A Waste of Time

More of the background and scarf done. Now I need to draw...

rickworley — Sat, 18 May 2013 14:47:21 -0400

More of the background and scarf done. Now I need to draw what’s outside the window.

Working on the background.

rickworley — Sat, 18 May 2013 13:25:19 -0400

Working on the background.

The same panel partly inked.

rickworley — Sat, 18 May 2013 12:54:33 -0400

The same panel partly inked.

Pencils for the first panel of the piece I’m working on.

rickworley — Sat, 18 May 2013 12:53:09 -0400

Pencils for the first panel of the piece I’m working on.

boldaslovejustasktheaxis: Hunter S. Thompson and Bob Dylan

rickworley — Fri, 17 May 2013 01:26:11 -0400

boldaslovejustasktheaxis:

Hunter S. Thompson and Bob Dylan

So, this is actually the guy that the piece for which I’ve...

rickworley — Sat, 11 May 2013 17:15:30 -0400

So, this is actually the guy that the piece for which I’ve been posting drawings one at a time is about.

How the piece started was that, around three years ago when I was dating him, I wrote him a poem, because I do stupid things like that. I wisely never showed him the poem, because it wasn’t all that good. There were parts that I liked, but I never finished it to my satisfaction before things started to go sour. There were still certain parts and turns of phrase that I wanted to use, though, so when I was approached to do a short piece for the anthology of Robert Kirby’s Three, I thought that this might be the time to dust it off and try to finish it.

It was an interesting experience, though, trying to complete a piece that was about how you felt about somebody at a particular time when you no longer feel that way about them. I started to think about how you feel about something within a moment is very different than how the memory of that moment feels when you’re looking back on it in retrospect, and so part of the poem was about one set of reactions and part was about a different set, although they were about the same incident, and I couldn’t really write about it without writing about it from two different perspectives, and commenting on what I was doing. So I was writing about being in a moment, but from the perspective of when that moment was over, which seemed interesting to me in terms of some other things I wanted to do with making a comic that was more poetic, and trying to do a comic book equivalent of the achronological song structure of some of the songs in Blood on the Tracks.

So all these different ideas came together with a few other ideas I had about form in comics, and hopefully have formed (Or are forming) something that will bring some elements of collage and song writing together with comics in an interesting way, which I saw as a way to create the comics version of the poem I had done in the first place.

Or, you know, maybe I just am creating a pretentious mess.

Arranging my ex-boyfriends onto a grid for my comic in Robert M....

rickworley — Tue, 07 May 2013 21:00:47 -0400

Arranging my ex-boyfriends onto a grid for my comic in Robert M. Kirby’s QU33R anthology… I’m a cartographer of twink.

When I posted this on my Tumblr a couple days ago, somebody...

rickworley — Mon, 06 May 2013 16:26:01 -0400

When I posted this on my Tumblr a couple days ago, somebody commented:

“im sure simon amstell would be thrilled to be portrayed as a rapist. jesus christ.”

So I’d like to make the following DISCLAIMER: I do not actually believe Simon Amstell is a rapist.

Although, I don’t speak for Simon or know the details of his private life, so there could be a trail of violated twinks a mile wide stretching across London of which I’m not aware. You never really know someone.

But regardless of the possible dark underbelly of Simon’s life to which I’m not privy, the drawing I did was intended as what’s called a “joke,” and he laughed a lot when I showed it to him, so I’m pretty sure he likes those “joke” things the kids are making these days.

There’s a bit in Simon Amstell’s show Numb where he talks about wanting to hate-fuck Justin Bieber until he cries. I’m uncertain, but given that Simon’s doing comedy, I think this may also be something akin to a “joke.” When I met Simon last time he came to San Francisco, I talked to him about my comics, which it turned out he had already seen before. He told me that he liked this drawing that I had done of an ex-boyfriend of mine, so I thought doing a drawing of Bieber in a similar pose might entertain him. Simon’s a lovely individual, and was extremely kind and complimentary about my art when I met him, so when I heard he was coming back to San Francisco, I thought I’d like to do a drawing for him as a gift.

