Cropped Will Cardini artwork

January 26th, 2010

FISTS Page 1

Back when I was in college I drew a comic for the Daily Texan (UT-Austin’s paper) called Fists: Free For All. My original premise, inspired by Krazy Kat and not too different from my current ATTACKS series now that I think about it, was to have each strip end with (or revolve around) one character hurling a gloved fist on a stick at another. Although I quickly abandoned that concept, I did, over the years, develop a set of regular characters and images that I kept coming back to, like the previously mentioned flying fists, a weird metal bat creature, the cigar-smoking frog, masks, and suited men who had to hold up their own lower jaws on a stick. After I graduated from college and got into Fort Thunder, my style changed pretty rapidly, and abandoned all of these characters except for, of course, the cigar-smoking Frog.

However, this past week, my buddy Natalia Ciolko asked me to do a two-page comic for the next issue of her zine Smear Campaign, and she was already reprinting some old FISTS strips, so I decided to do a whole new one.

Here’s the first page (I’ll have the second one up Friday):

November 13th, 2009

East Austin Studio Tour

Glade and I are participating in the East Austin Studio Tour this year as Boongoo Studio. We’re number 125 on the map, come check out our spaces!

Here are some shots of my studio:

As you can see in the upper left, I’ve got plenty of Gold County Paper Mill books left over from STAPLE! 2008, including Jak Cardini Achieves the Narratological Singularity, a book of J.C.‘s poems, and Impossible Objects, a collaborative book between me and Jak.

Here’s a detail shot. I’ve also got some color drawz, raw comix pages, and black and white india ink drawz.

Here’s my drawing space and something that I was working on.

Our good friend Alison Kuo came and did an installation in our living room! We’re also going to be featuring the artwork of Beverly Anderson and Aaron Flynn.

October 30th, 2009

Monster Show 4 Opens Halloween at Domy Books in Austin and Houston

Filed under: Events — Tags: , , , , , , , , — William Cardini @ 10:23 am

Hey y’all, Monster Show 4 opens this Saturday (Halloween!) from 7-9pm at Domy’s Houston and Austin locations, come check it out! There’ll be many, many fabulous and terrifying monster drawz by tons of talented creators, including the lovely Glade Whitworth.

Here’s the flyer, image drawn by Travis Millard:

Here you can get an all-in-one shot of my monster draws in process and a fraction of my new studio set up:

I’ve had this drawing table since the mid-90s, so please forgive the stickers. If you come to our house (Boongoo Studio) during this year’s East Austin Studio Tour, you’ll be able to see my whole setup!

October 16th, 2009

Funky Junction Oracles, New Work by Dylan Reece at MASS Gallery in Austin

Filed under: Events — Tags: , , , , — William Cardini @ 7:40 am

My good friend Dylan’s solo show, Funky Junction Oracles, opens this Saturday (Oct 17th) at MASS Gallery here in Austin from 10pm to 12am. If you’re in the area, be sure to check this show out. It’ll be open until Nov 7th. Here’s an excerpt from the press release:

On view from October 17th to November 7th, Funky Junction Oracles employs a variety of media — prints, photography, painting, animated GIFs, and sculpture — to illustrate Reece’s attempt to fix meaning in a world characterized by ever increasing flows of information and rapid change in the complexity of social systems. Drawing from a range of sources that include the pop-metaphysics of the ’70s, the classical art of Greece and Rome, the internet, vintage nature books, rave culture, and Modernism in art, the imagery for much of the work is unified by an underlying sense of idealism and progress gone awry.

I’m super stoked about this show. Here are some choice pieces of Dylan’s old work from his excellent blog:

October 14th, 2009

Research for the Monster Show 4

Filed under: Inspiration — Tags: , , , , , , , — William Cardini @ 9:18 pm

Well well well. Another week has gone by and I’ve failed to post to my blog on Tuesday. Faithful audience, I apologize – Glade and I still haven’t settled in from our big move, and I’ve been working on drawings for the upcoming Monster Show 4 at Domy Books in Houston and Austin, which opens Halloween nite. Actually, I haven’t been working on the drawings so much as I’ve been playing Zelda for research purposes.

Here’s some original Zelda concept art by Katsuya Terada: