Design experiment, Processing foxes, Zak Sally release party, life drawing

RAGTIME NIGHTENGALE
An experiment in progress. Drawn from a hipster clothing store's catalogue. You know the one. It's the one where you go in the store and you feel like an asshole immediately.


ZAK SALLY / LA MANO RECORD RELEASE PARTY
Full press release here at Sup Pop's site
Anyway, TOMORROW, Wed. July 22 at Eclipse Records in St. Paul at 5:30 PM, that's what you need to know.
Below I am just copying and pasting the official La Mano blog post, because there's so much info.
Madeline Queripel (cartoonist and current La Mano intern) and I (La Mano intern alumni) will be manning the table at the event, and both of us will have stuff to sell along with Aesthetic Apparatus and many other local arteestes.

big things are happening; expect a big site update and new la mano product (!!) tomorrow, but in the meantime, COME TO THIS:
("official""press" release follows)

all right; this is "Steve", the official La Mano "publicist".
here is the deal: Zak Sally (musician [Low, Dirty Three, Kid Dakota, etc], cartoonist [Recidivist, Sammy the Mouse, the forthcoming "Like A Dog" hardcover collection due this fall from Fantagraphics], and publisher [La Mano 21]) somehow ended up making a record; wrote, sang and played every damn thing on it, recorded it with his old pal Ben Durrant (Andrew Bird, Dosh, Shearwater) at Crazy Beast Studios.

it's called "Fear Of Song" (as in: "Zak Sally's Fear Of Song", get it?). 9 songs 37 minutes, and will be released on CD in a signed and limited edition, with all the packaging and such done BY HAND on the La Mano press. very pretty.
his old pals at the venerable Sub Pop records also did a 7" from that record, featuring the single "Why We Hide", and an exclusive track "When I Said I Missed You I Just Meant My Aim Was Off (The Quiet Life)". see, look here:

http://www.subpop.com/releases/zak_sally/singles/why_we_hide

there is also probably going to be a video for that first thing by Phil Harder (Foo Fighters, and, uh...Prince).
release date for the single is JULY 21, release for the CD is JULY 22.

to this end we are setting up a HUGE, AMAZING RECORD RELEASE SHOW/ LA MANO BENEFIT, etc etc see above i'm not typing it all again.
it'll be hosted by the good folks at Eclipse records (and therefore is ALL AGES and CHEAP) right on University ave in St. Paul.
starting at 5:30-ish, you will se performances by these local luminaries:
JIM AND THE FRENCH VANILLA (Jim from the blind shake's solo venture)
PAUL METZGER (solo treated guitar unbelievableness)
SKOAL KODIAK (sorry everyone else, but the best damn band to come out of minneapolis in a decade solid)
T.O.G.P.T.F.F.S.O.T.W.O.T.E.R.A.T.S.Y.O.A (Three Old Guys Play The First Five Songs Off The Wipers' Over The Edge Record And The Song Youth Of America, featuring Zak Sally, Dale Flattum [Milk Cult, Steel Pole Bath Tub], and double duty from Freddy Votel [Cows, Skoal Kodiak, a million other bands]
and the SEAWHORES.

and besides that, there will be tables selling ZINES, POSTERS, BOOKS and whatever by a bunch of your favorite local arteests.
like i said; ALL AGES.
and CHEAP? how does SIX BUCKS SOUND?
good? yeah, well see the aforementioned mention of a "benefit" and what that means in this case is that that $6 you just spent gets you SIX BUCKS OFF OF ANY LA MANO BOOK OR POSTER (and aside from all that, the first hundred or so people in the door will almost certainly get some free thing from the La Mano archives, not sure what exactly yet, but...).

oh who am i kidding there is no La Mano publicist. you knew that.
if you are getting this it means you are either a) a friend of Sally or La Mano, b) someone i've talked to about this thing but haven't yet said hey dammit you want to come sell stuff at this thing (if so, email me and say so posthaste) c) a writer or dj or press person or most likely
d) some combination of those things.
this thing is just a couple weeks off (and this email should've gone out a month ago), so spread the word, come down, whatever.
you got questions?
zak@lamano21.com

ok all. see you down there.
--zak.

Don't you see why I wanted you to be able to read all that?


PROCESSING FOXESThis is the final product for a submission to the 10,000 Foxes project by UK (apparently Marcel Dzama-influenced) illustrator Elena Iezzi (what a name!). The idea is that there are 10,000 urban foxes living in London (near Brighton where she studies and my friend Jenny Tondera did for a semester) and Elena is collecting 10,000 drawings of foxes.
Because there is a more linear path than usual with this one, I thought it would be nice to show some process, as I don't very often.

I did not intend to do multiples at first. I started off drawing some foxes from photos on the internet. I figured they were a good start but overall pretty dead.
Because the other ones were so tight, I had the inclination to do a much looser one, with Quentin Blake's drawings of foxes in mind, as well as process of his that I gleamed from the great Comic Tools blog.
This led me to the top image. It got a little out of hand structurally but led to the idea below.
I then took that one and traced it with a lightbox to make the refined final image you see at the top -- which could still use some work but I was ready to "put the octopus to bed," as Anne Lamott writes.

Title taken from Sean Lynch's Processing Elephants book.

LIFE DRAWING BREAK
God bless the MCAD Drawing Co-op. Dialogue below is what the model said.

At Hidden Beach with Abby and Kelly.

SRSLY
The Pentel Pocket brushpen is changing my life. Holy geez. I'll talk more about it in another post.

Enough bloggin for now. I'm gonna go drink a beer with Brad, Max and Zach.

There may be a strange collaboration between myself and photographer Hillary Berg surfacing in the near future. You heard it here first. Good night, Vietnam.