Bringing up baby

New illustration in the New Yorker coming up. Be on the lookout for it in the 29Apr13 issue. This one is for a MoMA screening of the classic comedy “Bringing up Baby” with Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn.

Better late than never?

I made this for the holidays and never posted it.

So, now I am posting it.

GAZE upon it.

Where did you sleep last night?

Tater Tot,
Be careful.
Don’t go into Those Woods alone.
Those Woods are filled with creepy crawly things.
Those Woods are dangerous.

"Awww, I’m not afraid of Those Woods.
Those creepy crawly things are my buds."

But Those Woods are dangerous.
People disappear in Those Woods.
There are Gangsta Monkeys in Those Woods.
And creepy funky wizards.

"Aww, I’m not afraid of Those Woods.
I’m a Gangsta Monkey myself.
And I jump rope with creepy funky wizards.
I’m going to Those Woods.
And I will roast marshmellows with Those Creeps.
It’s my birthday."

Eye for an… well, actually, an eye for who knows what?

Here is a page of basically finished inks from my upcoming Severed Limbs.
In which, Fred continues his unprecedented, save for Job, so, his precedented streak of being maimed by God and Nature.

Sacrificial Offerings

Lost.
In the abysmal labyrinthine corridors of some fantasy nouveau-ancient temple-city.
I stumbled onto this poster. And it shocked me.
I was hurled into a double-funhouse-mirror infinite regress of the mind.
I had been here before.
The horror I felt for this poor creature could not be reigned in. I fell into paroxysm.
A fit.
I reached, but grasped nothing.
I was only able to take away information.
But I will use this information.
Indeed.
I will get to the bottom of this.

According to the information I retained, and my subsequent interpretation, there is an art show happening, incomprehensibly of my own work.

Here are the details:
Sacrificial Offerings:
Tasty morsels torn from the still beating heart of Joshua Ray Stephens
Opening: 22Sep12 7-10pm
At: Octane 1009 Marietta St Atlanta GA 30318

I will be there to unmask the impostor masquerading as yours truly! Join me if it pleases you.

Dream Machine: The Conflagration

This here is just a sketch from recent sketches. I am in the incipient stages of birthing an epic comic adventure. The working title is “The Conflagration” and you will be hearing a lot about it for the next ten years or so on this blog. I am considering producing it in serialized form, because it will be so long, and then collecting it all as a re-edited and massive tome when it is finally all done.

I still have to finish “Severed Limbs” which is close, but on hiatus since Emperor Augustus Ray Stephens has arrived. In the meantime I am sketching a lot and fleshing out (roughly) ideas and notions and concepts and story lines and characterology and stories, etc.

A couple quotes I read today and chuckled over:
“No matter how cynical you get, it is impossible to keep up.” —Jane Wagner

“The aim of a joke is not to degrade the human being but to remind him that he is already degraded.” —George Orwell

Wild ride

Rushing headlong through an inter-dimensional portal. Is it as fun as it looks?
That’s for Deacon Dunblane to know and you to find out.

This is a piece I started in 2010? Somewhere around there.
An upcoming show at Octane in Atlanta prompted me to finally finish it.
I’ll be posting details about that in a few days.

Conflagratory sketches

Here are some sketches. In the planning stages of a very long epic narrative. Working title is “The Conflagration.” I figure it will be done in about twenty years or so.

Just some sketches.

Old new New Yorker piece

Well, after a months long accidental hiatus, in which I had a few weeks of technical issues with uploading images, and then a few weeks of travel, and an eternity taking care of a new baby I am finally back to blog all about it.

You will probably never see it now, but I had a piece in the 02Jul12 issue of the New Yorker.

This was an interesting piece process wise. It is the first non-fiction piece I have had to edit. It was to accompany a blurb about the Dragball of the Harlem Renaissance. The first version had an awesome rainbow gradient background. One of the editors, for reasons undisclosed to me, put the kibosh on that and asked for it to be changed.

I can only draw one conclusion as to the reason: the covert, but ongoing, war against awesomeness that our nation is perpetrating.

Here they are. You can compare: