Hi everyone, I'm staying at this crazy artist house in the Catskills for the next couple weeks. It's so nice here, there's fresh vegetables growing on the property. I have become obsessed with cooking garlic in all of it's many incarnations. We had it roasted the other night with fresh thyme sprigs. Then I slow cooked it with homegrown onions and lentils. This morning I harvested a zucchini and made zucchini bread. Tonight I will roast a chicken with five heads of garlic, and make green beans tomatoes and garlic from the garden.Speaking of incarnations, this house is supposed to be haunted. Infact, someone was either killed or just died in my room, and the people that we rent the house with vacated the room because of ghost activity. I do not believe in ghosts, but if I did, this place would definitely be haunted. I have tried to work on my book, the sequel to Girl Stories, and it's beginning to work. The secret is to go and find a sunny spot, hiding in the tall sunflowers, and give myself the gift of time to work. I am staying here alone. Except for the nightly hauntings, I am in heaven. I'll be postng sketchbook pages soon.
Hand Pics, Thanks to The Strand, and a Special Bonus...
Here are some weird night time pictures of the hand...
Richard O'Connor from Asterix Animation wrote up the Desert Island party here and has great pics!
On Tuesday I spoke at the Strand. I think I was totally under-prepared for this event, which sucked, because the place was packed. Sorry to anyone who was totally baffled by my "talk". All my friends say it was fine, you know how this goes. Am I fat?
One thing talks do is make you try and crystallize what you were thinking when you made something. I still don't know what I was thinking when I made the Goddess of War. I want to do it more. Working on it feels like digging a hole deeper into the ground. Is that a good thing? Do people want to read that?
Anyways, this is probably the end of relentless hyping of events and parties for now on my blog. I am going to get into deeper, psychological blogging now. If all goes right I'll actually be posting a new drawing or two.
Here are some bonus pics from the San Diego Comicon--both the thrills and the chills ...
Here's my publisher Dan who was this excited throughout the entire thing, and his underlings, Will and Jon.
I geeked out at Comicon and bought $300 of original art from this man (more on my prizes later...):
Next there's Shayna Yates, who makes the coolest fashions around....
Here's a lot of people clamoring for shit....
But look at this great Jack Kirby collage comic!!
Thanks to everyone who came to Desert Island!
Hi! Thanks to everyone who came out to Desert Island yesterday afternoon for such a fun party. Tomorrow I will go to the Strand and speak, and then I will duck down in my house and not come out for another year while I make a couple new comics. I feel anxiety and total lack of touch with making comics. This whole summer has been a bust for making anything, that's depressing to even write. But August I'm going to disappear and hopefully get some good work done on Calamity, (the sequel to Girl Stories).
Good closure for all of this, however, will be going to the Strand and talking about the Goddess of War tomorrow.
This week: New York Magazine has a preview of The GOW...
NY Mag put up a bunch of pages here! And there's a super great write up... "Sure, being a Valkyrie is great — you live on your own planet, you control all war and conflict among the human race, you get to have sex with Cochise the Apache chief. But sometimes a girl just needs to get away, you know? Lauren R. Weinstein's new graphic novel is a wild and fanciful vision of the day the goddess of war decides to take a personal day. The deluxe, oversize paperback of The Goddess of War — filled with both clever line drawings and gorgeous etchings — comes out in August from Picturebox."
Also, the window installation for Desert Island is finally up and the party is today from 4-7. I haven't gotten a really good picture of it yet, but the results have been amazing, people from all over the hood continue to drop off little characters, so many that they spilled out onto another display on the wall. On Friday I came in to help Gabe put the figures in place, and there was a steady stream of hipsters coming in and saying, "dig the hand, dude." Leslie Stein came in and we hid on the floor gluing and cutting and talking about boys. Then two beautiful cyclist hip environmental girls came in and made figures. We talked about Portland, Seattle, composting, and creative hang -ups. Before I knew it it was 8. I think I want to spend all my time in the store making little figurines with people and talking. It's a nice environment. Then I wouldn't have to confront the massive deadlines that lay ahead...
Two BIG Goddess of War events...
Back from Comicon. Will write more about that later. Two NYC events to announce...
SUNDAY 8/3 from 4-7 at Desert Island I'll be debuting an awesome silkscreen print, signing The Goddess of War, and unveiling the brand new window display chock full of characters made by artists from all over the world. Refreshments provided. Desert Island 540 metropolitan ave brooklyn NY 11211 (718)388-5087
TUESDAY 8/5 at 7pm I'll be showing slides and signing the GOW at The Strand Bookstore ! OMG! What an honor to be at best bookstore in the world. I think I'll bring some originals and show 'em too, maybe I'll "perform" some comics if my publisher doesn't think that's too unprofessional. The Strand Bookstore 828 Broadway (at 12th St.) New York, NY. 10003-4805 212-473-1452
I came back from Comicon and took a cab directly to Desert Island to help install the window for Sunday's show. All the faithful readers of my blog know that I've enlisted anyone who is able to hold a pen to create characters that are running away from a gigantic 3-d foam hand that is trying to snatch them up. So far about a million characters have been created by anonymous folks and many very awesome cartoonist buddies like Aaron Renier, Julia Wertz, Gabrielle Bell, Sarah Glidden, Shannon O'Leary, Joan Reilly, Sara Varon, Tom Hart, Keith Mayerson, and probably someone very important that I forgot in the greater Williamsburg area. Weird people slip characters under the door of Gabe's comic shop at night. One guy has decorated a cardboard space ship with cheerios that he painted red. Another cool anonymous lady made little yuppies. A little kid made a bunny. A rapper made a kind of transvestite. I got about 20 little figures from cartoonists at Comicon too. Zak Sally, Peter Kuper, Esther Pearl Watson, Tim Sievert to name a few. I'll have many pics soon.
