Jamaica Dyer » Events

Black Friday

Jamaica — Sat, 26 Nov 2011 03:33:18 +0000

It’s black Friday, and I’m at home scanning in Fox Head Stew! I can’t describe how gratifying it is to be finally getting these finished pages on my computer. I now have the first 40 pages all ready to go, the rest are sitting in a stack to be reviewed, touched up with some paint and ink, and scanned in! This thing WILL get done.

I spoke at Ed Luce’s Comics University at Isotope comics last weekend, and it was insightful and informative, even for me! A lot of the tips I came up with for creating a compelling online community with your readers are things I wish I was better at: consistency in releasing comics, frequent updates, behind-the-scenes posts and constant contact with other art bloggers. This more-than-full-time job of mine really eats into all of this.

I’ve been re-visiting some old sketches and working on some new ones. It’s funny how sometimes images you don’t like when you first draw them seem to resonate over time, and then it’s your job to finish them up.

I’ve been working on some t-shirt designs for my friend’s band! This is an image I threw at them and I’ll probably make my own prints of it.

Sometimes it’s hard to stay focused on writing just about my drawings and interests. I try not to get political, but shit is crazy right now! I’m in awe as I watch the horror being broadcast online, shot on my friend’s phones, and the constant steam of tweets on current states of invasion… we’re living in a new time of media, and watching a revolution occur in real-time. It’s shocking, revolting, and everyone is watching. The fact that all eyes are on it is what will make things change for the better. I hope.

I’m just noticing the darker tone of my more recent art…

To wrap it up positively, I am filling up every free moment I have drawing art, learning to play guitar, listening to music, spending time with fascinatingly talented people, party party party, and forging into the future with my fiance. Yes! Taking the amazingly wonderful day-to-day life along with the shadow of brutality and change.

It is our job to walk the line between reality and fantasy: persevere, reflect, and create beautiful art.

-J

Jamaica — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 01:08:53 +0000

This weekend I revisited some pieces from earlier this year and reworked them in new ways for a group show I’m in at Public Works. First, I took my portrait of Patti Smith and printed it out, cut out the shape with a razor and played around with the negative and positive shapes on an old painting of mine. Once it looked right I affixed it with Polymer medium to give it a nice shiny finish.

For the second one I took a print of my psychedelic dreamer girl, affixed it to a piece of wood that I’d painted and repainted on for the past year (giving it a nice, weathered look) and quickly placed some red hilights onto the illustration. The end result is rough and bold, both of these new pieces a tribute to my love of street art and wheatpasting, but being too scared to go about doing it on walls.

They go up this Thursday night in the Beasts and Beats show at Public Works.

Birds of Prey Cover

Jamaica — Sun, 02 Oct 2011 03:04:37 +0000

I’ve become a huge fan of Kelly Thompson‘s writing, specifically her drunk reviews of solicits for DC and Marvel comics. While looking at the covers for comics soon to be released, she drinks and critiques the drawing, storytelling, and bullshittery of each cover. It’s hilarious! Her solicits for DC’s December releases were great, and after reading and staring at the cover for Birds of Prey issue 4, I decided to design my own cover. I’m a huge fan of female superheroes, and Birds of Prey brings a lot of them together, and a book like this should be totally badass, and yet somehow it isn’t. So I, on a sleep-deprived warm Tuesday evening after work, did my own sketch of the cover, copying the design but tweaking it a little and doing it in my own style. It ended up being a lot of fun, though it turned out awkward in composition and placement.

Just as the paint was drying on this piece, I get a text from James Sime asking if I’d be interested in hanging some new artwork in the store, and within a couple of hours it was hanging on the walls of Isotope!

We put up a whole new collection of pieces, a curation of what I’ve been working on for the past 6 months.

All of my prints and originals at Isotope are hanging for your viewing pleasure and available for purchase!

This week I also got to read the submissions for Isotope’s Award for Excellence in Mini Comics, and there was a great selection!
I’ll talk more about my favorites after the award is given out tonight.

Here’s my watercolor set that I’ve been using for the past 3 years. Nearly every watercolor I’ve done has been using this (notice, how worn down the red is!)

I think it’s a testament to how simplistic your art toolset can be: I just use this set of Windsor Newton paint, Fabrer-Castell PITT markers for inking, and bristol board. Done!

Just Watched: Trollhunter, and now I want to read old troll fairytales with turn-of-the-century illustrations.

Reading: Rip it up and Start Again, and raging against art conventions is pretty similar to punk music.

