
Okay, that started as an attempt to justify so much stuff on the site that seems like self-promotion, but ended up sounding like some pursuit of work. Sorry on that.
Anyway, this week I have been playing with pen and ink, and leafy lettering. Here is my first attempt at this sort of thing. I think the coloring on the letters might develop more in the future, but I guess we'll see.
Peace!




Oh, the background is a free texture shared from Lost and Taken, a key hookup for any of you photoshoppers.