Art Love Magic

big changes

2007-08-06T23:57:00.000-07:00

well, my blog's probably all messed up now.
I reloaded artlovemagic with an entirely new design tonight. SO anything linked here (which is a lot) will be fubar.

Keep watch and I'll either replace the entire blog, or fix the damaged issues.

thanks for you patience, citizen!

New toons for Shep

2007-07-31T21:24:00.000-07:00

Shep Hyken is a business writer and speaker who uses me to turn his articles and concepts into cartoons. Here's some new stuff done for him.

Back from Awaken

2007-07-14T09:16:00.002-07:00

Wow. The Awaken show is a memory and was another true success. We don't have an exact count, but I'm fairly sure we drew over 400 people in attendance. A very cool crowd, extremely supportive. People are inspired by what we're doing. A lot of people thanked us for what we're trying to do with the Dallas art scene, and for local artists.

The artists and performers kicked ass. This time I actually got to see a lot more of that. The previous show was a bit more hectic for us and I spent most of the night running around like crazy. This time our leadership team resolved to go "deeper not wider". We didn't try to expan d or pull off new tricks, we just focused on doing what we do even better. It worked too. Everything on this show from the promotion, to the pre-meeting, to the night itself went down pretty smooth. We're getting better at this.

Justin put up a great report of the show that you can read at artlovemagic.com The photos with it are excellent. Sherry Smith proved that there's extra value in inviting a good photographer. She took a lot of great photos and shared them with us for the site. I love it when we invite someone I haven't met yet (she's a friend of Justin's), and they contribute immensely.

Anyway, another event down. I think it was our best effort. We've gotten some good feedback and we're continuing to tweak as we go. As far as our efforts to help the local art scene, I couldn't be happier. We've now had something like 50+ artists, poets, photographers, crafters, and musicians create live at our events. Several artists have shown for the first time anywhere with artlovemagic, and several people have sold their first ever work at our shows. One poet I know of (me) spit for the first time at our events.

I'm really proud of what we're doing here.

Ha! Feels good.

-Mike

artlovemagic AWAKENS

2007-06-06T11:42:00.000-07:00

Here we go with our third show!!!!

PRESS RELEASE
Awaken to a celebration of a diverse body of Dallas Arts. Join local Painters, Poets, Musicians, Photographers, Crafters and Comic Artists of the artlovemagic collective as they present their third live experience, AWAKEN, on Saturday June 30th from 7-11pm.
ArtLoveMagic shows go beyond the typical art opening and invite our audiences to experience the creation of the work live. Visual artists will create, showcase and sell work while the performance stage will rotate live music and poetry all evening long.

There is a $7 admission to the show that helps us support the local art scene and continue to put on events.

The show is also supported by a free gallery exhibit from the 26th through 30th which features selected paintings, illustrations, and photography from the event.

Location
The Jeanette Kennedy Gallery
at The South Side on Lamar
1409 South Lamar - Dallas

map and more info at www.artlovemagic.com

4 recent illustrations

2007-05-31T16:14:00.001-07:00

Here's some recent drawings. The original on each was hand-colored, which becomes a problem when scanning. Materials like colored pencil usually don't scan well, but I did my best and tweaked 'em a little in photoshop to try and keep how they look on paper.
Enjoy.

Inspiring work in Pittsburgh

2007-05-19T11:05:00.001-07:00

I just came back from Pennsylvania where I was asked to provide live artwork for a pretty unique business session. Two companies that design and build churches, Cogun and Aspen, came together for a day long discussion about where culture is moving and specifically what it means to their work. They brought in about 100 of their people, two authors who've written books on the subject, and me.

This was a pretty inspiring event. Right from the beginning they kicked off with a video montage (just something they threw together to add inspiration to the morning) that was perhaps the best multi media piece I've ever seen used in this context. U2 playing Vertigo and interviews with everyday folks and beautiful footage of church architecture. Then to set us firmly in the moment, a list with images from of the current #1 tv show in America, the #1 books, movies, and singles. It was a snapshot of right now.

For me, as I was sitting there watching it at 8am in the morning (keep in mind, I'm scheduled to do art live art all the way until 5pm) it was like, "okay. here we go. I thought this was a regular season game, but obviously we're in the playoffs. I better bring it today."

I think I did. Throughout the day, the content they gave me to work with was excellent. I really think the level of discussion was outstanding and the tone of the day was open minded and progressive- not in-spite of it being Christian, but specifically because it was.

For instance, author Joe Myers spoke of how he was asked to start a church in a very rough, crime-ridden area (somewhere outside Chicago, I believe). He agreed to do it, but only if it was clearly understood that he had no desire to just displace the local crime element to another part of the city. Therefore, those people (the dealers, the prostitutes, the criminals, etc.) had to be engaged as humans. You have to talk to them if you have any hope of doing anything better than just forcing them commit crimes somewhere else. Today, he literally has drug dealers who help with his services, open doors whatever, who go back to the streets to sell after church. Now is that blasphemy or Christianity? Did Jesus heal the well, or the sick?

It asks the question- who in your world are you acting as if God does not reside in? One interesting side note- an area of crime that they have seen dramatic change in there is the selling of drugs to minors. Joe encourages the dealers to respect kids, talk to them a bit, give a shit about them. While drugs are still sold in the neighborhood, an unspoken law has permeated the culture. You do not sell to minors here. Joe says the dealers know how to - and do - police their own on this issue. 'Nuff said.

That was just one instance of the kind of conversation that went down. The day was filled with great thought, as you can see if you read some of the scribing. Much of it centering around what the function of good buildings are and how do you build to a culture that's largely moving toward more and more digital methods and virtual environments.

I used illustration board to draw the art on, rather than dry erase - and this technique is really becoming more and more comfortable to me. 'Illo' board allows for all kinds of things that dry erase does not, like shading and gradations. Plus, instead of just using Expo markers, I get to use things like crayon and colored pencil, or even paint if I wanted (I didn't use paint though because I'm not terribly fast with it- see David Rodriguez)

Working with these tools and techniques is a bit slower than traditional scribing anyway, and therefore I'm usually minutes behind the speaker, rather than seconds. In some contexts (like this session) that was definitely worth it. In other enviroments, LIVE is the thing and it's better for me to move as fast as possible. But here, they were thrilled with how it was working early on and urged me to not change a thing in how I was doing it.

