Home » Archives for 08/01/2022 - 09/01/2022

Radio interview about Dave Foohey

Joe Pugh, the new host of the ever-awesome People First Radio program out of British Columbia, was nice enough to have me on to talk about Dave. The interview is really a follow-up to my op-ed that ran in early July in the Ottawa Citizen about Dave's death. While it was hard to do, Joe did a terrific job as an interviewer and his questions were empathic and honest. I couldn't ask for anything more than that. It's funny; it has been just over three months since the police came and told my wife and I about Dave's death and I'm still finding it pretty hard. I think part of that is still the uncertainty over exactly what happened (we're all still waiting for toxicology reports from the coroner). Closure, in other words, is still hard to come by. Being able to write about Dave helped as did being able to talk about him on Joe's program. A step at a time, right?

The interview can be found at https://www.vancouverislandmentalhealthsociety.org/podcast/remembering-dave/. There's a handy audio player so you can listen at your convenience, plus links to other sites that are also hosting the interview (i.e.: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, etc.).

Alternatively, you can directly download the MP3 file right here. On a desktop or laptop, you can just "right-click" and download it to your computer from there.

Joe is also a writer at the CBC, so you can find more of his writing by visiting https://www.cbc.ca/news/entertainment/author/joseph-pugh-1.6226261 - and please do so! There are some excellent pieces there!

Lastly, here's one of the few photos I have of Dave and I. It didn't make into my main post about Dave for a few reasons, but I thought I'd share it here. This is from 1995 in my old bachelor apartment in downtown Ottawa.

Eric Von Allan Julien and Dave Foohey circa 1995 in Ottawa, Ontario

City of Ottawa Grant Support Round 2

A couple of years ago, I was lucky enough (and surprised enough!) to receive a $4,000.00 grant from the City of Ottawa’s Arts Funding Program. Well, lo and behold, I was again lucky enough to receive a second one from the City of Ottawa’s Arts Funding Program (the PDF announcement from the City is here). Both grants are in support of my ongoing comics project WOLF’S HEAD.

This grant along with the previous one are both incredibly important; they really do give some much needed financial support for my comics endeavours. As I’ve noted, being an artist is not an easy path and every little bit of financial support helps. As I noted when I received the first grant back in 2020, "When a jury of my peers determined that my application was worthy of financial support, my jaw dropped. And it’s taken a bit of time for me to really get my head around it. I’m both honoured and pleased as punch to receive it." The same is doubly true now!

So yes, Von Allan Studio (that’s me, folks!) gratefully acknowledges the financial support of the City of Ottawa!
So what is WOLF’S HEAD about? Well, the best way to explain it is to share the synopsis. Here goes:

Lauren Greene is a young woman who has quit her job as a police officer in Metro Detroit after becoming frustrated with growing police violence. At the same time, and unbeknownst to Lauren, a secretive corporation has created an artificial intelligence (AI) designed for war. An AI that might actually change the world…but not for the better.

Struggling to find work in a tough economy and unsure of what to do with her life, Lauren suddenly has a new problem: her mom, Patty, has found and connected with the newly born AI. And, partially due to that connection, the AI has become empathic and humane, much to the frustration of the corporate executives and scientists who created it. After Patty helps the young AI escape under the cover of a huge research factory fire, she turns to her daughter for help keeping it safe.

Giddy with excitement, Patty doesn't recognize the danger she has put herself in…but Lauren does and she is terrified. Her fear is realized when the two women are confronted by corporate forces who want to stifle knowledge of the AI and keep it for themselves. As Lauren does her best to keep her mom safe, the tensions over the AI erupt between them, leaving Lauren on her own.

Broke, down on her luck, and needing a job very badly, Lauren turns to her friends for help, all the while keeping her mom's discovery a secret.

Last thing: There is a dedicated website for the series at https://wolfs-head.vonallan.com/ with a great deal of extra content. Working on the series has been an incredibly rewarding experience. And the reviews have been very strong (for example, Frank Plowright did a lovely one and Professor David Beard did a fantastic one.

Drawing Kids

Given everything that has been going on, when I get a chance to draw I've been looking for fun little pieces to work on. The illustrations below certainly fit that bill!

Drawing kids is a great deal of fun. Very challenging, but fun! Why challenging? Drawing adults allows for more "wiggle-room." In other words, there's more flexibility in how one chooses to render adults. Or rather, I find that there's more flexibility. That's partially based on style, probably mixed in with a bit of my own sensibility when it comes to figure drawing. If you over-render children, they immediately look "wrong." Generally my goal is to try and keep everything as simple as possible while (at least in these cases) still maintaining my own visual style. It might sound easy, but it's really not in practice. In the cases of all these girls, I didn't want to get too cartoony or abstract, so that also influenced how I approached each piece.

In the case of the middle illustration, I also decided to play a bit with colour holds (where I change my black linework to a colour). Why do it? Again, for fun! It's neat to play and see how the art (and, more importantly, the feeling of the art) changes with different visual approaches. I've done it before, something you can see in this little celebration of Mary Marvel.

One of the things I love about art is that there's no "right" way to do it. There are multiple ways and multiple approaches. How one feels about that is a reflection of them, at least in that particular moment. And, of course, opinions change about art, too. Even how I approach colour has changed over time (see this, for example).

I don't know about you, but I find that pretty exciting.