Switzerland

Photos from a recent tour of Switzerland:

We biked the whole country armed with nothing but a compass and our manly wits...

...And remarkably, we only got lost 467 times over the course of 9 days of biking.

What is more remarkable is that it really is possible to see all of Switzerland by bike.  Their bike trails are (almost all) very well marked, and offer great scenic routes between all the major cities and places of interest.  And many of these routes are on back trails or cart paths through forests or fields of flowers.  

It was one of the best trips I have taken. Especially the Interlaken area.  Lauterbrunnen (pictured above) may well be the most beautiful place I have ever been on earth.  Five stars. Would go back.

A few odd sketches from the trip:

Gimmelwold

Bern

Zurich

Reference Hunting: The Narrows

In 2004 some friends and I hiked the Narrows at Zion National Park in Utah.  Of all the hikes I have ever been on, this was perhaps the greatest.

During much of the hike, the 100 foot vertical sandstone walls of the canyon close in so tightly that you must hike in the water itself, which is murky, and full of bowling balls, making each step a perilous lesson in jujitsu.

When I was working on the St. George illustrations, I kept coming back to this place in my mind, and in the end, I used it very closely for the images of the last showdown with the dragon.  Part of this, is that amidst all the natural splendor of the Narrows, there is an element of danger, depending on which time of the year you are hiking.

When we got into the park we were told that it would be very dangerous to hike the canyon because if it rained then there would be a good chance that it would flash flood in the canyon. This would result in either severe injury or death or both.  But only if it rained. And it was suppose to rain.

Also, there were cougars.

After looking at the forecast, my friends were justifiably alarmed that we might get rained on half way out in the gorge and then be overtaken by a chocolate mud-slide of bowling balls and angry cougars. I was only able to convince everyone to go by showing them pamphlets for the hike, which offered glowing, happy pictures of elderly couples and very young children hiking in the stream, unmolested by mud-slides or cougars. If they can brave it, being elderly and infirm, surely we can.

(Confession: The pamphlets were actually not for the hike we would be taking, but a separate, safer one with guided trails. I lied and I am sorry.)

But in the end it never rained, and we weren't caught up in a flash flood or eaten by the indigenous fauna.  Instead we witnessed one of the most amazing places I have ever seen on planet Earth and the most memorable hike I have ever been on.

If you ever get the chance, go to Utah, stop by Zion National Park and hike the Narrows.  You will not regret it.

(But check the forecast first…)

                                                                          Image: Jon Sullivan

Note: This post is a re-post from Muddy Colors. To check out the original post and comments visit: Muddycolors.blogspot.com.

Inspiration

Every now and then I get asked what I do for inspiration. Some mistakenly believe that I torment my sister's cat for inspiration. Others believe that I methodically hunt down and destroy endangered species. And still others suspect that I build giant robots and plan an invasion of Mars.

I assure you this is not true. I like good music and fine literature.

But even more than music and literature, I find that camping trips provide some of the best inspiration.

Some might say; yes, but don't you spend most of a camping trip fighting mosquitos, rain, fires that won't start, and equipment failure all while being completely lost? And don't you spend most of your mental energy panicking about wether you will even survive this day because you have not exercised in a month and have been living on chic-fil-a?

And well yes, this is all true. But there are brief moments on these trips that make the whole experience worth the overall misery of it. When it is all said and done, I tend to forget how terrible it was, and how we almost killed each other that time the campstove broke, and I am left only with the impression of the spectacular views and the warmth of sun after being freezing and the taste of food after being starving.

Apart from being inspired by the raw beauty of the planet, hiking gives a person a chance to be alone with their thoughts in a place where they cannot help but feel small and cannot help but appreciate what they have. There is something about being freezing, and having to wrestle with building a fire and putting up a tent in the snow that suddenly turns a simple, everyday thing like a warm shower into one of the greatest technological wonders of all time.

I always bring a hardback sketchbook with me on these trips, and try to have easy access to it. Every time I come back from one of these trips I have hundreds of new thumbnails a ideas for new projects I want to undertake. The odd scribbles and tiny thumbnails made on the trail may get turned into something larger and they may not, but the impression of it all never quite leaves me. It will always be somewhere in the back of my head, waiting for a chance to find its way onto paper.

Photos from Comicon 2009

So then he looks right at me and says, 'No Disintegrations.' I mean, seriously? Say, have you seen Portland's new Booth?

Justin: "That print is overpriced."

Cory: "Yeah, great. Why aren't you wearing any pants again?"

Giving the SDCC Committee for Awesomeness some straight answers on being awesome.

Looking Good. Taking Care of Business.

San Diego was rocked again. It was an fantastic convention, and I am worn out. We met a ton of great people, got to see a lot of really incredible art and ate entirely too much awesome food in the gaslamp district.