Good stuff. Sessions like these make me kick my game up to the next level. I'd enjoy working with these clients again. At one point the facilitator asked me to comment to the audience on what my thoughts were about how the discussion was going. My comment came down to the fact that they were dealing with big things, big ideas, and big questions - and the great thing was that they weren't answering with arrogance. New systems, young people, the digital culture- you just can't control it like the old. But control is not a necessary element of success, and I suggested as architects, they could still build to something that had less control. They just had to be open minded about how to do it, and build for users who make up their own rules.

This was good work. The kind that makes the world a bit better.

Being an artist is messy

2007-05-19T10:17:00.000-07:00

Yeah, we're kind of like that.

My blog's gotten messy too. It takes a while to load because everything loads on the one page. I've now switched it so that only the last 25 posts load. But I hope folks will go to the archive and read through some old stuff if you haven't, as I believe there's good writing and art there.

good read- the :FUSION: report

2007-05-13T09:23:00.000-07:00

:FUSION: report
I've begun to ask artists and performers who work our shows to handle reporting on them for artlovemagic.com. The first example of this is the :FUSION: report just posted at the site. Blessings, one of our poets, wrote the text - and Erin Lenard, who works for the JK gallery was cool enough to supply the photography. It's a cool read, and if you haven't made it out to our shows yet, it will give you a glimpse of what they're like. Check it out at http://artlovemagic.com/index/fusion/fusion_fly.htm

Oh my God, I love Basketball

2007-05-08T09:38:00.000-07:00

What else is there to say? The playoffs have started great, and round two looks like it's going to amp up. The Suns-Spurs series looks incredible, as does the Jazz-Warriors. Everyone is counting out the East, but Detroit is making a statement that you just can't ignore.
It's a good time to be a bball fan.

Admittedly, it may not be the best time to be Steve Nash.

3 shows in 7 days!

2007-05-07T08:30:00.000-07:00

It's been a crazy couple weeks here. Artlovemagic put on our second live art experience, :FUSION:, on Saturday the 28th. 6 days later I created at Zues' Live Art Benefit and the next morning I was at the CAPE event promoting artlovemagic.

Whew. I'm loving the art, loving the getting to know people, and loving that artists are having success working with us. We've gotten a lot of compliments that amount to "thanks for giving me a reason to get my sh#% together". That's a good enough start for me.

The business stuff is less appealing to me, and ultimately I'm going to need to find someone else to cover it for us. We're trying to do big things, and big things do require some level of business discipline. I'll be more useful to the degree that I'm working on art and working directly with artists.

All the events were successful. Big attendance. For our event, I have one of our poets, Blessings, working on a report for artlovemagic.com. So I'll leave the storytelling there to her. For Cape and the Live Art Benefit, I'll just say that the good folks at Zeus know what they're doing with events. They always bring out a big crowd and always throw entertaining events. The pictures you see of me doing the drawing of the girl (Death from the Sandman comics) were done at the benefit. At CAPE, artlovemagic brought out 3 artists beside myself, Shelly Pinder, and David Rodriguez and Laura Terry (both pictured).

It was a real pleasure at these appearances to be promoting artlovemagic and have people say things like, "oh, I already know all about you, I've been to your events and read your website". That's encouraging. The word is getting out there.

Much more soon.

Fusion Rock

2007-04-17T15:08:00.000-07:00

FUSION

2007-04-10T15:34:00.000-07:00

This is going to be amazing. If you were at our last show, you know what I'm talking about. This one's bigger, has more artists, more bands, and more poets. New additions like Laura Terry, Cal Slayton, and eleven year old spoken word poet Lil' G should make things interesting.

Come out and support us and the local Dallas art scene. Saturday, April 28th from 7pm-11pm at the beautiful Jeanette Kennedy gallery in the South Side on Lamar bldg (minutes from downtown).

PS- I'm looking for people to help me get the word out. If you want to help, drop me a line at mike@artlovemagic.com

jackie's photo

2007-04-10T15:31:00.000-07:00

Making Comics

2007-04-07T10:51:00.000-07:00

My favorite thing to do. I had kind of a creative "burst" this week and wrote, penciled, and inked 8 pages in something like 4 1/2 days. That's a lot of work and it felt great. I think the story I'm working on will be somewhere around 12 pages when it's done.

Now my attention will have to be diverted a bit toward the April 28th show artlovemagic is putting on. I'll also be publishing something for that, a small book made up of the work of several artlovemagic contributers.

He's painting again!

2007-03-05T07:12:00.000-08:00

Man, It was really great to have people be receptive to my paintings at the Reach show. You see, all it takes is a little encouragement. I hadn't painted in years. But selling one at the show and then having so many people come up and ask me about the paintings, has left me with the jones to pick up the brush again.

I painted a small one first, and am currently working on the one in the pic. After that, I have the next biggest size up canvas. I'll either be unsing that one or saying, "damn the fear!", and I'll paint billboard size - like Dave!

REVOLUTION~!~!~!

our first big success

2007-03-02T02:21:00.000-08:00

report by Michael Lagocki
Art Love Magic's first live event, REACH, was more than I could imagine. It was inspiring, it was artful, it touched people. There is something absolutely magical that happens when positive people express themselves, together, in a wide range of art forms. Painting, music, poetry, jewelry crafting, comics and photography were all part of it. We brought it together and we brought it out of each other and it was alive with passion.

55 days into Art Love Magic's existence as a real company (and not just my website), our first live event, drew well over 300 people, and made a profit. Not a big profit mind you, but we're going to figure that one out. It was a great start. True beauty. Thanks be to God, we filmed it. I may try to make that available sometime. But here's some highlights:

A half dozen visual artists creating and selling original works.
Some really amazing art was on display and plenty was created at the show. When you see it all together, held up high like that, respected, it's beautiful. I believe the overall quality of the gallery (Jeanette Kennedy) really led us to put something special into the setups. Rebecca Brooks' art literally "reached" out into the space, as did several of David Rodriguez's 8ft tall paintings.

J. O'Barr showed a body of work that few of his fans get to see. Everyone sees The Crow stuff regularly, but James brought a large selection of personal paintings that he wouldn't normally take to the comic shows he does. I'm also well aware that he lent us his celebrity for the show. A lot of the people who attended came because they are deeply passionate about his work.

Pegasus and Word Became Flesh, two 8 foot tall
paintings by David Rodriguez were both shown.

