Bore @jasonrbradshaw - Tumblr Blog

Desquamation

Hey! It’s been a minute! Been wrestling with some feelings of burnout and just sort of stopped doing any sort of art for the past couple of weeks… then I had a flu that knocked me outta commission for another week! But hey! Trying to get back into the swing of things here with a new drawing.

Hope y’all have been well.

#digitalart #illustration #desquamation

I realize people probably don’t follow me to watch me paint my lunch, but hey, here’s another study from that digital painting class I’m taking. And… every single one of these represents a hard fought battle and I don’t have anyone else to share them with so I’m just going to subject y’all to my little victories. This weeks assignment is to do some paintings of different materials under a diffused lighting setup. Some of it I was able to capture. I think, but some of it I definitely struggled with. Capturing the glass of the bowl here felt like particularly challenging to me, so, of course I’m going to take another stab at some glass shit. Anyway, thanks for joining me on this journey! XO

#digitalart #digital painting

Plugging away on this comic I posted about last week. About 5 pages down this week which is a pretty good pace for me! It’s maybe a dumb comic and I can’t keep my character on model for the life of me but it’s nice to just cut loose a little and have fun with some more expressive cartooning for once. Anyway, here’s a sneaky peaky (without any lettering cause heeey I’m saving that for the end, baby). XO

#comics #illustration #artists on tumblr #zine #digitalart

read-nekojiru

About half of the India section of JiruJiru Travelogue is finished and available to read on the website. I upload 1 chapter almost every day so check back often

Entering the home stretch on my new comic book, Soft Sulk, and am finally in the process of drawing the last(ish!) story for it! It’s a stupid comic with a very subtle name and I’m having a ton of fun drawing it.

Hope y’all enjoy it when this whole thing is done!

#comics #illustration #artists on tumblr #webcomic #digital art #zine

Ok, so with Nekojiru being my apparent current obsession I couldn’t help but make some fanart!

Picking up on my last post I’ve really been sort of obsessed with everything Nekojiru this week both reading new scanlations of her work that I was able to dig up and re-reading everything that I was already familiar with as well and, hell, If you’re at all interested in checking out her work I’d recommend going to Mangadex and finding the book Nekojiru Udon - - it’s seriously worth the read.

I also watched this fascinating documentary called The Death of Nikojiru - - which somebody amazingly fan translated and posted on youtube - - which I HIGHLY recommend checking out if you’re at all curious about her or her work or just curious about the work of cartoonists in general and the impact we have on the world around us. Also, I revisited the wonderful short film Cat Soup (which is also on youtube!) which is based on her work but somewhat different in tone and was made, it seems, more as a tribute to the author than meant to be a faithful adaption. I’d seen Cat Soup back in my animation school days but being familar with the source material this time around made it much more meaningful for me.

All of this stuff is amazingly (illegally, probably!) just online for free!

Go find it!

#garo #nikojiru #manga #fanart #digitalart

So, I put in another order from Mandarake and got a new batch of neat/new manga books! This time around I got a weird assortment of stuff that I just wanted to have on hand for reference - - I’d been wanting to get a physical copy of something from the cartoonist Nikojiru for a little while and i chose this one based on the super cute cover alone without having any idea of what the actual book was. I believe it’s titled Nekujiru Cafeteria if a random Tumblr scanlation account can be trusted. We’ll go with it.

I’ve been a fan of Nekojiru since coming across her work in, I believe, that Comics Underground Japan book from the 90’s, then randomly sometime later stumbling across some scanlations online of her first book, Nekojiru Udon which… I really fell in love with! The comics are presented in this super cute Kawaii kinda style, and they’re hilarious, but the substance of the stories is also often horrifically cruel, nihilistic, and - - at their best - - surreal and poignant.

Sadly, just as her career was taking off she took her own life. Her comics weren’t for the faint of heart and were, frankly, fucked up in sometimes uncool ways but I think her comics also have a very unique kind of power to them that is unnerving in a way that’s quite rare. Nekojiru was a true original and I’ve never read anything quite like her work before or since. So, I kinda just want more people to be aware of her? She was a Garo artist so if you’re at all interested in the translations coming out of that scene you should definitely check her work out.

None of her comics has been officially translated aside from, i believe, two stories that appeared in english language anthologies back in the 90’s. It’s… kind of a shame? I’m really grateful to the various scanlators that have gradually pieced together a decent chunk of her work and made it available to an english audience where it otherwise wouldn’t be - - but I’d really love to see an official translation of some sort at some point. in the meantime, it’s out there if you look for it.

