TUMBLR
A SCRAPBOOK OF STUFF I'M READING / LISTENING TO / LOOKING AT.
Alain de Botton’s book tour tweets
Getting the jitters about going on such a long book tour, so my agent suggested reading @alaindebotton’s tweets to prepare myself.
Oh, and I just watched Contagion. Not recommended if you’d like to ever leave the house again.
Also, we have the #humblebrag, I think we also need the #worrybrag
Keith Haring’s journals on Tumblr
The Brooklyn Museum’s Keith Haring exhibit has a home on Tumblr. The exhibition opens tomorrow, but you can get your preview on right in your dashboard.
So. much. love.
Gonna try really hard to see this when I’m in NYC. Filed under diaries.
Hugh MacLeod, Freedom is Blogging in Your Underwear
Hugh has been a very good friend and mentor to me, so I was delighted when he gave me a galley of his new book. It is, as he describes it, “a wee love letter to the blog.” I’ve posted a few of my favorite bits already, but I love this part from the intro:
Having a blog, a voice, having my own media, utterly changed my life. Suddenly my career as a cartoonist wasn’t dependent on other people: the “gatekeepers”—publishers, editors, Hollywood executives, etc., etc. Suddenly I had direct contact with my audience. They had direct contact with me. I could just do my thing, without having to wait for somebody else to deem me “worthy.”
…Blogging gave me everything. Even in the early days, the benefits of blogging were so glaringly obvious to me that I couldn’t understand why more people weren’t doing it. Ten years later, I still can’t.
Me neither.
Filed under: blogging, my reading year
“When you are making art, you are stealing time,” my favorite cartoon from Hugh MacLeod’s Freedom is Blogging in Your Underwear
“Authenticity is the new bullshit!” a cartoon from Hugh MacLeod’s Freedom is Blogging in Your Underwear
Filed under: authenticity
Last Thursday, Matt Groening visited Lynda Barry’s “What It Is” class at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Later he joined her on stage at Madison’s Museum of Contemporary art to talk about his Life in Hell comic strip and the the friendship they’ve shared for over 30 years.
Photographs by Angela Richardson, AKA Bucca 4 of Hearts
Note: The slide in the last photo is of Matt Groening and Lynda Barry in about 1984. Lynda Barry is the one in drag.
Awesome.
Anatomical studies using magazine photos (from the book, Figure Drawing)
“Magazines and catalogs offer an amazing opportunity to conduct anatomical studies. Look for the structural lines of the human body, and draw them where you think they belong. Draw on tracing paper so the figures are independent of the photographic context. You can change the traces in scale or adapt them to fit your imagination.”
How to draw Bugs Bunny
It’s amazing how the drawing looks nothing like a rabbit and then with a few quick strokes, he draws those cheeks and, boom, there’s Bugs. You can also watch Jones draw Wile E. Coyote and the Roadrunner, Pepe le Pew, and Daffy Duck.
Filed under: Chuck Jones
“Banksy on advertising”: a plagiarism
UPDATE: turns out this wasn’t plagiarized after all, just poorly attributed. Read more→
It looks like that wildly popular Bansky quote on advertising was plagiarized from a piece by Sean Tejaratchi in the zine Crap Hound. Tejaratchi color-coded the passages lifted (pink = indirect; yellow = direct) but the Bansky piece wasn’t color-coded or annotated, so I took the liberty of clearing things up a bit by adding color outlines to the Banksy piece from the original book and annotated numbers to both. Compare and contrast.
Tegaratchi:
It’s hard to know how to feel about this. My first thought was, “Hey, Banksy reads Crap Hound!” Then, “What the fuck is going on?” Then, “Am I a real person? Am I actually happening?” And finally, “Am I a beautiful flower angel sent from heaven to inspire Banksy?”
As problems go, it’s a pretty nice one to have. I like Banksy’s art and ideas. I’m flattered he liked my writing and my sentiments, and I’m happy others liked the quote enough to post and forward. I’ve seen forums where people are debating the passage, including rebuttals from ad-agency twats. It’s on wikiquotes and a hundred blogs. My essay never would have had that impact on its own.
The downside is that Banksy’s name is always on it. Seeing my writing credited to someone else makes it a little less magical. Same with knowing that one day (maybe soon, since the issue in question is being reprinted), I’ll get to hear how I ripped off Banksy.
The fact that he’s an “elusive mystery artist” doesn’t leave me many options. I found contact info online, but so far I’ve only received bounced messages.
My goal is to set the record straight online. There will be no lawyers or threats of legal action. I’ve tried not to jump to conclusions, or angrily denounce Banksy, or the Internet, or the terrible unfairness of the universe. Maybe a ghostwriter was responsible for lifting it. Maybe an attribution was lost in layout. (On the other hand, my words were rearranged and tweaked. How does that happen accidentally?)
Good for Tegaratchi. Here’s hoping this helps a little with setting the record straight.
(Thx to jndevereux.)