The music of the soul
I'm a cartoonist. What do I know about live music and poetry? Thankfully, I involved Justin Nygren (of the Tribe and Blue Door shows) to put the pieces together. He assembled a live show that brought the house down. People were enthralled. His plan was to rotate the acts quickly and mix in poetry and live jamming. The rapid pace felt dynamic, agile, and alive. If you weren't feeling the stage, you could walk around, watch people make art for 10 minutes, and by the time you came back something completely different was happening. The bands Faint Image and Many Days Waiting have that kind of free flow feel anyway. People just came up and jammed with them all night.

The language of the soul
Legions of Will Richey fans showed up (many of 'em under 3ft tall). Will teaches for a living. He teaches children to do spoken word poetry. Now that I've seen it live, I understand how much he's empowering them. A child - creating art out of their words and thoughts - and then reading those words live, with soulful expression - to an enthusiastic audience. That is holy work if there ever was such. And there was, and it is.

Look below. I even did a poem, for the first time in my life. I was so nervous I had to pull my hat over my eyes so as not to look at the audience. I performed a poem I wrote titled "The Spoken Word".
'Lil G liked it, so there you go.

Epiphany
Halfway through the show, our jewelry artist, Sarah Gillmore came up to me and screamed, "Art Love Magic happened to me!!!" She was referring to the moment she found herself doing what she loves to do (making jewelry), surrounded by the people she loves (her boy James was there, as well as her momma and many good friends), listening to great live music, and selling her work to a receptive audience.
Yeah, that is Art Love Magic.

What's next?
Halfway through the show, the gallery told us they'd like us to return. We will be back at Jeanette Kennedy on April 28th, with a completely new show with completely new performers. I have 2-3 other shows popping as well and we'll do what we can to keep the info here current.

If you'd like to get on the mailing list and experience this for yourself, drop me a line at mike@artlovemagic.com

Things are jumping offfffff. Much much love to everyone who was there and saw it happen. I love you.

If you have any question of who we are,
well this is who we be...
We are known on this planet mother earth
and throughout the galaxy
You'll recognize us by our eyes
the L - I - G - H - T
And when you are in our presence
you feel L - O - V - E.

We be the people with the love inside of we.

from the song "Love"
performed live by AP and Faint Image
at REACH

jump to artlovemagic - see Michael's art and scribing

Slam dunk contest- a plea for change

2007-02-18T08:45:00.000-08:00

I can't take this anymore. Hi everyone, I'm Michael, and I'm a slam dunk addict. Every year, one of my favorite parts of the season is the slam dunk contest during all star weekend. Now two years in a row, I wanna choke judges.

Last year was a real heartbreaker for me. Nate Robinson may have won the trophy, but there are about 5 people in the world who think he deserved it. Yeah, he's small. I get it. He jumped over another small guy. Yes, it was cool. But it was nothing compared to the creativity and athleticism of Andre Iguodala (who dang near took his own head off trying to wow us).

Recap for those who missed it: Teammate Allen Iverson throws the ball at the back of the backboard and as it bounces off, Andre Iguodala runs from out of the crowd, grabs it in mid air, pulls his neck far back (so as not to decapitate himself) and then dunks the ball (in reverse) on the front side of the hoop.

Check out the sequence below (click twice).

Thass just stoopid brilliant. Iggy sat out this year's contest- and who can really blame him?

This year, it happened again (kinda). Dwight Howard got one of the lowest scores of the night, doing one of the coolest dunks seen in NBA history. Why Why Why.

I'll tell you why. It was so innovative, that the judges scored it before they actually realized what the kid did. While the scorecards went up immediately, it even took the announcers a minute to figure out what happened. It looked like a decent dunk, he went high, he slammed it hard. The judges scores go up- 8s and 9s.

Then Dwight pointed.

12 feet 6 inches above the ground, (twice my height and I'm a big dude) Dwight Howard stuck a sticker with his non dunking hand on the backboard. 12 feet 6 inches. The sticker had Dwight's face, his number, and a simple note that said "through Christ all things are possible".

Here's the pics.

Judges missed it. Scored it like it was so-so, like we'd seen it before.

Want more heartbreak? I found out today that the NBA denied Howard's first request. He wanted to bring in a TWLEVE FOOT HOOP and dunk on it. Two feet higher than NBA regulation.

Sigh.

Then I hear that if he had gone onto the final, Howard was planning a slam where he kisses the rim with his lips while dunking.

Sigh. Sigh,

So here's my plea, and may it make it to the ears of commissioner David Stern. Please, please let the judges watch a replay before scoring. A dunk happens in a split second. You cannot catch the nuance, the little bits of creativity that these guys are going for. Let the judges watch a replay and let's get an accurate idea of who did what.

Oh well. I can only hope. As for Dwight, I'm sure I'm not the only person in America who just became a huge Dwight Howard fan last night. Anyone wants to pick me up a Howard jersey for my next bday, you've got the green light.

Ah well, even through the heartache...only 364 days until the next dunk contest. Waiting with anticipation.

whyartlovemagic

2007-02-11T12:46:00.000-08:00

why art love and magic

Artists provide a valuable service to society. We dream and we seek to inspire and at our very best, we plant seeds for a better future. We remind people of beauty. When someone's engaged in a piece of art, they're present and they let that which drags them down slip away for a moment.

So many artists I know have struggled to turn their talents into careers. Art careers generally fall into three categories- the successful entrepreneur, the underpaid work for hire, or the starving artist. Not everyone was born to be an entrepreneur. In many ways the skills which make for a genius artist (unbounded creativity) are in conflict with the skills it takes to launch an entrepreneurial career (organization, timeliness).

A driving force behind what I'm doing is the belief that there is a staggering amount of talent out there that goes underdeveloped. I know scores of talented artists who struggle with living two lives- a day job to allow them to make it, and their true life as an artist that they live in stunted gaps. I happen to believe that living this way breeds manic suicidal depression.

With the close of 2006, I thanked the folks at WildWorks and set out to do my own thing. On January 1st, Art Love Magic (or artlovemagic- I love both) officially began operations as my full time passion. We're publishing, we're doing live art events, and we're going to help artists develop their careers.

I fundamentality believe that the universe works as a mirror and it reflects back at you what you bring to it. All these things I've wanted my whole life- a career in comics, affluence, collaborating with artists who've inspired me- I'm trying to create them for others. And myself. We'll do it together.

