I've been to quite a few comic 'do's over the last couple of years (check out the events on www.paulgravett.com, so many cool things going on) but tonight I went to a really cool one - no waffle, really informative and entertaining...
It was basically talks by James Jean and Tara McPherson on their work. Now I'm a massive fan of James Jean, so I was very excited about that. James came on second, so first up was Tara. She's a cool pretty rock chick person who seems to draw the same girls over and over again, but in a very appealing stylish way. Very 'now' and a bit 'emo'. She was lovely (altho considering we only had a limited time in the room I could have lived without her fiddling about with her mobile and playing a couple of short movies on how she hangs paintings for a show).
James was incredible - I mean, like Adrian Tomine, I thought he would be a recluse, but he was very funny and engaging ('I slept my way to the top', 'this painting is quite soft and luscious like my hair'). So James talked us thru some of his work and how he got into the biz and a few anecdotes (a recent XMen painting earned him a five-figure sum...) and he also intimated that he's moved away from comics and into his surreal paintings.
What fascinated me, was how these guys just do their own thing and do incredibly well out of it. They both openly admitted that they can't be bothered drawing comics! They just like doing portraits.
So anyway, great stuff, very inspiring. Gonna do some drawing now.
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