The show I saw him doing, Numb, is just such a great piece of writing. After I saw the show once, I probably would have been able to quote good sized stretches of it, because it’s so precisely and beautifully written that if you move a piece around or substitute one word for another, it’s not quite as good. It was still a lot of fun to see him do it twice, though, because he’s also a great performer, and there’s room in the piece for embellishment, and it’s also a lot of fun to watch him engage his audience. He likes to incorporate what’s happening around him at the time that he’s doing the piece, and it’s great to see how he’s able to do that without compromising any of what he’s written.

It seems like he usually picks up on something or someone in the audience and makes that a part of the night, so it would probably be fun to watch him do it several times and see what changes. This time, he started to comment on the notebook I was holding on my lap, which had the drawing of Bieber in it, and then said, “Oh, I know you…” Later on he has a bit about pretending to write in notebooks when you’re in a cafe alone so people will think you’re a traveling genius, and then he pointed to me and and my notebook and said, “Apparently I’m not the only one with that idea…”

I was distraught that he saw through my traveling genius guise, but glad that he recognized me.

Anyway, apparently this was the last US go around for Numb, but a friend of mine saw Simon road testing new material in London a couple months ago, so I’m excited to see what that will be. If you didn’t see him the last two times that he’s been here, see him next time- we need to keep encouraging him to come back!

im sure simon amstell would be thrilled to be portrayed as a rapist. jesus christ.

rickworley — Sun, 05 May 2013 12:26:31 -0400

I think you’re supposed to phrase that as a question.

So if anybody was wondering why I was talking about Justin...

rickworley — Sat, 04 May 2013 22:37:32 -0400

So if anybody was wondering why I was talking about Justin Bieber’s dumb little tattoos earlier today… Last time I saw Simon Amstell, I talked to him for a little bit and it turned out he had seen my comics before and had enjoyed them. He specifically seemed to like the drawings I had done of twinks in various compromising positions. I like Simon’s comedy a lot, and since he was so nice about my comics last time, I wanted to give him something when I saw him again tonight… He has a bit in his show where he talks about wanting to hate-fuck Justin Bieber until he cries. I mean, who doesn’t want to do that? Then I read Justin Bieber’s quote from his Rolling Stone interview where he talked about abortion in the case of rape and that, and the type of drawing I wanted to do to give Simon, and Simon’s bit about Bieber, all seemed to come together naturally to make this drawing. I think this drawing is pretty SFW, since I specifically had Bieber’s legs turned so you don’t see any Bieber dick, but just side of his legs and a tiny bit of butt. I felt a drawing of Justin Bieber’s dick just wouldn’t be appropriate to give Simon, since I’m classy.

Part of the piece I’m doing for Robert’s QU33R...

rickworley — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 18:24:56 -0400

Part of the piece I’m doing for Robert’s QU33R anthology… I’m drawing portraits of exes I’ve had and then editing them together. The piece is kind of about the repetitious patterns that occur in relationships in our lives, and learning to live in the moment and not dwell on comparing things to the past or trying to predict what they’ll be in the future… So, here you go, the parade of twinks. Most of these people have appeared in my comics in one form or another, but I’m not attaching names to any of them, because whenever I draw a real person I’m always very careful to be discrete and protect their identity… Which anybody should keep in mind if they’re wanting to offer to pose naked for me. Totally legit, you’re in safe hands ;)

amissinglink: Bob Dylan - handwritten lyrics

rickworley — Sun, 21 Apr 2013 16:24:33 -0400

amissinglink:

Bob Dylan - handwritten lyrics

Photo

rickworley — Sun, 21 Apr 2013 14:05:43 -0400

Hey, I really like the thing you wrote there about Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. I felt like I was alone in that mindset, but your writing really opened up a lot of perspectives. Wishing the death of someone (suspected) who's caused death doesn't make them any better. What happened at the Boston marathon was horrible, but the reactions towards suspected Dzhokhar aren't any less inhuman. I really do hope that there are more people like you out there. Oh, and great drawing btw!

Sat, 20 Apr 2013 16:24:35 -0400

Thank you! Watching everything unfold yesterday provoked a lot of strong reactions in me, and...

In addition to being one of the all-time great films, Psycho...

rickworley — Sat, 20 Apr 2013 15:59:59 -0400

In addition to being one of the all-time great films, Psycho also had one of the all-time great ad campaigns.