-Mike

I'm putting to gether a live event!

2007-02-09T10:31:00.000-08:00

Intellectual Debate

2007-01-15T08:46:00.000-08:00

Last night my homestead was the site of a really cool conservation, with an incredibly diverse group. My father was over and some friends came by to say hello, as well as to enjoy our first visit with our friend Mario since his return from Iraq. What ensued was one of the most interesting, passionate, and opinionated debates I've been privy to attend.

Everyone was pretty respectful, which was great, but you couldn't have had more divergent viewpoints. You've got a hard line Bush republican, a returning Iraq vet, a radical pacifist, and a host of others all along the political spectrum.

I don't know that anyone solved anything, but we all had open minds and certainly tried to see it from each other's view. If anything, I was mostly a spectator. To be honest, I kept guarding against anything spilling over to an actual argument. It never did.

Great night.

Collaboration with DTM

2006-12-10T21:40:00.000-08:00

DTM is an artist I met on myspace. He cartoons gorillas too. I saw a drawing he did that I really liked and offered to color it for him. He obliged and this is the result.

You can check out DTM's other work, here.

New Orleans recovery- live art

2006-12-03T12:57:00.000-08:00

This weekend, I got a last minute request to provide art for a conference around the rebuilding effort in New Orleans. 500 Katrina refugees gathered in downtown Dallas and connected with 5 other sites around the country via satellite.

They gave me a corner of the room and asked me to create illustrations based on what I heard. It wasn't hard to come up with imagery for such an important cause, such a lively town, and such affected people. The freedom of being asked to create whatever I chose is something I'm really thankful for.

I used a lot of different art supplies (thanks to Jenn for assistance with everything). Markers and colored pencil and crayons and airbrush dye and several different types of paper. It was a blast.

At the end of the day, they did a really nice tribute to the artists at each site and broadcast images of all our work across the country to each site. I was proud to have my art shown to everyone and it got a great response. There were ooohs and aahhs when they showed the image that says "the courage to HOPE in the midst of crisis".

This is the type of work I'd like to see more and more of come to my life.
And it seems to be happening.

photomographs

2006-11-10T03:35:00.000-08:00

You never know what's going to happen at a get together at the manor. Steelo could be hanging with the chitlens, drawing- or Jan might even take a super sonic ride on the ku-rocket.

Gorilla Aura

2006-10-25T23:55:00.000-07:00

New joint.

Gorilla Target

2006-10-15T16:20:00.000-07:00

This drawing was made to vent my frustrations. I've had a really crazy week. And while some really good things are going on for me, some really lousy stuff has gone down too. I think there's a lesson here- something about being unchanged by circumstance, trying to be who you are no matter what's coming at you.

Facing some hardships these last several days, I've felt fairly weak. I need to get ahold of that. Drawing this stuff out is one way I deal with it positively.

And I really like this drawing.

-Mike

Live from 24 comics day!!!

2006-10-07T23:47:00.000-07:00

Well, I'm at Titan comics, it's 1:40 am. Only really a few hours in (we started at 8). Honestly, I'm taking it all low key. I decided to really just take this one for me and instead of creating a true 24 hour comic, I'm working on my regular comics work (which I'm amazingly far behind on). I have a collaborator who's been waiting on work from me for too long. I'm working on that tonight and really loving it. Plus, it's just good to be around other artists working. There are quite a few others here, maybe like 25 people. I'm sitting with and chatting it up with James O'Barr (the creator of the Crow). I was big into that book back in the day so this is cool.

Anyway, I'll post some images in a few hours.

24 Hour Comics Day

2006-10-05T15:49:00.000-07:00

I will be creating a live 24 hour comic at Titan Comics- Saturday night and Sunday day. Titan is located at Marsh and NW Highway. If you could come by and say hello and lend support on Sunday I would love you so much!!!!

To read the 24 hour comic I produced last year, go to artlovemagic.com and click on comics.

Gorilla Burn

2006-09-22T06:27:00.000-07:00

A new piece of art. Flair tip marker and photoshop. Enjoy.

New art, sleepless nights

2006-09-09T10:43:00.000-07:00

ZZZZ....snort!
Huh? Wuzzat?
I'm in between events right now, so that means I've switched to artist's hours. Staying up all night cartooning is fun, kids. Thank you, coffee.

Samax has had some solid networking success through MySpace and encouraged me to give it a try.

The page I built can be seen at www.myspace.com/artlovemagic. The above toon is a pretty good representation of my experience with it so far. Timesucking aside, I've already traded emails with comic artist Felipe Smith (who writes and draws a very cool book called MBQ for Tokyo Pop) and discovered a new hip-hop track by Dallas' Alkhemi Jones that I'm crazy for. If you love quality hip hop (beats+lyrics+flow), follow this link and download the song Country Metro from her for free.

The monkey below is panel one of the strip I'm doing for ghostwerks' Ghetto Manga magazine.

New napkin art

2006-09-07T22:03:00.000-07:00

This one was drawn tonight at Sherlock's while hanging with my new roomate Billy.

Test Subject A

2006-08-28T17:10:00.000-07:00

ghostwerks had a meeting on Sunday and Corance and I hung out long after. As we talked about comics, I drew. We talked about the character Test Subject A (see GhostwerksComics #1), and I drew this portrait of him and Annie.

I look forward to coloring this one, hoping to get a Josh Middleton-inspired softness to the colors.

The Boo-ness!

2006-08-23T09:33:00.000-07:00

Here's another new one. (Click the image twice to see the big 'un) This is a page for the next crop of ghostwerks stuff. The ghostly character is BOO, ghostwerks' mascot.

This is a weird page- the actual drawings took very little time- what REALLY took a lot of time was combining them, coloring them, altering the background photos - all the digital photoshop stuff. Plus, as I began working the next page, I realized that it's not as easy as doing it once and "getting" it. The images after this have been less successful so far.

Full color comics is new to me and there's still a lot to learn- but I smell a breakthrough coming.

More Double Scribing

2006-08-23T09:02:00.000-07:00

Experimenting with two scribes working at once has gone great lately. This morning I worked with a scribe-in-training, Stephanie Plagens (above). Together we listened to an hour long conversation, drawing the entire time, capturing the key points and entertaining the crowd.