Drawing comics at Isotope

Jamaica — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 04:22:23 +0000

This saturday, inspired to draw comics and not wanting to stay isolated in my little studio, I brought my work over to Isotope comics where James let me set up at a desk and draw all day! It was extremely productive, I got a bunch of pages inked, and started watercoloring six pages, and got updated on all the gossip about the new DC comics coming out. I haven’t painted in quite awhile, and it was fun to jump back into it. Later that night I started adding in the blacks, and it’s all looking pretty solid.

I then got asked to be a judge for the Isotope Award in Excellence in Mini-Comics! This is really cool, and I can’t wait to read all the cool books you send in! I don’t take briberies, but I will enjoy every minute of having an excuse to read new minis. It feels like not so long ago I was sending in my own ‘zines for this award (okay, like, ten years ago…). In the press release James reveals that I’m going to be serializing my new comic right here on my site! The wait is over my friends, I will be highlighting what’s happened so far, and begin posting new pages. You knew I wouldn’t stay away…

Of course, I’ll be sharing the process all along the way. Currently a huge stack of pages are going through the transformation of inks to fully-painted.

Here’s something else I worked on this weekend. It’s an image I’ve had in my mind for awhile, but once I got it on paper, painted and inked, I just wasn’t happy. I’m realizing that I’m way more of a storyteller than an “artist” who does single pieces, in that, when I try to reflect on pop culture and develop imagery and symbols that I think will “work”, I end up feeling disappointed. In the end they all turn out looking like pretty girls with things on their heads. I find this funny and keep on finding myself playing around with it, but this time around I realized clearly that I enjoy telling a story in a sequence of images much more.

I also got my very own toilet seat in Jame’s toilet seat gallery. If you haven’t seen it, the toilet seats line the all the walls at Isotope and they are all drawn and written on by ALL the greats in comics. It’s an honor to be a part of it.

-j

comic-con in pictures

Jamaica — Sun, 07 Aug 2011 02:31:19 +0000

I’ve been avoiding my post on Comic-con and maybe it’s because there’s just too much to tell. I saw so many awesome people, went to some great parties, drew drew drew, made new friends, got the word out, and pretty much had a great vacation. It was all the fun parts of this business without all the sitting at tables trying to sell your books. On Friday, I didn’t want to go to the convention hall AT ALL, and so I didn’t. I hung out at the pool instead.

During one of my one-hour drawing sessions at the Cartoon Art Museum, I did THREE doctor who sketches in a row, requested by some lovely fans. I didn’t get a picture of my good friend and Weird Fishes editor Jennifer de Guzman, but she bought the third doctor sketch.

Here are thee of my sketches I did at the barbarian-themed life-drawing session at Trickster Friday night. Surrounded by great comic artists, great music, scantily-clad models and booze, well, it was a highlight to be sure.

I can’t tell you all the juicy stories, but I got to hang with the likes of Jim Mahfood, Dave Crosland, Barron Storey, James Sime, have my new art/comic book “Fox Head Stew” released to the public at Tr!ckster and Allen Spiegel’s booth, I got to hash out ideas with my art rep Scott Z, and discovered my alter-ego wears a Mexican wrestling mask. Anything more than that would be telling.

The Tr!ckster pop-up shop was the star of the show, we all stumbled over there towards the end of each day, and while you know it’s near-impossible to find all the people you want to see on the convention floor, but you could surely find them drinking and drawing on the front porch at Tr!ckster. Here’s a neat report from the storefront.

A lot of the memories are a jumbled mess of fun, but I got back to a running pace at work the moment I returned (I’m designing in-game art for social games) but my desk at home is looking good, covered in sketches and half-inked comic pages I can’t wait to unleash on everyone.

Thanks to the crew and all the great faces at Comic-con this year!

sdcc ’11

Jamaica — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 04:49:06 +0000

My limited print run of hardcover, color art books came in the mail today! This is my first time trying Print on Demand, and they turned out great. Soon I’ll make them available to order, but I’m bringing copies with me to Comic-Con, and you might be able to find them at Allen Spiegel’s booth (#4701).

I have one scheduled appearance I’m making at the con, drawing at the Cartoon Art Museum’s Sketch-A-Thon, table #1930. I will be there Thursday from 5-6pm, and Saturday from 3-4pm.

The rest of the time I’ll be floating around visiting people, and I’ll try to send updates on twitter so feel free to follow me @ jamdye.