In other news, gonna see Psycho tonight in Berkeley! :D

rickworley — Sat, 20 Apr 2013 15:58:26 -0400

In other news, gonna see Psycho tonight in Berkeley! :D

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. I was staring at this face on the news all...

rickworley — Sat, 20 Apr 2013 15:34:22 -0400

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. I was staring at this face on the news all day yesterday, so I ended up drawing it. What was kind of fascinating to me was how this picture, which tells you nothing about the person, became a blank slate onto which people- hack news anchors, especially- could project any kind of wild speculation that they wanted. After hours of frenzied conjecture he was (allegedly!) some kind of criminal mastermind that was coming for everybody. If he did what he’s accused of, which it certainly looks like he did, he’s a dangerous person and shouldn’t ever leave prison, and it’s important that we find out why. But he’s also not Dr. Evil, operating some vast criminal conspiracy to take over the world with a couple homemade pressure cooker bombs and secret agents disguising themselves with stupid looking backwards baseball caps.

Reading about it this morning, I saw news reports describing him as “ethnic Chechen,” because they need to specify somehow that he’s FOREIGN even though he’s actually an American citizen and has been here since somewhere around the age on nine. But that won’t do, because it has to be specified that he’s one of Them. The news reports yesterday featured endless speculation about every connection to terrorists that Chechnya has ever had, because that was the key bit, that he was from There, not Here. On ABC they read the captions from those pictures of his brother boxing, and the anchor said that one was “especially interesting” and then read a quote talking about the brother being extremely religious.

Why is that extremely interesting? If the phrase “extremely religious” was referring to the reincarnation cult featuring ritualized cannibalism that Americans prefer- you know, Christianity- then it wouldn’t be of interest as a motive- it would be the part of the report where they drag every family member and acquaintance who ever knew the person on the news and report what they blurt out, which is always about how the accused seemed like such a nice person and had such nice values and they never saw any hint of anything wrong. But it was clear that the anchor wasn’t talking about THAT religion, she was talking about that OTHER one, you know, the iffy one.

The problem is that the whole Us vs. Them mentality is the entire reason that things like this bombing can take place to begin with. To do something like that, you have to be able to disassociate from the victims. You have to be able to decide that it’s alright to murder these innocent people who you don’t know anything about because they’re part of Them and that makes it justified.

It disturbs me that we see the same disassociation when we seek revenge for the crimes. Obviously he needed to be caught and it’s great that we caught him alive so we can possibly find out more about what happened. Law enforcement, from what we know, seems to have done an amazing job of making it happen and keeping the people in Boston safe until it was over. But I don’t take any particular glee in reading about some pathetic 19 year old who we don’t know anything about getting dragged out of a boat, or in seeing pictures of him bloody and broken in the dirt being handcuffed. It was great that we caught Bin Laden, and I felt a sense of relief, but I didn’t feel joy or excitement in hearing about somebody being executed, and I think it’s disturbing when people do.

The childish Huffington Post headline of GOT HIM after he was captured, or the response of JUSTICE SERVED just seems to undermine the actual gravity of what happened, like it’s a chase scene in a movie and it ends when the bad guy gets caught. Actual justice being served will be when he is tried properly in accordance with law, and receives the correct sentence. It will also be when he is Mirandized and provided with legal counsel. I’ve watched a lot of crime movies, and even in the movies I don’t remember a part where they say that American citizens have certain rights “…Unless, you know, we really don’t like you.”

Over the last few weeks I’ve seen Rope, Vertigo, The...

rickworley — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 15:22:38 -0400

Over the last few weeks I’ve seen Rope, Vertigo, The Birds, and Marnie… Next up is the big one: Psycho!

This isn't a question, but I wanted to say that I read all of your Persimmon pages and it's really funny :3 Persimmon is adorable! I think you're a really great artist.

rickworley — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 12:38:05 -0400

Thank you! If you haven’t found it yet, there are a lot more of my comics and links to my...

Drawing I did of the boyfriend from pictures I took of him on...

rickworley — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 22:42:00 -0400

Drawing I did of the boyfriend from pictures I took of him on Easter.