It helped me see that this "double-scribing" technique really helps with training new scribes. Stephanie worked with a lot of confidence for a rookie, in part because she knew I was there capturing stuff she might miss. Vice versa- I enjoyed being freed up to spend more time than usual on drawings myself.

More to come!

Double scribing - Ocean Metaphor

2006-08-19T08:37:00.000-07:00

Make sure you click on the above thumbnail TWICE to get the full sized image.

My co-worker and good friend David Rodriguez and I experimented with some "double scribing" this week. We simultaneously scribed on a wall of dry erase about 12-15 ft long and about 6 ft high. We agreed on a metaphor beforehand (in this case the ocean) that the facilitator then worked into a conversation with the client. 50 or so people spoke and David and I turned their comments into this huge piece.

What was fun about this was that it allowed one of us to catch the content while the other spent much more time illustrating. Therefore you get good stuff you don't normally have time to do while scribing (like the whale and the sailboat).

It was also cool to trade places back and forth as we drew and pass quietly pass comments directing one another. I think there's a LOT to explore here. We need to do this a lot more.

*****

Side note- I need to find a medium on dry erase that will "shade" images. It's got to be something that can go on and come off quickly and easily. I've used watercolor paint before- but it needs like 5 coats and is messy to remove. No good for the live, rapid fire environment of our sessions.

If anyone's got a suggestion on that one send it to me please.

New ghostwerks drawings

2006-08-19T00:44:00.000-07:00

Two new ones for an early next year ghostwerks comic.

Enjoy.

LG Pinkston High School

2006-08-08T13:49:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I worked live for LGP High in Dallas, for their professional development day. It was the day all their teachers returned from summer break (and the first day for all the new staff). LGP's principle, James Colbert, had seen me perform over a year ago and remembered me and found me when he wanted to do something special this year.

Another facilitator, Terry Stone, already had a strong design for the meeting and allowed me to work within that- drawing live, teaching graphic modeling, and just helping make the day more creative and fun.

Previous years had days like this that were just all the teachers sitting in a room and being lectured at- all day long. This one was filled with laughter and movement and creativity. Many teachers told us it was their favorite professional development day ever.

One neat highlight is the last image above. I had hoped to try and fit in time for a really nice image that highlighted the main points of the day. I had brought some posterboard for it, but when I started I really wanted to do something softer than the markers I brought would allow. I cursed myself for not bringing my colored pencil set, when I realized Terry, the other facilitator, had brought boxes of 24 count crayola crayons. There were among the candy and trinkets she had put all over the tables as fun stuff. Man I hadn't worked with crayon for years. It's actually a really good medium- a lot of fine artists use them. They allow you to shade softly from dark to light, and they mix a bit too. You can get cool effects with them.

The piece came out great. The staff loved it and wants to frame it.

There were several inquiries for more work. Since I'm interested in doing more with schools, and since I already know and like several of the staff at Pinkston, I'm going to try and build a relationship with this school. I've offered to do a few freebie drawings for the staff and I've talked with the principal about future meetings and events, including coming in and talking to students.

Illustrations for WildWorks

2006-08-04T02:45:00.000-07:00

Lately, I've been getting more requests for traditional illustration and cartooning gigs. Which of course, I love. These are some drawings WildWorks will be incorporating into templates they sell that help groups run meetings. I'm proud of these. They have kind of a Rick Geary flair to them.

Coloring Samax Randolph's work

2006-08-01T22:45:00.000-07:00

Ghostwerks... back from the dead???? Rumors abound.

This image was drawn by Samax Randolph - and the lower version was colored by me. The coloring was done in Photoshop using my wacom tablet. I imagine some final changes will be made prior to using the image on the cover of Samax's comic Manchild #1. This book is already completed and current plans have the book premiering in 2007 from ... yep, ghostwerks.

Incidentally, Samax also writes one of my favorite blogs on the internet. You can check it out here.

Working with schools

2006-07-30T01:52:00.000-07:00

A few opportunities have popped up lately for me to do some freelance work with schools. I love it. Working with schools is something I feel good about and is a fresh breath from my normal routine. Schools usually aren't quite sure what I do, they just know they like it, so they kind of let me just go all out and do whatever I want that I think will add value.

The pictures above are me providing live scribing for an FCE event at James Madison High School last month. My boy, CW of Real Coaching brought me in. Fun stuff there and I even got to give some drawing lessons to the kids.

Next up is assisting with LG Pinkston High's professional development day. This is where the teachers return after summer break (before the students) and prepare for the coming year. Their principle, James Colbert, had seen me scribe at an event last year and asked me to come help make his development day a bit more creative. I'll be providing live art and assisting the facilitator they've brought in.

Should be fun, and will hopefully lead to more work with schools.

Ironic considering how much I didn't enjoy actually attending highschool.

New WildWorks website

2006-07-28T19:36:00.000-07:00

I spent a good deal of time over the last few weeks rebuilding the WildWorks website. WildWorks is the company I work for and who I provide the majority of my scribing through. The content of the new site was written by everyone in our company and really focuses our message a lot better than the previous version.

I'd love to hear comments if you have any. You can visit the site at www.wildworksgroup.com

Thanks.

lots and lots of gorillas

2006-07-25T14:46:00.000-07:00

I've been drawing lots and lots of gorillas lately. I'm trying to get their anatomy down, understand how they move, and what looks really cool in terms of drawing them. The drawings above are a selection of about half of the sketches I did a few nights ago.

You can click on the image (twice) to enlarge it.

What's a 24 hour comic?

2006-07-12T12:27:00.000-07:00

As explained by its inventor Scott McCloud, the objective of a 24 comic is...

"To create a complete 24 page comic book in 24 continuous hours. That means everything: Story, finished art, lettering, colors (if you want 'em), paste-up, everything! Once pen hits paper, the clock starts ticking. 24 hours later, the pen lifts off the paper, never to descend again. Even proofreading has to occur in the 24 hour period. No sketches, designs, plot summaries or any other kind of direct preparation can precede the 24 hour period."

This is a crazy big task. So challenging, I wont even boter going into all that you have to consider to do a comic in a single day.

I completed my first 24 hour comic last year at LoneStar Comics in Dallas. It was a great experience, yet when I was done I felt like I had run a marathon. You can see the results at my site, where I've just posted Stream of Confidence, my 24 hour comic.

Enjoy.

Just for fun...

2006-07-12T12:19:00.000-07:00

more specifically because I was bored out of me skull...
this is a pretty quick little cartoon I threw together this afternoon.

What is scribing?

2006-07-11T12:36:00.000-07:00

Scribing is the art of capturing a conversation in real time through pictures. People have conversations and I draw images of the things that they're talking about. It's what I do for a living. I've done this kind of work all over North America, often for very prominent speakers and very (very) big organizations. As I write this I'm currently in Chicago scribing for a consulting company.

Above are some recent examples. These are about 5 feet tall in real life and are produced live in minutes as I'm listening to conversation.

More at my website.

Akiane

2006-07-10T15:04:00.000-07:00

Hi, remember me?
Been awhile. I have been working, though. Mostly traveling around doing client work- scribing and graphic design. I'm writing from Chicago now where I'm doing live art for a consulting company.

But I wanted to jump on and key you towards an artist that I find inspiring. 11 year old Akiane is a child master painter and an accomplished poet. I first saw her work on television, then went to her website to learn more. I encourage you to check her site out. The above painting is a piece she did at 9 years old.

http://www.artakiane.com

Chuck Palahniuk

2006-06-14T04:16:00.000-07:00

Chuck Palahnuik, author of Fight Club, lullaby, Survivor, etc, was signing last night at Borders Book store and my friend David and I attended. I had been to the same store a night earlier when another reading/signing was going on- that one drew about 15 people. Thus, I was pretty surprised when we showed up almost a full hour early and there were already hundreds lined up to see Chuck. Yikes.

Problem number two was that the line moved extremely slow. Chuck seems like a nice guy and was in a good mood. He said it was the second to last signing of his tour, so he spent a good amount of time personally talking to everyone who came up to him. Unfortunately that meant that in about a half hour I moved maybe five feet forward in line. Ultimately I didn't get to meet him for this reason (plus the NBA finals were on and I didn't want to miss the entire game).

I did get to hear him speak though, which was a lot of fun. It seemed we were one signing too late for the goods though, as Chuck related that his publisher had called him that very morning warning him he had to tone down the content of his presentations at book stores. That meant of course that he couldn't do the reading he had planned, as there's almost nothing the guy's written that's appropriate for all audiences. Fortunately, the guy's a pretty entertaining speaker and the talk was still good.

I had also wanted to go because on both night's signings I picked up some tips on how to do this stuff. As a hopeful author, I need to get a handle on that. I've done some Q & A's as a comic artist and publisher and have never been quite comfortable at them. Chuck's technique is really good. Basically he takes a small number of questions (rotating boy girl boy girl) and uses each question as an opportunity to tell a story or really elaborate on his writing. In a half hour talk, he maybe took 8-10 questions, and told several funny stories.

Chuck pointed out that what he really likes to do is document things that he feels will never be documented by anyone else. Most of the writing in his books are based on crazy stories people tell him or that he's experienced with his friends. He said, "100 years from now, no historian will write about the sex industry boom in Portland Oregon in 2006, or the odd sport of Big Car hunting, or whatever." So he puts those facts in to stories. He even said that most of the stuff that he purely makes up is only there so that people will believe the real stuff.

Big Car Hunting by the way is a really funny idea. Apparently this is a sport where folks rig a beat up old car with a remote control steering mechanism. The car is then sent out and several "hunters" follow in other cars with rifles and try to shoot the thing to death. When it finally dies of gunshot wounds, the hunters drink beer, fix it, and send it out again. Love it. Beats the shit out of hunting deer in my humble opinion.

Like I said, I couldn't wait around as long as it would've taken to meet Chuck, but I did give him a drawing. I usually try to give drawings as gifts to people I meet who've inspired me. For Chuck, all I had was a hunk of wood to draw on. David suggested I draw a scene from Fight Club that was in the book, but didn't make the movie. I chose the scene where our narrator first meets Tyler Durden. In the film, this happens on an airplane, but in the book it's on a beach. The narrator has fallen asleep while sunning, and when he wakes Tyler is there, naked, sitting in the shadow of a huge hand he's built out of driftwood.

I drew that image of Tyler, with two sentences from the book that describe that scene. I wrote, "To Chuck- thanks for good reads- Michael Lagocki" on the back and left it on the table where he was signing.

Fun stuff.

Gallery Meeting

2006-06-10T07:48:00.000-07:00

The meeting at Art Prostititute went well. Mark, the owner, is good people. I was glad I brought my comics, because the paintings didn't really catch much attention. Painting represents a pretty small portion of my art. I've done maybe 20-25 paintings in my life and of them, maybe 5 really mean something to me. I took several of those, and it was really the first time since college that someone looked at them with a professional eye. He pointed out some things to work on, but the more we talked the more it became clear that illustration is what I really love and the conversation went that way. I brought several pages from my Misprecision project and those were a hit. That project gets the strongest reaction out of anything I've ever done.

Mark digs comics illustration too and has featured several cartoonists in Art Prostitute's magazine. He gave me some local contacts to reach out to, and pointed me towards some other illustrators he thinks I should contact, and he invited me to stay in touch and keep bringing new work over to the gallery. Good stuff. I suspect there will be more to this story.

Other...
My work for the Dallas School district last weekend went well and I had several requests for teaching and freelance art. It's got me thinking about doing some private lessons. I like to teach and would enjoy designing and presenting something like say... a one-time two hour course aimed at giving novices a leg up and some confidence on making art. Not sure I'd enjoy teaching someone over and over, but I know that I could create and delivery a one-shot course that people would really enjoy and would get some skills out of. That's a good service.

I'll keep turning that one over in my head.

Become an Art Prostitute

2006-06-08T06:22:00.000-07:00

I attended the opening of the Art Prostitute gallery in Deep Ellum last Saturday night. Great Time! First off, the opening was a huge success, people filling the gallery and lining the streets. Second, I LOVED the show. Dave Kinsey's illustrative paintings are gorgeous, have a lot of life and spark to them. As a cartoonist, I was particularly attracted to his controlled linework. (see above painting) You can check out his site at http://www.kinseyvisual.com/

Aside from the show, I just really loved the gallery too. It's a cool space, they had a DJ supplying beats for the opening, and they were selling comics in the gift shop. Score! Anyway, tomorrow I have a meeting with the owner to show him my work. I was just so comfortable at the gallery that I'd love to become involved, possibly show there.