Into the belly of the beast…

Austin Unplugged

Jamaica — Mon, 09 May 2011 20:24:32 +0000

I recently decided to make a career change, and managed to arrange it so I had a month off in-between jobs. I’m nearly at the end of my break, and the transformation my mind has gone through during this time was much-needed and fulfilling. There’s barely been a moment to be lazy, since I’ve been running around doing interviews, starting a new line of drawings, scripting new comics, going on adventures in the sun, plus I went on an trip to Austin, Texas!

Here’s one of my favorite things, documenting myself with fashion drawings:

(click for details)

My first week off I ran around SF with my portfolio, and this was a lot more stressful than an average week of work in the office, but it was thrilling and I got some great results. The week after, I hopped on a plane with some friends to visit Texas for the first time and see the Austin Psych Fest!

I’ve never been to Texas before, and from what everyone tells me, Austin is the oasis to visit. We got to spend a day walking around on foot, in this warm gorgeous weather, and I fall in love with the architecture. The buildings were all painted with colorful birds and sugar skulls and guitars, then we found moped shops and SF-worthy coffee shops and record shops with all my favorite vinyl. I definitely felt at home here.

The festival itself was as overwhelming as you’d expect, with over 50 loud, droney bands to choose from. APF4 took place at the Seaholm Power Plant, a giant concrete structure that had some unfortunate acoustics and heat-holding powers. The structure was divided into two stages, one too big to project sound properly, the other too small to fit the audience. But we made due, because the music was great and the people were top-notch.

The experience of going to a music festival was new to me, but it reminded me a lot of large comic-conventions. You’re given a list of things to do that seems incredible, and you manage to miss most of it and get lost in the mess. I intended to document all the bands I saw, but soon found that nearly impossible and instead jumped back and forth from stage to stage trying to experience as much music as possible. Friday night, I know we listened to a lot of bands, and A Place to Bury Strangers was in there somewhere, but the standout for me was Tobacco, with their gritty low beats that reverberated through the walls and into your feet.

Saturday arrives and I’m excited to see the San Francisco-based bands I came down here to support: Lumerians and Sleepy Sun. They’ve been touring together for the past week, and bring some great energy with them as they play back-to-back on stage 1 and 2. Sleepy Sun has a new set that I think is catchy and undeniable, their old favorites transformed with a a little more force and rock and roll. I run over to see Lumerians, who blow out the fuses on the stage, and then play with an intensity that I adore. I’m biased, for sure, but it was well worth the trip just to see them play, and then experience the rest of the show with some of my favorite people.

The rest of the night is a fantastic wall of sound involving Young Prisms, Indian Jewelry, Soft Moon, Crocodiles, Black Moth Super Rainbow, and I think we even caught Spectrum at the end there. Some of this was caught from outside, where a cool wind catches everyone in the face as we try to remember who we want to catch next. The power plant is a hothouse, the best kind there is, but utter hell at the same time. We catch a rickshaw back to the hotel, and get a glimpse of the Austin nightlife, still going strong late on a Saturday night as we check out, ears ringing.

All I can say about Sunday is that it happened, we were there, but everyone I encountered shared the same problem: our ears hurt so that we didn’t know who was playing. So we ran around a lot, from backstage to the bar to outside to hide in the Lumerians’ van. Dirty Beaches was fantastic, and it made a baby cry with extreme force and I couldn’t figure out what a baby was doing there, anyway. Pete International Airport left a good impression, creating a sound that made it’s way through my extra-thick earplugs and left me wanting to hear more. In an act of tragedy, I miss the Black Angels, too exhausted after Roky Erickson to pay anyone attention, no matter how great, or how fantastic their festival was that they put on.

So, Austin, I wish I had swum in your waters, enjoyed more of your barbecue, and seen more of your city, but I had a great time. APF4 was a marathon, one I barely managed to finish, but I made it all 3 days, saw friends, and came home with some new favorite music.

And now for the unplugged part: I come home to find out that our internet had been shut off. This is the excuse that was needed to change services (I’ll leave them unnamed), and so we’ve been internet-free at the house for 10 days. And I love it. It’s like going back to the nineties. I can receive emails on my phone, but there’s no blog-surfing, no streaming Netflix and no constant messages or facebook updates. I’ve delved into drawing, keeping a journal, reading books, analyzing symbols and thinking about what kind of art I really want to be doing. No internet is great. This is a real vacation. Plus, I get to sit at the cafe when I really need to take care of business, and then write my blog post.

Noisepop

Jamaica — Sun, 20 Feb 2011 21:40:11 +0000

Something interesting happened when I decided to take a break from working on my comic. I had been buried under the current “Weird Fishes” storyline, trying to construct a fictional band, send Dee on some crazy dates, and merge some monsters into their world, and I hit a wall. For the first time in years, I stopped drawing comic pages every week, and instead started to draw whatever I thought of when I had a chance to sit down at my desk. I started doing black and white portraits of my favorite rockstars and it felt refreshing.

