Near the end of last year, I painted a watercolor commission of the character Diana in Tales from the Hyperverse. I did two versions and let the commissioner choose.
Here’s a detail of the first version, with additional lines in India ink:
Here’s the second version, without any India ink:
If you’d like to commission a drawing or painting from me, send me an email at william cardini at this website.
There’s one week left in the Retrofit Comics Spring 2017 Kickstarter!
I’ve been posting previews every day on my new public Instagram, @williamcardini. Here’s a crop from the colored version of my comic “Ghost Arrow,” which will be one of the short comics collected in Tales from the Hyperverse, one of the six books in the latest Retrofit Kickstarter.
You can order just Tales from the Hyperverse for $8, all six books at a discount for $45, or all six books and an original black-and-white 9×12″ ink drawing on watercolor paper from me for $150. I’ll draw you the Miizzzard, the Floating Crystal Witch, or whatever you want. I did this for the Sparkplug Books Fall 2014 Kickstarter, here’s what I drew for people then so you can see some examples of my work:
A drawing of the Miizzzard.
A drawing when I was told to do whatever I wanted.
A portrait drawn from looking at a photograph.
A drawing of the Miizzzard vs Kid Space Heater for Josh, the creator of KSH.
Hi y’all, we’re past the halfway point of the Sparkplug Fall Books Kickstarter to crowdfund the collected Vortex and Elijah Brubaker’s Reich #12!
First of all, a big Thank You to everyone who’s backed our project so far!!! At over $2,000, we’re almost a third of the way funded. If you’re unfamiliar with Kickstarter, we only see a cent when we meet or surpass our goal of $6,450 by October 3rd. Your help will make these books a reality – if you’d like to see a print Vortex collection or the end of Reich, please consider buying a reward or sharing our project on social media. We appreciate it!
Two of the rewards that we’re offering are my original art – a 9×12″ India ink drawing or a 2×3′ full-color acrylic painting. These rewards are for a new, custom work (I’ll take your requests for imagery) but I thought I’d post some examples of my previous work:
Hypermorph #103 – 9×12″ India ink drawing.
The Rise of the Miizzzards – 2.5×4′ acrylic painting.
If some original artwork interests you, we’re offering it at a discount through the Kickstarter – $75 for the 9×12″ India ink drawing and $250 for the 2×3′ acrylic painting.
The James Jarvis drawings that Dan Nadel posted this past week on the Picturebox blog are a revelation.
An homage to Goya’s “The Sleep of Reason Produces Monster” from Day 1 of the James Jarvis posts.
A colored page from Day 4 of the James Jarvis posts. These posts on the Picturebox blog are promotion for a full-color book that Jarvis has out, De Profundis.
Pure, unfettered cartooning. The impulsive, inky scratching of them reminds me of Ralph Steadman …
This is Steadman’s homage to that same Goya etching. I posted it so large because I stitched it together from two scans I did of Gonzo: The Art, a Steadman art book.
… mixed with a little bit of Maurice Sendak and of course, Pierre Alechinsky.
Alechinsky, “Alvéoles.”
Alechinsky, “Volcan ensorcelé.” Both of these paintings are from the website of the Alechinsky retrospective at the Musées royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique. Check out this Alechinsky post by Derik A Badman or my previous Alechinsky post for more examples of his comic-like work.
Steadman was one of my biggest early influences and I love Alechinsky so Jarvis’s work really speaks to me. I’ve been experimenting with modifying my wanna-be Moebius-and-Brinkman hybrid style to something more spontaneous and cartoony. I like working in MangaStudio but sometimes I just want to get away from glowing computer screens and put nib to paper.
Here are two examples of me doing just that, in these drawings that I did for Monster Show 6 at Domy Books in Austin:
I was thinking about the TV Tropes entry on the Quirky Miniboss Squad when I drew this (warning: TV Tropes is a link-infested time suck).
This drawing is dedicated to my buddy Grant Davis.
Disclaimer: these drawings may or may not be in the Monster Show 6. I’m going to have something in there but I don’t know what yet. Come to the opening from 7-9pm on October 29th (costume encouraged) to see tons of monster drawings by all sorts of amazing artists. If you’re in Houston, there’s also a Monster Show there.