So wish me luck on that. And I think the gallery is a great place to check out. It's right downtown, very fun, very welcoming, and free. Here's the site:
www.artprostitute.com

worth taking action

2006-06-06T07:43:00.000-07:00

So I'm pretty encouraged by a new wave of people who seem to be tired of listening to the same old BS and making a stand. This week as Bush rolled out the gay marriage amendment again, I've heard a lot of people simply say "enough", we're done with this nonsense. There are real problems to be solved and acting like our most pressing problem is who wants to love who is just ridiculous. For me it's simple, I'm done listening to politicians and radical preachers telling me who to hate.

The same week, an Inconvenient Truth (a great documentary about global warming) opened on just 77 screens and still managed to break the top 10 most profitable movies in the country. That's amazing. You'd think that'd be impossible on less than 100 screens nationally. People are hungry for change, and their hungry for messages about solutions.

When I saw it, I was so encouraged by the audience's reactions. The end credits included suggestions on actions that individuals can take, and as they rolled, audience members cheered their favorite ones. One thing I loved is that some of the biggest cheers came from the following suggested action: If you believe in prayer, pray we'll find the strength to make the necessary changes. I loved this response because so often a perception is put forth that republicans are Christian and Liberals are atheist. If anything, what I've seen in the last few years is that the major republican issues all seem to be about standing for war, for building walls, for limiting freedoms. Christ preached unity and peace, Christ was a radical, I see nothing Christ-like in the current administration.

What does all this have to do with movies? Well, movies are the campfire of our generation. It's where people form ideas, discuss conclusions. Some of the best conversations I've had with friends over the years have been interpreting films we just saw. It's one place that change begins to happen.

Here are links to two great trailers that are from documentaries about changing the way we think about progress. Both are about technology and the earth.

An Inconvenient Truth
http://www.apple.com/trailers/paramount_classics/aninconvenienttruth/

Who Killed the Electric Car
http://www.apple.com/trailers/sony/whokilledtheelectriccar/

back in the saddle (sexy girls included)

2006-06-05T07:28:00.000-07:00

yep. I've haven't been great about posting in the last few weeks, but here we go again- got some new work, some new things to yap about.

First- everyone's favorite- sexy girls.
Comic artists excel at drawing beautiful women. It's something I've kind of shied away from because it's overdone and usually done in a pretty goofy way. (Girls with 100DD breasts and all that) So I didn't put a ton of effort in growing in that direction (I draw more cartoons than realism anyway) But recently I realized that it had gotten away from me a bit and that if I needed to draw an attractive lady pic, my skills in that area were kind of weak. So I did these two images as practice.

Click on the images to enlarge. Enjoy.

kewl stuff

2006-05-22T08:14:00.000-07:00

yeah, I haven't had a lot to blog about this last week. - haven't been that productive and been been playing some Quake 4 (nice!). But I thought I could at least point out some cool stuff.

GEZFRY!
check out the art of a crazy insane talented illustrator. My friend David turned me on to this work.
http://www.gezfry.com/gallery.shtml

A SCANNER DARKLY
I can not wait for this flick. From the director of Waking Life. A really cool looking animation/film mixture from a story by Phillip K. Dick.
Official site
http://wip.warnerbros.com/ascannerdarkly/

new layouts

2006-05-16T09:09:00.000-07:00

these are layouts for a comic story
this is not finished art- the drawings here will be retraced and reinked to create smoother lines and higher detail. My process for this project is to do the entire book in layout pages like this- then essentially redraw the entire thing. The work is too complex to try it all at once, and working this way I'm much more free to be experimental in the layout process.
These drawings are from two separate scenes- so the last two pages aren't meant to flow from the first three.
These were created pretty big- about 13"x19" - with pencil & marker (the 3rd one was brush & ink)

Will Eisner

2006-05-13T10:58:00.000-07:00

This is a picture of myself and Will Eisner-the inventor of the graphic novel. The pic is a few years old. I met Will back in the first year that I hit the San Diego con with the ghostwerks crew. Today, I needed to get a scan of the pic and I thought it would be a good opportunity to blog about Will and his influence on me.

Eisner's impact on comics really can't be understated. Will was around from the earliest days, both as an artist and writer, and as one of the industry's first publishers. He gained wide recognition doing an eight page comic called the Spirit that shipped with American sunday newspapers. Later, Will pioneered the use of comics for teaching purposes in the army and for corporations. In 1970, Will invented what today is know as the graphic novel, with the publication of A Contract With God. A later work of his, Comics and Sequential Art, would be considered as THE bible for comics teaching for many years. Eisner continued to release graphic novel after graphic novel until his death last year.

Comics' most recognized award, our version of the Oscars, is called the Eisner.

Other people document this better than me (obviously). But generally I just want to communicate that Will was really an important figure in the history of this, my favorite artform. His work itself has a huge influence on me. I think of Will as the master of cartooning and simplifying the human form. He made drawings which were very cartoony, yet at the same time show a true craftsmanship for illustration. When I saw Will's work and injected his influence into my style, it was like I had figured something important out about how I was supposed to draw. To this day, his influence is all over my work.

Meeting Will in San Diego was a big deal to me. He was signing at a booth. I waited for him a bit and asked if he would look at my portfolio. He quickly glanced and then said that he would only be signing here a minute, and could I wait by the side for him to finish so that he could look at it more. I did and he gave me a thorough review. At this point, I had very little experience. I'm sure there were prolific pros who would've loved to get that kind of review from Will.

He was extremely encouraging. I remember he pointed out a very simple, simple drawing (in a complex page) and told me that that figure had much more life than the others I had spent so much time drawing.

That was a great experience for me and something I'll always keep in mind. To this day, this photo of Will and I sits above my drawing table. When Will passed, part of my sadness came from knowing a dream of mine had passed- Will would never see me reach the status of an important creator in the artform. Sigh.

Many thanks, Will. Your influence on me was and is great. Thank you for sharing your time, and dedicating your life to this art.

www.willeisner.com

new sketches posted to my gallery

2006-05-11T13:06:00.000-07:00

I put 4 new sketches up in the gallery this morning.
they can be seen here.

More napkin drawing

2006-05-10T04:54:00.000-07:00

Because Babette dug the napkin pieces, here's another one. Drawn at the Stonleigh P on Monday afternoon.

Art from the Gallery

2006-05-09T13:08:00.000-07:00

My friend Eric Swanson reccomended that I put more of my gallery pieces on this blog. It hadn't really occured to me that folks would see this who never went to my website. (duh- I'm kinda new to this). Anyway, here are three of my favorite pieces from my site. To see much much much more, visit it at artlovemagic.com.
thanks Eric

Art for Shep

2006-05-09T09:42:00.000-07:00

Shep Hyken is a speaker/author who uses my work to communicate to his clients. We do a cartoon strip together called Moments of Magic. This new illustration is something he requested for his marketing broshure. Click on the image to enlarge.

On my website you can see more of my work with Shep. Check the projects page and the corporate gallery under the art gallery.

Miss Monster rules

2006-05-08T11:36:00.000-07:00

Here's the painting I bought from the uber talented Melita Murphy. Her website is a monster's gut full of fun. She does painting sculpture and costume design. Her site is www.missmonster.com

And yes, that's my new shaved noggin in the pic.
Ya shoulda seen it on day one.

Michael pays 30 bucks for a dead kitty

2006-05-08T05:54:00.000-07:00

Signing report
Well, both signings were good times. I put together a few prints of my work to sell, and I sold more than I thought I would. What was great about that was that I think most people who bought them really picked them up because they liked the art, not because they knew me or were trying to support ghostwerks or whatever.

The folks at Titan are all good peeps. And they had a nice gathering of local writers and artists. Titan is a truly great shop to shop (shop to shop?), especially if, like me, graphic novels are your thing. The Zeus show (Cape2) was much bigger and Richard and the crew over there really put together a fantastic collective of talent and small publishers. That show was outside under a big carnivale tent and was really well attended despite the fact that it rained pretty ferociously.

At the Zeus show I was more of a fanboy. I hung out at the ghostwerks table for an hour or so, and did a few sketches, but I spent the better part of my time just walking around and buying stuff. James Kochalka (Monkey vs. Robot, Peanutbutter and Jeremy, Pinky and Stinky) was selling little paintings for $30. I bought the dead kitty one (above) thinking I might send it to my friend Leigh, but too late, I'm in love with it. It's mine!

I also bought an Andy Lee original. Andy is a self described Zen painter. His work is crazy beautiful and crazy fast. He had a huge crowd around him all day watching him work in his freakishly kinetic way. Andy paints rapidly and regularly usings his brushes, his palms, and his forearms to paint. He uses the shoulder of his tee shirt to smooth his brush, so by the end of the day he's covered in paint. He produces a painting in about 5-7 minutes, and while I was there, he never once stopped. Go check out his website right now. http://www.findandy.com/home.cfm

I bought one more- a gorgeous gorgeous gorgeous painting by Melita Curphy. But I want to snap a picture of it, so I'll do that and post it tomorrow.

All in all, it was a great day. It was good to get back into the comics scene and I felt really good about supporting other artists.

more gorillas

2006-05-05T10:04:00.000-07:00

let the apes keep on rolling
The thing that's kind of fun about these is that the line drawings are actually pretty simple. Most of the work is in the coloring. I've also found that good coloring allows you to skip a lot of the traditional line variance work. All the lines on these two are basically one thickness.

Gorillas in a Happy Mood

2006-05-04T08:26:00.000-07:00

Witness the strange creations! Giant gorillas stalk the city, gleefully causing destruction and mayhem.

These are drawings I began working with for a strip to be seen in Samax Randolph's Ghetto Manga Magazine. The images are created by taking a line drawing, coloring it in photoshop and again using that program to paste it on top of (or within) a photograph.

The images here are basically experiments in the technique. This kind of thing is seen in comics, but rarely done well. I wanted the concentration to be on the cartoon more than the photos. When I think of successful blending of cartoons and photography, the project that immediately comes to mind is the film Who Framed Roger Rabbit. I thought that movie really nailed it and was a blast to watch.

If you like these, check out the art gallery section of my website to see more.

Signing this Saturday!

2006-05-04T08:05:00.000-07:00

I will be signing this Saturday (May 6th) at the Free Comic Book Day celebrations at two great Dallas comics shops. Come by and see me! I'll be giving out free sketches and giving free demos on comic book creation. Both of these events are loaded with cool writers and artists. Plus, I'll be bringing a brand new sketchbook publication for sale.

I will be signing at:

Titan Comics
from 12pm to 3pm
3701 W. Northwest Highway Suite 125
Dallas, TX 75220
Phone: (214) 350-4420 www.titancomics.com

Zeus Comics and Toys
from 3:30pm to 6pm
with the ghostwerks crew!!!
Turtle Creek Village
3878 Oaklawn Ave
Suite 100E Dallas
TX 75219
T: 214.219.TOYS
www.zeuscomics.com

napkin drawings

2006-05-04T07:58:00.000-07:00

I draw everywhere. As long as I have something to write with and something to write on I'm comfortable. For example- these napkin doodles were done at a bar using a ballpoint pen.

Drawings for Mario and Rob

2006-05-04T07:26:00.000-07:00

Here are two drawings (of the same figure) that I did as gifts for friends. The figure is a girl I painted a long time ago in my first "serious" painting on canvas. That painitng is still hanging in my living room. Mario, my pal and biz partner really digs the painting. He's asked me on occassion to draw the girl from the painting again. I've enjoyed doing so, and it's kind of built a rhythm for me and a connection to this character.

Currently, Mario's serving in Iraq. I did the first drawing as a gift for him. The second is another gift (as yet undelivered) and was drawn for my friend and former painting teacher Rob Erdle. You can click on either to enlarge them.

Polar Bears and Honey

2006-03-22T06:55:00.000-08:00

Ethan, an employee at Titan Comics in Dallas, asked me to do this illustration for a children's story he's written. He had seen my comic strip Toho the Pacifist and thought my style of drawing polar bears fit well with his story about them.

When I read his story, this image popped into my head immediately. It was sketched in blue pencil, scanned, inked in Adobe Illustrator, and colored in Photoshop.

Enjoy.

On The Inside

2006-03-21T12:49:00.000-08:00

Blogging is a look inside someone else.
We'll see what bleeds out now that I'm split open and here for you to see.

What's in the Art Love Magic blog?
I'll be regularly using this blog to post new artwork. I create a ton of stuff and I'd like to share it. My website's a good venue for this also (and I'd love you to check it out), but stuff can get lost there and most people wouldn't check the site regularly enough to see what's just come out.

Enjoy.