Hindsight

I recently gave a talk at the Aldrich library in Barre, VT (where, incidentally, I used to play D&D as a young nerdy child). This is more or less my standard presentation — although I made a few last-minute changes, so I was improvising a little. Here’s a 15-minute excerpt from the 1-hour presentation:

I went to see ASP’s Much Ado About Nothing the other night. Had a great time, except for navigating to Roxbury. I really love that the seating for this play is arranged around tables, cabaret-style. Here are some of my sketches of the performance:

Sketch 3 of ASP’s Much Ado by Gareth Hinds

Sketch 6 of ASP’s Much Ado by Gareth Hinds

Sketch 7 of ASP’s Much Ado by Gareth Hinds

Sketch 8 of ASP’s Much Ado by Gareth Hinds

Sketch 9 of ASP’s Much Ado by Gareth Hinds

Sketch 10 of ASP’s Much Ado by Gareth Hinds

Sketch 11 of ASP’s Much Ado by Gareth Hinds

Sketch 12 of ASP’s Much Ado by Gareth Hinds

Sketch 13 of ASP’s Much Ado by Gareth Hinds

Sketch 14 of ASP’s Much Ado by Gareth Hinds

Graphic novels:
The Photographer, by Emmanuel Guibert - This is one of the most awesomely powerful graphic novels I have ever read. I’d say it is a very close second to Maus. Guibert is an interesting artist, because he doesn’t seem to believe in using any of the ‘tricks’ of the comic medium to tell a story like this. No funky angles, interesting page layouts, motion lines, graphic symbols… just a straight linear narration of the true story of a photographer (Didier Lefevre) who accompanied a Doctors Without Borders mission to Afghanistan. It’s a very documentary style — and I don’t mean a cleverly edited documentary like Supersize me, but a totally straightforward one like Blindsight (see below). The only thing experimental about it is that it mixes Guibert’s drawings with Didier’s photos, to great effect. Nevertheless, Guibert’s art is amazing. It manages to look both like a Tintin homage and a sketchbook of someone who was actally there with Didier. The real power of the book comes from the subject matter, though. This is an incredibly stark and nuanced portrayal of the Afghani people, and of the amazing work of the doctors who hike through physically and socially dangerous terrain to treat the casualties of the violence in that region. A must-read.

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The Eternal Smile, by Gene Luen Yang and Derek Kirk Kim - These two guys are part of the latest wave of comic geniuses, and consequently their collaborations are pretty darn good. This book isn’t actually a GN, but a collection of 3 short stories previously published elsewhere. All three are very impressive demonstrations of drawing, storytelling, and playing with a psychological/existential twist. The second story, from which the book gets its title, was my favorite. It’s basically a mashup of Disney’s Ducktales with a certain popular existential movie which I won’t name lest it spoil part of the story for you. As such, it’s not the most original story ever, but it’s an awesome reworking of the source material, and obviously I have a soft spot for good reworkings of source material.

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Other Books:
My Stroke of Insight, by Jill Bolte Taylor - the account of a brain scientist who undergoes a massive stroke which disables much of the left side of her brain, and then not only recovers, but learns how to reintegrate the left brain in a way that allows her access to the blissful state of freedom-from-suffering she experienced when the voice of reason was silenced. The subject is riveting reading: directly useful for anyone interested in the brain or the mechanisms of consciousness and suffering, and also great roadmap for stroke recovery. Unfortunately, I found the writing rather weak, and the author’s reading in the audiobook version to be actively irritating. Still, with that reservation, I highly recommend the book, especially the last part about how she managed the selective reconstruction of her left brain. Her TED talk is a good capsule version of the first part of the book (you’ll see what I mean about her voice).

