Uncle Biscuit Rides Again!

“Where have you been?” you may be asking. If anyone is out there who’s been looking to see what I’ve written lately, and hasn’t seen anything, well…

As with pretty much everyone this time of year, I’ve been busy with Christmas. But that’s a bit of a simplification.

Sure, I’ve been out there doing shopping. Karin’s played a number of Christmas services at area churches and the like, and I’ve been carrying her harp to those venues.

Gypsy Bandwagon has been booked for Christmas Eve at Westville Pub in West Asheville, NC. Lance arranged this since he felt it would be nice for people who have nowhere else to go on Christmas Eve. And Karin and I couldn’t be more excited about that outreach. We’re working on that show pretty heavily now, and with five days to go we’ll have to concentrate on it even more as it approaches.

I have admit that yesterday was the first time I picked up my sticks and drummed along with our debut CD, “Stole My Mule” (plug) to get warmed up for the show, at least on my own. But I’ve been listening to the CD in the car and on the job. I’ll, hopefully, be able to perform the pieces in my sleep.

And we’re also working on a Christmas set. We played in Biltmore Village on December 3, and so we have had some performance experience with those pieces. Since we played them four times in a row and then went to Lake Junaluska and performed an evening show with those same tunes, I think we’ll do okay. But we’ve got to fill two hours on Christmas Eve, so it may need some more material. We’re working on it.

The show will be something like a CD release party. We’ll be giving away CDs and Christmas gifts. We’ll be working up comedy to fill the gaps. It takes time to make this stuff work.

All of which might lead you to believe that I haven’t done any art. (Yes, this blog is supposed to be about my ART).

Not at all. But it brings up a very important issue. In fact I got a survey from a student in England yesterday (well I got it by way of an acquaintance in England, I assume the student is there). Anyway, the student asked the question, “what do you think of the argument that comics aren’t as important an art form as the others?”

I told him that I feel that anyone who says that really hasn’t thought about it very long. Now, I’m not trying to be “holistic”, but it seems to me that MOST artists of any stripe are involved in one or more particular discipline of art. That is to say, I am a comic book artist, cartoonist, illustrator, and graphic designer; but I have also acted, done comedy, I play drums, bass, compose pop tunes, I’ve been writing fiction lately, etc.

John Singer Sargent said that he wished “music was my medium, rather than bad paintings”. “Bad paintings?” I consider Sargent one of the best painters ever! But he would rather have been playing piano (and apparently was quite good at it). Imagine that.

So, what does this prove? Artists can’t be pinned down to one discipline. So anyone outside of creative endeavors who says, “comics aren’t important” hasn’t seen that many creative individuals love them and find inspiration from that particular medium. Anyone who claims to be an artist and says comics aren’t…well, as a rule of thumb, I’d say that person is a phoney.

Enough on that subject.

I have been doing artwork. In fact, I’ve been doing quite a bit. I’ve done several commissions over the past couple of weeks, and have interested parties for even more. I did a Wonder Woman last evening (still got to ink it). I may try to post the pencils up here as soon as I hear from the guy who commissioned it.

My agent sold my signature Batgirl art on eBay last week. That got sent out Friday.

The guy who was second highest bidder wants to commission a similar piece.

I got finished with several pages I’ve been inking for a small publisher, those also went out Friday.

The big piece I did for some lawyers in Washington, D.C. went over well. They gave me a tip and they may want more!

I’ve been working on a brochure to help me promote commission pieces. Not unlike my commissions page on the ComicArtistsDirect.com website, but for those people who might never log onto my page. I figure you’ve got to work as many angles as you can think of, as long as you aren’t doing wrong in the process.

So obviously, I’ve been at the art “grindstone” pretty much every day.

But it’s hard to keep up with it all. And blogging about it becomes another chore to be taken care of.

Anyway, a Merry Christmas to all if I don’t blog before then!