Cropped Will Cardini artwork

November 18th, 2011

Final E.A.S.T. 2011 Weekend at the Hensel Hypercastle

Filed under: Artwork — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — William Cardini @ 7:29 am

Hey y’all, this upcoming weekend is your last chance to come by the Hensel Hypercastle during E.A.S.T. 2011 to see Glade and I’s art. Just like last weekend, we’ll be open from 11am to 6pm, Saturday and Sunday. We’re Stop #121 on the tour, 1807 East 22nd Street.

Here are some shots from last weekend:

Hensel Hypercastle entrance
Here’s the front door. We’ve got Glade’s Welcome to the Hypercastle print on the door, a new artwork by her above the TV, our Christmas tree (out a bit early, we know), and a spinner rack of Glademade cards.

Hensel Hypercastle comic table
Our coffee table is chockful of comics. Most of them are for reading but a few are for sale. I’ve got comics I’ve drawn (such as my latest, VORTEX), comics by fellow GCPM members (such as Kid Space Heater by Josh Burggraf and Lords ov thee Black Sun by Mike Miles), two issues of the GCP’s poetry/comics anthology Catch Up, and various issues of anthologies that I’ve been in (Math Fiction, Candy or Medicine, Smoke Signal, Taffy Hips, and Secret Prison). Come by, chill out on our couch, and feel free to flip through everything.

Hensel Hypercastle prints
We’ve got almost all of the prints from our Hypercastle print show at Austin Books and Comics and every print we had for sale last year.

Mark P Hensel studio
I switched out the artwork on my walls in my studio.

L Glade Hensel studio
Glade has some birthday banners on the walls of her studio.

I hope to see some of y’all this weekend!

August 30th, 2011

Flower Hypercastle by Glade Hensel and Ads in Secret Prison #5

Filed under: Inspiration,Print Comics — Tags: , , , , , , , , — William Cardini @ 8:33 pm

Hey y’all, sorry I made a mistake with my blogging and released an incomplete post early on Monday instead of today. Here’s the post that I intended to publish this morning:

Here’s a print that Glade made for our show at Austin Books (Speaking of our show, if any of y’all want to see our prints at Austin Books and haven’t yet, this week is your last chance! Tomorrow is the last day.):

Flower Hypercastle by Glade Hensel

This print is called “Flower Hypercastle.” It’s a digital print of a gouache painting. This past Saturday Glade and I just hung out at home, painted, and watched Mad Men. I spend so much time working on comics on the computer that I forget how relaxing and visceral painting can be. I’m going to try to make painting more a part of my regular art routine.

Something I’m excited about but haven’t mentioned on here yet is that I’m the co-featured artist for Secret Prison #5. It’s especially exciting because I love the work of the featured artist, Tom Scioli. Gødland is one of my favorite comics. I’m bringing it up now because it’s debuting at SPX in a week and a half and they’re looking for people to buy ad space before this Sunday, Sept 3rd. Here’s an information sheet (with a small preview of Scioli’s dope cover):

Secret Prison Ad Sheet

If any of y’all want me to draw your ad for you just drop me a line at mark p hensel /at/ g mail /dot/ com.

August 23rd, 2011

Welcome to the Hypercastle by Glade Hensel

Filed under: Inspiration — Tags: , , , , , — William Cardini @ 7:09 am

Here’s a print that Glade made for our show at Austin Books:

Welcome to the Hypercastle by Glade Hensel

This print is called “Welcome to the Hypercastle.” It’s a digital print of a gouache painting. I love Glade’s text treatment. You can see a similar design that she did for a Happy Birthday card here.

August 16th, 2011

Hyperhut by Glade Hensel

Filed under: Inspiration — Tags: , , , , , — William Cardini @ 7:50 am

Here’s the first print that Glade made for our show at Austin Books:

Hyperhut by Glade Hensel

This print is called “Hyperhut.” It’s a digital print of a cut-paper design except for the roof of the hut, which is patterned tape made by the Japanese company MT that Glade found.