An image has been burning in my mind lately:
The skull of the hyperlord, granting me benediction.
The skull of the hyperlord, encased in arcane armors.
The skull of the hyperlord, biting at the inky blackness.
Hey y’all, sorry that it’s taken me so long to get a second post done this week!
Per request, I’m posting a close-up shot of the drawing that I did for Glade for Valentine’s Day:
The drawing is watercolor over india ink. It depicts Glade and I defeating a monster with rays emanating from our wedding rings. If this drawing is too big for your computer screen you can see it various sizes on my flickr.
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.
The show No More Worlds at Concertina Gallery in Chicago opens this Saturday, the 12th. Here’s the promotion image again, Alex McLeod’s Jolly Ranch:
If you’re going to be in Chicago this weekend, go check the opening out, from what I’ve seen the other artists are amazing.
I’ve been working furiously on my drawings for this show the last three weeks, and I finally finished them on Monday, a little too late to enjoy the pool on Labor Day, unfortunately, but early enough that I was able to photograph them and package them to be sent by Express Mail to Chicago on Tuesday.
Here’s one detail shot from each of the six drawings:
I think that adding the india ink really changed these from what they were when they were just gouache drawings. I didn’t have as much time to work on these drawings as I would’ve liked, but I’ve been working close to deadlines my whole life, so I’m used to it. I think that, like most procrastinators, I really need to feel the pressure to actually finish something. Otherwise I just dabble and consider all of the possibilities before making a move. With the time constraints that I was working under, I just chose gouache and used it, even though I had limited experience with it before. If there had been more time, I would’ve spent more time playing with different options and practicing techniques. Now, however, I feel really comfortable with gouache and I’m going to start producing more pieces like this. And one thing that I’m going to put together is the comic tools DIY stay-wet palette, check it out. It sounds pretty awesome. I wish that I had remembered that blog post earlier. Having to carefully note my color combinations and then try to replicate them every nite was frustrating. Even with the DIY stay-wet palette, however, I don’t think I’ll be doing narrative drawings any time soon. I didn’t like having to keep the color palette consistent between each piece, I would’ve much rather been able to experiment.
I took most of the content from my old blogs and imported them to this site last nite, so please, feel free to browse the archives and experience some nostalgia. I’ve been blogging sporadically since May 2007 and started to blog at least twice a week since December 2008. I’ll be going through those old posts over the next several weeks and updating their formatting and the size and source of the images.
Last nite I also went to my Okaymountain studio to work on my drawings for the upcoming show No More Worlds at Concertina Gallery in Chicago, which is curated by Corinna Kirsch and Katherine Pill. I’m doing medium-sized (18″x24″) drawings that I’m coloring with gouache. I tried out a bunch of different materials because it’s been a while since I’ve colored something off of the computer. Here’s one of my gouache experiments:
In the end, I decided to do flat color with gouache and then add outlines and details with india ink. I’m going to do six drawings like that for the show which will replicate one of my MELT pages from TRANZ.
Here’s the promotional image for the show, Jolly Ranch by Alex McLeod:
Here’s an excerpt from the press release:
Following an investigative curatorial model, Concertina Gallery’s first exhibition inquires into the simple yet seldom insignificant gesture: the greeting. Although an invitation can take shape in a myriad of forms, the works in No More Worlds invite viewers to enter – through tactile engagement or with the aid of imagination – captivating yet unsettling environments. Featuring artists who use a variety of mediums, No More Worlds showcases works that deftly combine the fantastical and mysterious with elements of the everyday, reminding us that even our wildest ideas of new worlds are anchored in and mediated by our own experiences of reality. Reveling in the unknown surprises of the grotesque or the extraordinary sensuous qualities of the idyll, the impossible tableaux constructed by these artists hover between real and imagined worlds. These liminal environments give way to partially obscured narratives, both enchanting and monstrous.
I’m excited to be in this show alongside amazing artists and I wish I could be there for the opening. If any of y’all are gonna be in Chicago September 12th, be sure to check it out!