We didn't really see much of the floor this year, because the booth was a madhouse. But we did make it out to see Donato and Manchess bring some shock and awe again this year with their demos. (Check out their work on Irene Gallo's blog here.) We also had the chance to meet and talk with Peter DeSeve. He has been a huge influence on me. I learned how to illustrate in watercolor from the Step by Step guide on him. (The one that Cory stole) Peter DeSeve is a great guy.

For the action in video format, head over to Cory's blog and watch his yearly Comic Con recap.

Photos by Matt Silver and Kitty Mach

Illustration Master Class 2009

Last week I attended the 2009 Illustration Master Class in Amherst Massachusetts.  The faculty included the amazing talent of Boris Vallejo, Julie Bell, Greg Manchess, Charles Vess, Donato Giancola, Rebecca Guay, Irene Gallo, Scott Fischer and Dan DosSantos along with guest appearances from Michael Whelan and Jon Foster, among others.  

Donato Giancola elaborating on the finer points of galaxies

Dan Dos Santos showing some mad skillz.

Michael Whelan about to go to work

Charles Vess showing us how to do magic tricks with paint

It was a very intense week of lectures, demonstrations and projects with the faculty working very closely with each student to give very personalized guidance. It was a highly rewarding week and I cannot thank the faculty enough for so generously giving their time and efforts to the students. I learned a great deal from the course and I will be posting some of the work I did there in the coming days. It felt like going to Hogwarts where all the professors are literally teaching the students how to do magic.  

And in case you were not yet convinced. FLYING MONKEYS.  

For more images Irene Gallo's Flickr pages for a look at the mayhem. They have a great overview of the whole week as well as images of Greg Manchess being awesome, Fantastic art in progress and myself in a fight to the death with Allen Williams.

And for the run-down of the event she has also posted a number of entries on her blog.  If you are interested at all in possibly signing up for the event in 2010 you should check it out.

European Tour

I recently did some traveling abroad to visit friends and see some of the galleries in France and the Netherlands. I have always wanted to see Paris, to see the galleries, and to see the city itself and experience the culture. But most of all to see if everything that everyone said about the place was true; that the food is spectacular, the art is legendary, the city is the most beautiful on earth, and that the people are all very rude.

We found that the food lived up its reputation, that the city was indeed beautiful, and the people were only rude if we ran around like drunken apes. 

In general people in Paris were wonderful, and really helpful. And using my astounding knowledge of the french language, I was able to successfully negotiate my way through at least three meals, two subway rides, and get myself completely lost everywhere I went.  

Here I am on the phone, lost.

If it weren't for the kindness of our friends Olivier, Loren and Annebelle over at the Daniel Maghen Gallery we would have spent most of the trip lost in the subways with the drunken apes.  

Aside from the stunning palatial quality of the city, (touring Paris from the Senne river one would think that it was built of nothing but palaces,) it was the statuary that was the most strikingly impressive for me. I would love to spend several months drawing and doing studies from these. There is so much knowledge to be gleaned from these works. They are some of the finest examples of the human form in art that I have ever seen.  

The Hunt For Petar Meseldzija

After leaving the wonders of Paris, we journeyed to the Netherlands to seek the counsel of the mythical guru, Petar Meseldzija. 

We saw him in the distance, biking over the fields and canals and windmills in the far north. We tried to catch him, but after days of unflagging pursuit, our legs gave out and our bikes fell apart. As we lay exhausted in the marshy fields night came. It had been a wasted trip. The next day we would return to france, defeated.  

But as the moon began to rise we heard the creaking of an old bike drawing nearer and nearer. A shadowy figure came through the tall grass. Petar Meseldzija. He stopped in front of us and laid down his bike, which was magical and had only one pedal. He told us that we could not have caught him, had we ten thousand horses, or dragon's wings, or even canondales. He had a magical bike. Then he sat down with us and explained the mysteries of time and space and served us flaming hot Serbian coffee.

 

The next morning we ate belgian waffles and toured the Rijksmuseum with him to veiw the Rembrandt paintings. 

It was a privilege to see these paintings with Petar. Along with being a mythical guru, and owning a magical bike, he is also a phenomenal oil painter and hearing him explain the methodology of Rembrandt's work was worth a decade of college education.

This is Rembrandt's, Jeremiah Lamenting the Burning of Jerusalem. We sat in front of this painting for hours. There is the wealth of a thousands of years of artistic knowledge wrapped up in this single little gem. I hope if you ever have a chance to go to Amsterdam that you will stop to see these paintings.  

Misty Mountain Walk

I took a hike up through the Smoky Mountains on the AT a little while back and I am just now getting around to posting these photos. It turned out to be the absolute best Smoky Mountain weather. Hazy, ominous and cold, like a Caspar David Friedrich painting. There is nothing quite like it for clearing your head.