#garo #manga #japanese #nikojiru #untranslated]

Red Crime Flower by Seiichi Hayashi

So, here's a book that I got from a recent-ish Mandarake order. It’s a book by Seiichi Hayashi called, I think (if the automated translation can be trusted), ‘Red Crime Flower’. It’s a collection of short “picture stories” (which basically just read like super sparse comics) from 1970 and is very much in line with the comics work that he was publishing at the time through Garo and collected in books such as Red Colored Elegy, Red Red Rock and Gold Pollen and Other Stories. It’s a really beautifully put together book - printed on nice, thick Japanese paper with a beautiful hardbound cover and slip case. I doubt this will ever get translated, but since Seiichi Hayashi is easily one of my favourite cartoonists and biggest influences poring through these pages for the drawings alone has been incredibly inspiring for me. Fingers crossed for more Seiichi Hayashi books in english! XO

#comics #manga #garo #seiichi hayashi #japanese #book design

Nobewenaku by Mitsuhashi Otoya

Here’s a book I got in a recent Mandarake order that I’m SUPER excited about - - Nobewanku by Mitsuhashi Otoya.

I first stumbled accross Otoyas work while browsing thorugh some raw scans of old Garo magazines posted do archive.org and was totally FLOORED by the cartooning on display here. There’s just so much raw energy and life in these drawings that, even though I haven’t been able to properly read any of his comics, since basically nothing of his has been translated into english, he’s become by far one of my favorite Garo artists on the strength of his cartooning alone.

I guess a minor dream of mine would be to see a lavish Drawn and Quarterly collection translated by, and with a meaty contextual essay by Ryan Holmberg. One can dream, right? Not sure how much interest there is in this work but I think it's absolutely stunning and I want people to know about it!

#comics #manga #garo #untranslated #alt comics

Hey Tumblr, it's been a while! Anyone still actively follow me on here? Probably not, but hey, I figured I'd try this platform out again cause the others are bumming me out (and you, Tumblr, were ALWAYS my favorite). Anyway, here's a new drawing. Afterworld Kid. Drawing has been a bit of a struggle lately but I like how this turned out. My drawings, certainly the drawings I enjoy doing the most, seem to be sliding further and further into “hopelessly influenced by the anime I’ve been watching” category. It’s not a bad thing. Thanks for taking a peek! XO

#comics #illustration #post apocalyptic #digital art #digital illustration

Lately I've been feeling vaguely nihilistic about the whole pursuit of some half assed "career" in cartooning. I enjoy making things and sharing comics with people but the dynamic that capitalism imposes on the process of sharing these little bits of myself within these small press communities is hardly inspiring for me. I've never been all that motivated to make money off of my comics and in the ten years that I've been doing this the costs for tabling, traveling and printing for comics keeps getting higher, making it a progressively less accessible community for me to be a part of. I find myself too worried about having to make my table cost back before I can even consider maybe buying a friends four page zine that costs $10 to really enjoy much of it. I've been backing off of tabling shows because of it and It makes me question my intentions behind making these comics in the first place.

I've put too much of an obligation on myself -- applying debilitatingly high standards to do "good" work, to be acknowledged, to be admired, to be worthwhile, to sell books. Nothing of which I'm all that comfortable with..Don't get me wrong, I do love making comics. I love the art form, love the community of people around me making beautiful things -- but I find these obligations I've put on myself just cheapen the whole endeavor. I want to communicate and make connections with people. I want to commiserate, critique and share stories about our own unique struggles, interests and ideas. I want to learn. I want to teach. I want to explore. I want to, in some way, foster a sense of community. When everything in my life from the hours of my day to the google searches I make are commodified I'm reluctant to turn something I care about into a commodity as well, even if a comic book does look like a hell of a lot like one. (There's a reason I publish under the imprint 'no commercial value').

So. What does that mean in terms of my comics? I'm not really sure yet..I think I'm probably going to slow down into some sort of even more glacial place and just make/release comics as I feel like it..I'll probably only travel to comic/small press shows if there's an actual travel incentive (as in, non-business related "fun" travel) involved because it's otherwise financially stupid thing for me to do. I'm probably also going to transition into making my comics more accessible in a digital format rather than focus exclusively on print because I live in Canada, making traveling to a lot of shows unrealistic as well as postage making zines prohibitively expensive to buy in a non local capacity.These are things I've been doing gradually over the last couple of years but I think I'm going to start doing them more intentionally. Anyway, I've started working on some new comics for an eventual new issue of Bore. By the time that's done I might have a more concrete idea where I stand with all of this. Or not. It's a journey <3