Blue Cats, Red Sox

[bluecatsredsox]

In theory I would like to work every day. But in the morning I invent every possible excuse not to work: I have to go out, make some purchases, buy the newspaper. As a rule, I manage to waste the morning, so I end up sitting down to write in the afternoon. I’m a daytime writer, but since I waste the morning I’ve become an afternoon writer.... I’m very slow getting started. If I have an idea for a novel, I find every conceivable pretext to not work on it.

Italo Calvino and his highly relatable procrastination, from this Paris Review interview/article.

[doctordune]

[bluecatsredsox]

UGH. Bad news, man. (cartoon is from 2010, which was... a long time ago, now)

[theophile-steinlen]

Cats on the Sofa, 1908, Theophile Steinlen

[bluecatsredsox]

Steinlen was a dude who spent a lot of time looking at and drawing cats, so he knew what he was doing when he gave the black cat the beginnings of airplane ears back there. This cozy scene is absolutely about to erupt into chaos. Good art.

[bluecatsredsox]

Alix Bailey, Repertory, oil on linen, 48 x 72″, 2021.

More important cat art, via Hyperallergic

[theophile-steinlen]

Two Cats on a cabinet, 1914, Theophile Steinlen

[bluecatsredsox]

I wish this important cat art was a drawing, but it’s a print. Oh well.

[artist-sargent]

Two Sketches of Dogs, John Singer Sargent, May 15 1906, Harvard Art Museums: Drawings

Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Bequest of Grenville L. Winthrop Size: 11.4 x 7 cm (4 ½ x 2 ¾ in.) Medium: Black ink on ivory laid paper

https://www.harvardartmuseums.org/collections/object/195047

[bluecatsredsox]

John Singer Sargent looking at dogs, thinking, “paw... but what if hand?”

[bluecatsredsox]

I used to type first and revise in longhand, but I find that modern fiber-tip pens are less effort than a typewriter. Perhaps I ought to try a seventeenth-century quill. I rewrite a great deal, so the word processor sounds like my dream. My neighbor is a BBC videotape editor and he offered to lend me his, but apart from the eye-aching glimmer, I found that the editing functions are terribly laborious. I’m told that already one can see the difference between fiction composed on the word processor and that on the typewriter. The word processor lends itself to a text that has great polish and clarity on a sentence-by-sentence and paragraph level, but has haywire overall chapter-by-chapter construction, because it’s almost impossible to rifle through and do a quick scan of, say, twenty pages. Or so they say.

J.G. Ballard on the medium/message relationship in writing. From this 1984 Paris Review interview, which has some, let’s say, period appropriate rough patches. But this is a good one to chew on.

[bluecatsredsox]

Caleb Considine, Greenwood Dogs (2), graphite on paper, 11 x 8 3/8″, 2020.

It’s no Important Cat Art, but I suppose there’s room for Important Dog Art in this world too.

[bluecatsredsox]

I don't like to see these high-priced prints on the market... It deludes the public. They think the higher the price the better the work. It keeps them from having the courage to buy the work of unknown artists. And I don't like these fancy twenty-five-print editions of etchings with each print numbered. It is just a scheme to make the public think the thing is precious, so they will buy... It seems to me that an edition of one hundred is in good taste. The first prints should be sold at a modest price, and the price raised proportionately as the edition sells out. Any etching much bigger than ten by fourteen inches I consider to be in bad taste.

John Sloan being crotchety and opinionated about printmaking. John Sloan: New York Etchings (1905-1949), edited by Helen Farr Sloan

[scorchroots]

I've never loved anyone as much as I love Ursula Le Guin

[bluecatsredsox]

An entire exhibition of contemporary cat paintings by Bendix Harms at Nino Mier Gallery in Los Angeles. Reversed Evolution - How it Feels to be Mamon.

[alexdecampi]

Happy Hanukkah, everyone, from these two jerks! I’m posting this a little early this year. Line art by the amazing Ro Stein & Ted Brandt, and colour art by @deecunniffe. 

I want to point out what a technical achievement this story is on the art side. There’s a real joy to creating a whole story in eight panels, but this? This is some magic. We introduce four new characters. In panel 5, SIX PEOPLE are talking. SIX. In the world of comics, that’s almost un-doable. 

Yet Ro and Ted arranged everything so the conversations flow and are sensibly grouped, all the “acting” is fantastic, and then Dee laid on top these beautiful, almost fairytale colours – look at the subtle work, the blush in Henry’s cheeks, Frank’s five o-clock shadow, the shine of the wine bottle’s glass surface, the light texturing in the backgrounds… and of course the snow! This is some first-class illustration work on an incredibly hard script. (I fear Ro and Ted always get me at my worst – my very formalist script for them in the 24 Panels anthology was no cakewalk either. (The problem is, they’re just so damn good at it… check out their work on the Image comic Crowded!)

As always, if you like what we do in Hells Kitchen Movie Club, consider donating a little to a veteran’s charity. 

(I also have a thriller novel I’m crowdfunding, please check it out, we are more than halfway there. The book is all written…)

Previously in Hell: cover image // 01 // 02 // 03 // Xmas // 04 // 05 // 06 // 07 // Hanukkah // That time the Punisher’s creator gave us a thumbs-up // twitter // insta

[reparrishcomics]

( Facebook / Twitter / Instagram / RedBubble / Buy Me A Coffee )

[bluecatsredsox]

The doctor, who knew a little more than I gave him credit for, had also suggested I should start taking walks. But there are two things I will never do, I would rather put a pistol to my head and pull the trigger, and they are: a) family therapy and b) walks. So, naturally enough, I didn't. What I did do, and it helped in an amazingly short time, was to start painting. I drove to Ystad, went into a painting shop and bought oils, canvas, thinner, brushes. I came home, sat down and painted. I have never done it before, I have only liked paintings, but now there I was, no idea what I was doing, no idea whether you could mix colours, no idea whether you could superimpose one layer over another, no idea what turpentine was for, but I didn't give a shit, to express myself in a way I don't really like, I am becoming more and more narrow-minded year by year, I just painted. And I became hooked. At the peak I painted eighteen hours a day. After only a week I began to feel better, and after two everything was fine again, at least as regards energy. Then I stopped, I didn't have the time, but ever since then I have thought I am going to do it, going to find time, because it is fantastically obsessive and challenging, and a very special feeling, seeing the colours in front of you, changing them, building with them in a way, layers and strata and contrasts and light - even if my paintings are a real mess. I have mentioned this to only a couple of friends and when they ask me what I paint, I have to tell them the truth, I paint exactly what a pensioner in Österlen would, yellow corn, blue sky, perhaps a tree in the far distance, which is easier to do than a tree up close of course.

Home and Away: Writing the Beautiful Game by Karl Ove Knausgaard and Frederik Ekelund. Here we have Karl Ove in one short quote being a hilariously unreasonable ass about taking a walk, then fully embracing bad painting, in a book about soccer.

[bluecatsredsox]

First painting: Gillian Carnegie, Prince, oil on canvas, 2011.

Second painting: Gillian Carnegie, Elgar, 2017.

More important contemporary cat painting.

[bluecatsredsox]

Holly Coulis, Cat and Potato Chips, oil on linen, 28 x 24″, 2017.

Important cat art. Important potato chip art.

via Hyperallergic.