Everything is hard to do

Comics and drawings by Amy Peltz

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Wrapping paper

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Sweet Spot

This RISO-printed minicomic with a belly band/quarter jacket debuted at CAKE, the Chicago Alternative Comics Expo.

It contains loosely connected vignettes about me, my father, and music, and I used it as an occasion to explore the musical potential (think rhythm, melody, and beat) of the comics page.

I’m incredibly grateful to Matt Davis of Perfectly Acceptable Press for printing Sweet Spot and guiding me through my most complex Riso project to date. 

Copies available at Quimby’s shortly!

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Blow-Up

This poster is my first-ever offset print. It’s a retelling of Antonioni’s Blow-Up, which is itself an adaptation of a short story by Julio Cortazar. 2016 is the fiftieth anniversary of the movie’s release.

I first saw Blow-Up my senior year of college. Watching in my dark, wood-paneled Neo-Gothic dorm, I was as transfixed by its primary-colored portrayal of swinging sixties London as by its utter lack of concern with plot, action, or connecting the dots for viewers.

Years later, in his obstructions class at SAIC, Jeffrey Brown assigned us to compress a movie or television series into a single-page comic. That idea stuck with me, and this year I decided to apply it to Blow-Up.

Finding the structure and organization was a struggle, but I knew I wanted to include the iconic red-and-white title treatment. Once I put that at the center of the page, the rest fell into place.

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Cat Food

I debuted this offset-printed accordion book with slipcase at CAKE, the Chicago Alternative Comics Expo, this past June.

My cat, Gus, gave me the idea, as he always lies in “shrimp” position.

But my favorite is the cinnamon bun cat.

Cat Food is available at Quimby’s.

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Kopy of Krazy Kat Sunday strip for December 21, 1941.

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#wernerherzog #aguirre #possiblymyfavoritemovie #comics #poetry #poetrycomics

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Sic is currently raising money for printing, so if you want to read my comic—or some other comics and essays on the theme of diagrams and exploded views—contribute here!

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A page from my contribution to the forthcoming issue of the French anthology Sic, devoted to infographics, diagrams, and exploded views.

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From my in-progress comic on Agnes Martin.

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New Comic: Expectation

This is the comic that debuted at CAKE, so technically not so new. It’s loosely based on the life (or, really, the myth) of Egon Schiele. As you can see, I stuck with the original cover design.

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ZineFest 2015

Geordan Tilley | NNN Illinois's small press scene gathers in Chicago for Zine Fest 2015, displaying and selling their original comics in the event's sixth year.

Geordan Tilley interviewed me for an article about Zine Fest. That’s my work in the opening still! I also appear around 0:44.

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From the comic I’ll be debuting at CAKE tomorrow.

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Simple/Eye-catching?

This is the initial cover design for the comic I began at Aidan Koch’s SAW workshop (and finished in Beth Hetland’s class). Pencil drawing printed via copy machine on gray cover stock, with a simple three-hole pamphlet stitch binding in black thread.

I think it feels true to the work inside and makes the book more of a complete, beautiful object than my previous covers have for my other comics. Not only does the binding thread look kind of like a line itself, but it eliminates ugly staples. Win-win.

BUT my teacher and friends think I should push it further, and I have to admit I agree, especially as I look ahead to tabling at Chicago Zine Fest.

One possibility:

Same design, all in white (the thread could remain black). Paradoxically, this has more presence. Maybe because white is unusual, and you have to put in more effort to see it? The ghostly quality is also really appropriate to the story. I could also go darker with the paper.

BUT, it is not easy to print in white ink. White letterpress and screenprint are possible, but not copier or RISO. So this solution may be prohibitively expensive or too time-consuming to have ready for Zine Fest.

More to come . . .

[amypeltz]

Simple/Eye-catching

My recent comics have been in pencil, and my work has always tended toward the quiet and simple. After tabling at my first convention, however, I realized that this presents some challenges in getting people to engage with your books. Even those whose aesthetic preferences tend that way may not notice them in the visual hullabaloo of the convention floor. So, how to make an eye-catching cover that feels true to the book’s content? Here's how some cartoonists with similar approaches solved this dilemma.

The actual drawn design is just text, but the subtle colored paper and shaped binding reflect the content, and the juxtaposition of the two is effective. (king-cat.net)

Again the design is (nearly) all text, but it works as a design because the text is designed, and the bright color definitely stands out. (yumisakugawa.com)

This cover also consists primarily of type, but the type has become even more of a drawing than it does in Yumi Sakugawa’s. Brown and white might not stand out on a digest-sized comic, but at a bit larger than 8 1/2 by 11 inches it has a presence. (jaakkopallasvuo.com, elinaminn.com)

The red, black, and white palette is itself bold, but the composition (especially the use of negative space) and the intriguing, contextless image contribute substantially to the effect as well. (http://georgiasdumbproject.com)

By comparison with the preceding covers, this one is cuh-razy! Not only are there four colors (white, tan, orange-brown, and the brown of the drawing and text), but they aren’t “flat”: the whole thing is actually a color photograph of a collage. Nonetheless, it’s a fundamentally simple design whose strength lies in the geometry of the page being divided equally in two. (http://butterstory.tumblr.com)

Here there are a number of subtly variegated colors, but the palette is limited and unified. Because it is hand drawn, the text again functions as a visual element. As in Georgia Webber’s cover, the negative space and the ambiguity of the image grab one’s attention. (aidankoch.com)

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Some abstract comics I made during the Aidan Koch workshop. The purple ones are my favorites.

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Tomi Ungerer sketches

Among the many great shows I just saw in New York was the Tomi Ungerer exhibition at the Drawing Center. Ungerer, who since the 1960s has written and illustrated everything from children’s books to erotic publications, and who has designed political posters and advertising campaigns, was recently the subject of the excellent documentary Far Out Isn’t Far Enough. There was a lot worth studying in the show, but the process sketches really stood out. Unfailingly, Ungerer revised his images in ways that strengthened their compositions, as can be seen in this illustration for Das Grosse Liederbuch, a collection of German folk songs.

This first composition isn’t very dynamic, with both the gated wall and the young woman parallel to the picture plane. The gated arch does, however, nicely frame the woman and the waving man.

In this next version Ungerer has set the gated wall and the woman at a diagonal to the picture plane, and introduced a second wall on the left that emphasizes the spatial recession. The vanishing point is very near the figure of the waving man. The arch frames only him, but the woman is similarly framed by the shadow cast by the other wall. Ungerer has also emphasized the recession by showing more of the man and barrels in the foreground.

In this final version, a few further refinements have been made. More barrels are shown in the foreground, the placement of the woman in the shadows has been adjusted, and  less of the buildings’ roofs are shown. Whereas before the woman was at the center of the composition, now it is the space between her and the man that occupies this position, which better fits the song this illustration accompanies.

If real estate is all about location, location, location, sometimes drawing is all about composition, composition, composition!

[amypeltz]

I'm currently in Gainesville, Florida, at the Sequential Artists Workshop, taking a class with Aidan Koch. I'll post more about it once the whirlwind is over, but for now here's a drawing from our latest exercise: deconstructing paintings in the manner of Aidan's Elements of Painting series. This is after Bordone's The Venetian Lovers.