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Movies:
Blindsight - the story of a group of blind Tibetan teenagers attempting, with the help of a blind mountaineer and a large sighted support team, to climb Lhakpa Ri, a 23,000 foot peak next to (really part of) Mount Everest. Amazing stuff. After seeing this I decided I had to re-read my favorite John Varley short story…

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Short Stories:
“The Persistence of Vision”, from The John Varley Reader - the narrator, hitchhiking through New Mexico, stumbles upon a commune built by a group of blind and deaf adults so they can live a life more suited to their special abilities and challenges. A fascinating, albeit speculative, look at how these people might live, and how their touch-based lives appear to a sighted person. Varley gets a bit too gleeful with his ideas about their sex lives, and tacitly condones a couple of behaviors that the reader may justifiably find disturbing. But it’s still a wonderful story. Now I’m reading a bunch of the other stories in the collection. They’re quite good, and I’m surprised at how many I’ve read before. I guess the period when I was reading sci-fi anthologies lasted longer than I thought.

I believe I’ve mentioned that Mount Auburn Cemetery is awesome, and that I love to draw there. And that there’s a great blue heron. Alison’s parents were in town last weekend, and we made a visit to Mt Auburn for some spring scenery.

So as I was sitting by the Halcion Pond, the heron showed up. He was walking slowly and methodically around the edge of the pond, occasionally darting his head down to catch a small fish — completely unconcerned by me sitting on the bank or the crowd of photographers with giant lenses who were following him around. He walked right in front of me, about 6-8 feet away.

Alison got this shot from the other side of the pond:

I just returned from a fantastic week of vacation in San Franisco. Lots of cable cars, parks, gorgeous weather, and expeditions down to Santa Cruz and Monterey, plus visits to many good friends we hadn’t seen in quite a while. Here’s the trip according to my sketchbook (which seems to favor mainly animals).

The plane:

The Japanese Tea Garden and Golden Gate Park:

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I went to the dress rehearsal of ASP’s Coriolanus on Wednesday. It was pretty darn cool. The choreography especially. More review and more sketches below the cut.

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I got a bit behind schedule on The Odyssey, and I’ve had my nose to the grindstone slowly catching up, so I haven’t really had time for much sketchin’ or postin’. And I still don’t have anything for you today, though ASP’s dress rehearsals for Coriolanus are coming up soon, so I’ll post some sketches from that.

In the meantime, I’ve been thinking about merchandise, so let me ask anyone who’s got an opinion on this: what merchandise would you buy, related to any of my past or future books? Sky’s the limit. Apparel, posters, toys, games, backscratchers, what? Do you have any favorite comic merchandise from other creators?

Thanks!  -G

Well, I quite enjoyed the dress rehearsal for ASP’s Duchess of Malfi. It was much more polished than I expected from a dress rehearsal. The action was only stopped once, and that was for a technical glitch of some kind. The main difference actually had to do with the lack of normal “theater ettiquette” — the audience, which was basically all production people, would (quietly) make various comments, laugh when anything odd happened (intentional or not), eat snacks… and in my case, pull out a laptop and use it to draw when the lights went low.

The play itself is a bit of a mixed bag. The story mostly revolves around people doing horrible things to each other, but some of the characters are pretty interesting. ASP’s rendition is full of really dramatic and creepy imagery. This is one of their more visual productions, with fairly elaborate lighting and costume design, and a stage/set that has a nice instant visual impact. It’s set up a bit like the ART Romeo & Juliet I didn’t like from a few years back (the stage is long and narrow with audience seating on both sides); but here the acoustics work much better, and they seem to do a better job of blocking and lighting it so it doesn’t feel 2-dimensional. The performances were all rock-solid, with none that especially jumped at me as being better or worse than the others. Which is a good thing.

Here are a few of the better sketches I did. I wish I could’ve captured more of the lighting, but so it goes. There may be some minor spoilers, so I’ll keep most of the drawings behind the cut.

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Okay, I finally finished the proto-animated capsule version of The Merchant of Venice, from my sketches of ASP’s performance a few months ago. I waited too long, so my memory of the costumes and the blocking is a little hazy, but I think this is fairly accurate.

Also, I’m very excited because they’re going to let me come and draw at their dress rehearsals — so come back later this week for a preview of The Duchess of Malfi (their first non-Shakespeare production).

I’m on a roll! It’s not really a New Year’s resolution, it’s just that when I finally get around to scanning stuff from my sketchbook, I keep seeing things I want to post. So I figure I should queue a few up at once.

Here’s a sketch I liked, of a young African-American guy who was sitting across from me on the bus. (On the top are some little compositional doodles and a few random Odyssey notes.)