Shortly after, I got asked to animate a music video (psychedelic, tropical and top-secret), and then got asked by James Sime if I wanted to be a “Sequential Reporter” for Noisepop. Hells yes!

Noisepop starts next week, and I’ve got a handful of great bands to go watch and then draw comics about, which will air on the Noisepop website. There’s a great lineup, (http://noisepop.com/calendar) and in particular I’m going to cover Battlehooch and interview Yo La Tengo! Along with that, I’m currently working on screenprinting a tribute piece to Broadcast for the Vinyl Dreams gallery show.

More Noisepop/Isotope info: facebook and Isotope

Also, a very neat comic anthology centered on stories about the Mission is coming out at the end of this month, and I’ve got a few pages about my introduction to the neighborhood.
Comic Book Guide to the Mission: http://www.facebook.com/?ref=logo#!/event.php?eid=202510653096591

This year, the projects, art and music are all flowing. I plan on working on a longform comic in the future, but right now I’m excited to get swept away with new projects and animation.

I turned 26 this week, and things are looking great.

Rainfall

Jamaica — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 04:36:01 +0000

This has been a crazy month of events! APE came and went in a flurry, and I went and did a comic collaboration at FLAX art with Doc Pop, STORM, Kane Lynch, Nicky Nargesian,Sophie Yanow, and hosted by the wonderful Ed Luce! We all played well, produced 6 comics that each of us worked on, and charmed some little kids in the process.

Now that I’ve gotten through the thick of it, I’m working on new comics! I want to stay inside on rainy days and paint! I’m also reworking how I’ll be showing my online comics. It’ll be good. I’ve been dreaming in web design lately. Dropping the weekly comic format and replacing it with larger “installments” will allow me to focus on penciling larger scenes at a time, and it’s really fun!

Meanwhile, I’ve started something a little wild. A food comic:

http://idrawfood.tumblr.com/

Passport Report

Jamaica — Wed, 13 Oct 2010 05:59:51 +0000

What a weekend!

Saturday night I headed over to Mission Comics and did my reading from new Weird Fishes material. I got some laughs and think the visuals turned out well, and I want to keep on doing readings and getting better at it. There’s only one way to get good at public performances, and I don’t intend to stop anytime soon! Big thanks to the Litcrawl people and Leef Smith for putting it on.

After reading with Susie and Geoff, I ran off to the pre-Passport party, where I got to meet a lot of artists and collectors and, most importantly, have some drinks with James Sime and Kirsten Baldock. We even got to get our pictures taken using film film and not phone filters, all while looking like silent film Burton characters in the process:

Sunday was an amazing and intense marathon of stamping and drawing in everyone’s books all day. The SF Arts Commission had really gotten the word out for their event, and people were lining up before noon to get their stamps. Everyone who stopped by had bought these cute little screenprinted moleskine “passport” books along with maps of Hayes Valley with all the locations marked, so they journeyed to all the stops along the way: boutiques, restaurants, galleries and a record store. And then there was us. We got a lot of surprised visitors who came in the doors with a mission to just get a stamp, then they saw our DJ up on the platform (playing Bowie, T-Rex and Eno, inspired by one of my paintings), all the new artwork on the walls, a table of my original art and prints, free wine and tons of exciting books to read. It was a steady stream of people for the entire afternoon, and I barely had a chance to see the line myself, let alone stand up. There was a lot of excitement over Bunny Boy from people who’d never even heard of my book, but who’d seen the design printed on their map and were looking forward to getting that very stamp themselves.

I was lucky to have help, or I would have damaged my wrist and gotten pretty grumpy about it. But James was an enthusiastic host throughout, pointing people to my work, to the walls, and making everyone excited. Kirsten kept everyone in fresh booze. David, an awesome customer, helped me out by taking over the stamping responsibilities so that I was able to draw little goldfish and signatures in each book. Lots of copies of Weird Fishes went out the door, some prints and original art were sold, and everyone, everyone left happy.

Kirsten took pictures of me and the masses:

Here’s the art for the Bunny Boy stamp:

Crazy time, right? One of the best events I’ve done, and a killer of a weekend.

But now: I’ll be at APE next weekend, doing some signing at SLG and roaming the floors. You should be able to find me at SLG from 2-5 on Saturday, check out my surrealist workshop at 5, and I’ll definitely make an appearance at Isotope that night. Go check out my art on the walls, there’s lots of new stuff up there!