August 9th, 2011

One Color Hypercastle

Filed under: Artwork — Tags: , — William Cardini @ 7:29 am

Hey y’all, here’s the digital, colored version of the one-color screenprint design that I did for Glade and I’s show at Austin Books and Comics, up in the back room all of this August:

One Color Hypercastle

For this print I was experimenting with getting as many different shades and textures out of a single color as I could. Unfortunately, all the small details made screenprinting difficult. About half of the prints turned out okay. My winning formula was to flood the screen first, hold the squeegee at an angle greater than sixty degrees, and put minimum steady pressure. At Austin Books you can peruse the prints, they range in color from fresh to dried blood.

August 5th, 2011

Glade and Mark’s Hypercastles at Austin Books and Comics

Filed under: Artwork — Tags: , , , , , , — William Cardini @ 7:28 am

This past Wednesday Glade and I went to Austin Books and Comics to put up our print show.

Here’s a post-install pic:

Glade and Mark's Hypercastles at Austin Books and Comics

The prints will be up and for sale there the entire month of August.

From left to right, we have:

  • “One-Color Hypercastle Screenprint” by Mark, $20 – This is the print I was posting about on Tuesday. It’s available in dried and fresh blood red
  • “Hyperhut” by Glade, $15 – This is a digital print of a piece that Glade made out of cut paper.
  • “Glade and Mark’s Hensel Hypercastle” by Mark, $20 – This is a digital print.
  • “Welcome to the Hypercastle” by Glade, $20 – This is a digital print of a gouache original.
  • “Rainbow Hypercastle” by Mark, $20 – This is a digital print.
  • “Flower Hypercastle” by Glade, $15 – This is a digital print of a gouache original.
  • “3D Hypercastle” by Mark, $20 – This is a digital print that’s made in red/blue anaglyph 3D. There are a pair of glasses that you can use to try it out hanging beneath the print.

As you can tell from the names, the theme of our prints is hypercastles. I’ll be posting larger pictures of each print throughout this month. If you want one and you can’t make it to Austin Books, please let me know in a comment or by any of the means on my connect page.

August 2nd, 2011

Screenprinting a One-Color Hypercastle Print

Filed under: Artwork — Tags: , — William Cardini @ 7:56 am

Glade and I are going to put up our print show in the back room of Austin Books tomorrow, so we spent the weekend screenprinting.

Here are some process shots:

screenprinting process shot

screenprinting process shot

And here are the drying prints:

screenprinting process shot

July 26th, 2011

Newly Burned Screens, the Complete Shaman Thunder, and some Meta Posting

Filed under: Admin — Tags: , , , , , — William Cardini @ 7:03 am

Newly Burned Screens

Glade and I have an art show at Austin Books and Comics the whole month of August, where our prints will be hanging in the back issue room. I’m going to have two full-color CMYK prints and two screenprints, one that’ll be a single color, and one that’ll be two colors. I had my screens burned at Industry Print Shop and just picked up the screens today.

Here’s a shot of the screens in my studio:

New Screens

The theme for our show is hypercastles. I’m going to post images of our prints throughout the month of August.

The Complete Shaman Thunder

Since I finished posting the pages from Shaman Thunder last week, I just uploaded the whole thing to my comics page. Click the banner to read the whole thing from the beginning:

Shaman Thunder cover crop

I’m proud of this comic. Josh Burggraf was a great guy for me to collaborate with because every time I got one of his pages in my inbox, it pushed me to try harder for my next page.

Meta Posting

I’ve been thinking about how I want to approach blogging, going back and forth for a bit now, and I’d like y’all’s help. In my years as a blogger, I’ve just posted my own art, posted folk-sci-fi content, and, with this site, mixed both together. In April, I decided that the two-to-four hours a week that it takes for me to write two blog posts should instead be devoted to drawing. That’s why you’ve only seen comic pages here and I’ve been talking more about folk-sci-fi on my Twitter feed. But, as Scalzi pointed out to me with this post, why should I invest a lot of time and thought into a site hosted by a company that may one day be permanently beached or become a ghost town?

So what should I do? Would y’all like to see me:

  • Continue to focus on posting my own comics or drawings here regularly, and leave other musings for other blogging platforms?
  • Return tomixing in my own stuff with musings, reviews, and artwork that inspires me?
  • Add a column where I roundup whatever things I find inspirational or interesting, like an expansion/curation of my tweets?

If there’s something I’m not thinking of, let me know that also.