A Sight for Sore Eyes

A COMICS PANEL

A really nice interesting illustrated presentation of a panel featuring Ivan Brunetti, Seth, and Chris Ware done by Gordon McAlpin.

Максим Дмитриев - Жизнь и творчество

Not really sure what the writing says, but the photos speak for themselves.

La Strada

Again the library comes through with the great selection of films. I heard my girlfriend gush over her love of this one a while ago so I jumped at the chance to check La Strada out. It is the first Fredrico Fellini film that I had the pleasure of seeing and it was definitely worth checking out.

The Soviet's Did it Better

An awesome daily poster with great write-ups.

via boingboing

Art is Dogfood.

Probably the most famous graffiti artist around right now, Banksy, has posted a few of his sketches for his pieces. I get really excited whenever I see new work from him and I really enjoyed getting a behind the scenes look at his process.


Click here to see more.

As my friend art-teacher Bert Stabler put it, reading McCloud’s first book, *Understanding Comics* is “like getting a lecture on sexual titillation from a talking pair of pants filled with lunchmeat.”

This is my first post as a contributor here, and I thought I'd link to this Noah Berlatsky review of Scott McCloud's Making Comics. There are parts of the review I take issue with, including the notion that copying other artists is such a surefire way to grow as an artist (it's certainly one aspect of studying art, and an important one, as is drawing from life, formal instruction, etc.) But for the most part, I think he's pretty on-point.

I've always had issues with McCloud - I haven't read Making Comics, but Understanding Comics always seemed like a such a drab, joyless read. It bothers me especially to see it as a prerequisite on almost any Graphic Novels course, including a course in French comic books I took in my first year at U of T. It felt very wrongheaded to be studying a Scott McCloud study of a Tintin page, when it was infinitely more effective to refer to the full-size Hergé page to analyze its formal properties.

Red Beard

I've discovered that the Library of Ottawa stocks quite a few fantastic movies so I've decided to start doing little movie features. The first one is Akira Kurosawa's Red Beard which I watched last night. At first when I learned it clocked in at a whopping three plus hours I was a little bit put off, but stumbled on none the less.



It is the story of a man who is training to be a doctor and the trials and tribulations that he encounters along the way. There is also a few little sub plots so it seems like kind of a documentary in a way, broken up into little pieces while showing the path he takes to his final decision in the end after all the attacks on his courage and strength. I'm not going to go too much into it as you can read plot summaries on the wiki or, hell watching the film. The Criterion edition has an awesome commentary with film scholar Stephen Prince. It is stunningly well shot and really pulls you in.

To be an artist means never to avert one's eyes.
-Akira Kurosawa

Nina Berman

Some pretty powerful photographs from Nina Berman.

The Bravest Nino

An awesome comic done by Elio up on flickr.