Here's one of Jared Whitham installing the giant foam hand...
San Diego Here I Come!
Hi everyone, I'm going to San Diego Comicon this Friday through Sunday. Apparently it's really sold out since two years ago when it was just me and Dita Von Teese hangin out. I'll be at the Picturebox table.
Desk Set Tonight!
Hi everyone, tonight I will take part in a neat panel of lady cartoonists organized by the Desk Set at the Huckleberry Bar at 7pm. I'll be signing books too.
Nice new reviews for Goddess of War...
It is cheesy to link to the nice things critics are saying about The Goddess of War, but here it goes... The great Alex Cox of the great comics shop, Rocketship (who hosted a great party for the book a couple weeks ago) says:
"Is THE GODDESS OF WAR the most important book of the year thus far? VERY MUCH MAYBE."
Jog from the The Savage Critics gave me 6 out of 7 stars!
"Weinstein's own brand of Norse myth often walks and talks like a diary comic, following its very annoyed heroine as she groans about her life and her job, drinking too much, confiding in a hapless friend and tumbling onto the floor from romantic angst."
The Brick Weekly from Richmond, VA was pretty psyched about it too:
"...any devotee of weirdness and a good science fiction romp should come buy this. I can’t wait for future volumes."
Making stuff with friends is fun.
Check out all the cool figures people made for my window decorating party the other night. But there will be more.... much more.
Print for Desert Island!
I just finished making my print for Desert Island. I hope the color looks good. I could see the aqua getting a little gross if it's not just right. Also,
Today I'm having an art party to make all the little characters that crawl along the base of the window installation. I bought some oak tag and poster paints. I love those crappy straight from the tube colors. I wonder if anyone will come? I will document my fun evening and post it on my blog!
Goddess of War Window at Desert Island and YOU!
Okay, hear me out...On August 2nd I will be holding a Goddess of War release party at the awesome store, Desert Island. Gabriel, the owner has been gracious enough to let me design and build the window of the store. Long story short, I NEED YOU to help me decorate the window... I decided to make a three dimensional version of this image from my book:
I got together some of my most talented art buddies, Jared Whitham and Stirling Krusing, and they are going to help build a gigantic foam hand and a base of detritus for all the little characters to run around in. Here's a sketch...
Anyways, I need YOU to help me make all of the little characters that run away from the giant foam hand of GOD! I'll make all of my characters, but I need some of your characters too. I don't care what you create, just as long as they are running, and between 3 and 10 inches high, and they are painted on both sides of a thick sheet of cardboard and cut out nicely. If you are interested, email me at vineshtein@mindspring.com.
Teaching Comics, Anxiety and the Heat
Hi again. I should really blog more frequently, but right now I am in non-stop teaching mode. I'm teaching high school students at the amazing revolutionary SVA pre-college program. We get forty students from around the world who are the best cartooning kids in the country. Then we force them to do 10 pages in three weeks. And the results are amazing! Keith Mayerson, who designed the program and sets up this totally positive learning environment says they always succeed because they don't know it's hard. And it's true, I hem and haw and try to perfect things, but all of this fear keeps the work from flowing. These students don't have any time to be fearful, and their minds are like sponges, so they suck up knowledge, and spit out cool comics.It's always a thrill to be able to hand a kid who comes from somewhere in Kentucky a brush or a g-pen or a crowquill, and two seconds later they are going to town. And you can see that super satisfied smile that learning a new tool always provides. It's also cool to be a supporter of a student's deep cosmology that's been growing inside their brains since they were in fourth grade.
Some nights I teach adult ed too, and I like those classes, because I always feel I am touching base with that optimistic high schooler that has remained semi-dormant inside the adult needing an outlet.
Some days I'll be teaching 9.5 hours a day. So I haven't had much time to make comics but my mind is very creatively restless. I keep thinking of stuff for Calamity, the sequel to Girl Stories that I'm working on, but I gotta put the pedal to the metal on that comic. I wake up each morning with a sense of anxiety about getting work done, all day it hangs in the background.
While all this was going on I forgot to pay the heating bill and our heat got shut off, that meant no hot showers or really clean dishes. So then I paid the heating bill and the guys came to turn the heat back on, but then they turned our gas stove off because my landlord was paying for our cooking gas on a separate line, and had it shut off not knowing our gas line was attached (we didn't know it either). So now we have to get a new gas line. The guys left, assuring us the heat had been turned back on, but actually, in real life it had not. So we're taking cold showers, which is invigorating, and Tim's grilling delicious things like corn and tuna. Did you know that grilled corn is the best food?
Couldn't sleep so I...
It's dark in my house, so I can't see my keys.... I want this blog to be full of images, so to start off, here's a couple pages from The Goddess of War. Here's the first one where we see a cut away view of The Goddess's house. The second shows the hierarchy of the Gods. Check it!
This is my first post.
Hi everyone, I'm sick of waiting around to design a fancy website so I'm starting a generic blog that might flower and bloom or whiter and die. I dunno. I just released a new book called the Goddess of War and it's out in stores now. You can check out my publisher's Picturebox's website too. Also, Alex Cox from Rocketship was kind enough to review The GOW in his column...
I will be announcing events, uploading images and changing the design of this thing as I learn how. Check you later!
Love,
Lauren