Voices Inside My Head

Yep. My union (CUPE 391) is still on strike. So the sketchbook is still being filled with faces, robots, monsters and whatever else my subconscious compels me to draw. The above images are 3 pages from my picket line sketchbook.

The Raven

The PR machine just keeps on rollin'...

My latest Q & A is concerning my involvement in an amazing new book from poet and friend Alex Ness. A Life of Ravens is a collection of narrative poetry, written by Alex and illustrated by many talented artists, such as Mike Grell, Peter Bergting, Alex Sheikman, Bob Giadrosich and Josh Howard.

This interview is in a roundtable format where each artist answers the same questions, making for quite a variety of interesting responses. Michael May did a great job in pulling it all together.

Click here to see what I had to say about the experience of working on one of Alex's poems.

Come Talk To Me

Recently, I had the honour of being interviewed by Bernie Gonzalez of IndiePulp.com. I had a great time answering Bernie's questions, as most of them made me do a lot of thinking about stuff I rarely put into words, like how did my "style" come about and why do I draw comics. Sometimes I surprised myself with my responses. Here's a taste:

BG: Would you say that most of your artwork is comic artwork? If so, then do you think of yourself as a "serious" artist?

JC: Yeah, almost all my work is traditional sequential comic book work. I definitely consider myself a "serious" artist. And why wouldn't I? Because comics are considered a "Low Art" form? I don't believe in the notions of "High Art" and "Low Art". That offensive distinction was created by institutional art critics and historians to bring an air of validity to the art forms that they had a stake in, namely painting and sculpture. Comics are just as valid and important. In terms of "Art", I'd put Frank Miller's Sin City on equal footing with Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa. Seriously.

The interview was a blast to take part in and I managed to give Bernie so much information that the interview will be broken up over the course of a couple days.
You can read the first part of the interview here.

I Want a New Drug

Last week was a wash for any sketching on the picket line. So, instead, I've been doing a bit of warmup drawing at home.

Warmup drawing? For exactly what, I don't know. But I am finishing up the inks for my latest project, which means I'm going to be starting something new in the next little while. I might as well get ready for it....

Just Another Day

The strike continues...as does the sketching. Here is another page from the picketline.