da minha mesa de desenho #31 INDEX:
end of 2022 and my comic
são paulo and tattoos
little plant
about nostalgia
animal video
my favorite series os the year
beta readers
goals for the next year!
Hello friends! It's the end of the year, one cycle closes another starts, plans, goals, yaddayadda. I confess that I'm not a big fan of doing these year-end balance. I don't know, I think it's kind of depressing, it seems I've always done very little. And I also don't set year-round goals, I've found that I work better with mini goals throughout the year, rather than making a huge list of things in January only to get t the end of december and feel kind of bad about not being able to complete almost none. so this year i had two things i wanted to do, and i did them and i'm super happy! yes, I'm proud of two goals, leave me alone!
back to my two goals os 2022: finish my comic and go to são paulo and tattoo people
ok, technically the comic is not 100% ready because it's missing some minor details like the cover, but we have drafts:
oh yes, the title is not well defined yet as well... details! "ada e o fantasma" (ada and the ghost) was my favorite title, but there is a portuguese book with a similar name. the second option is "there's a ghost in my room" but I don't know, I don't like it that much, someone might think it's an erotic book with ghosts haha. man, titles are hard.
são paulo was amazing: I really like it there, despite getting lost all the time (yes, even with google maps and everything)
december tattoos
Oh no plant!
But don't you worry, I know exactly what you need...
SUN!
Noooo! You got even worse, plant!
WHYYYY? I give you everything! Please stop dying!
WHY do you plants always die?? what more do you want from meeeee??
Oh. It was water. you wanted water. sorry plant...
i was listening to an interview of the wonderful jessica abel with austin kleon (that guy from "steal like an artist") and he says something about the right time to read certain books or watch certain movies and that makes a lot of sense to me: all times I've re-read a favorite book the experience has been totally different, most of the time (or is it all?) quite disappointing. I really believe in the right time for each experience. i think the only thing i can review and feel more or less the same is seinfeld. I still love those bastards!
then yesterday I decided to rewatch Hereditary: when I saw it for the first time I was so scared that I spent about 3 sleepless nights... it was one of the scariest movies I've ever seen... until yesterday when I saw it again: I thought it was sadder than scary, I felt sorry for that mother. and I didn't even find it that soooo scary, even though those naked people grinning weirdly in the dark still give me the creeps!
still about nostalgia - because re-reading or re-watching something that made a big impression on us is trying to recover that feeling from the first time, so it's still nostalgia - marc maron's latest newsletter talks about the melancholy of returning to the city where he grew up: "It’s not that you can never go home again, it’s just that whatever you are looking for isn’t there. It’s within you. It needs to stay there or it will become tragic." I feel something like this every time I enter my grandma's house. I had so many happy moments there, but today it's a different house, almost everyone who is a part of those memories has died. it's easy to give in to a sad nostalgia. in fact, so many people have been born and died in that house over the decades that if ghosts exist that house must be full of them!
"No estoy seguro de que yo exista, en realidad. Soy todos los autores que he leÃdo, toda la gente que he conocido, todas las mujeres que he amado. Todas las ciudades que he visitado, todos mis antepasados..." this quote from the greatest: Borges
crazy animal lady: this mama gorila and her baby
Some cool series that I saw this year, because there are two that stood out TOO MUCH for me:
severance
you know that idea of ​​liminal spaces? Can you imagine a series that takes place in a place like this? and it mixes humor, drama and suspense. the premise alone is already very good: what if you could separate your conscience in two: one for life in general and another for work and neither remembers the other
yellowjackets
this is a psychological horror with a great soundtrack if you like the 90's. they are high school girls whose plane crashed and now have to survive in the jungle, it also shows how they are nowadays. It's too good, guys. it has christina ricci and juliette lewis, divas and wonderful.
honorable mentions:
sandman
Of course I needed to talk about this one. i've been a fan of neil gaiman and sandman since i was a teenager (yep, long tme ago!). It was the first adult comic that I liked: we used to come from Pelotas to Porto Alegre to visit the Forbidden Planet store to buy comics and rpg stuff. Then, at about 12 years old, I was addicted to rpg and I had pretty much given up on comics, because I only knew children's or super hero stuff. until the day I saw an issue of sandman (at that time it was published in magazines) and it was love at first sight.
about the series: it's impossible to rescue that youthful love that I felt when I read it for the first time (that nostalgia thing again). it's a beautiful series, well done, I recommend it and I'm even excited for the next season. but it's not my favorite series of the year.
archive 81
this was sooooo cool, but netflix has already canceled a possible second season and there's no ending.
Guillermo del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosites
a vibe from tales from the crypt: it's funny, disgusting, disturbing - I love it!
good ones too: the diaries of andy warhol, department of conspiracies (an animation that starts a bit down and picks up pace latter) and love death & robots (all the stories of this season are so good)
beta readers: I'm starting a new comic and you're going to be my guinea pig readers. It's still very much in its infancy, but I'm going to start throwing ideas, drafts and excerpts here. I am so excited in these early stages of a project, but I usually reach a point where I get stuck and often abandon everything. the idea of ​​posting here is to put pressure on myself to move on! it's a comic book, but it has a lot of text (a challenge for me, because I think my text is kinda bad, but let's go) untitled yet, obviously (did I say titles are hard??)
if i could pick a place to be trapped it would be a library. but the irony: like in a twilight zone episode i can't read any of the books. my job is just to put them in place. and they arrive all the time. Of course, I've tried to read a few times, but he always finds me: my prisoner and fellow prisoner: artur. that's how he came up and introduced himself to me: as a colleague. I remember meeting Arthur, but nothing more than that: I don't remember how I got here, I don't remember where I was before. actually, I'm not sure what my name is.
artur is a kind of robot, i think, and lets me know when new books arrive and where to put them. none of the books have a title or a cover: they are all gray and just have a sequence of numbers and letters printed on the spine, apparently random, but artur always knows where each book should go and it's my job to put each one in its place on the shelves, even without understand the logic. each book has a different number of pages: some are huge, seem to have more than a thousand pages and others are very small, I've seen a book with only one page. the numbers and letters of these minors ones are on the cover.
the punishment for trying to read a book is not working. not working sounds great. but there is nothing to do here, there are not even windows. I don't know where the library starts or ends, it seems endless. the punishment is to sit on the only sofa here and look at the endless shelves. an hour like this is crazy, I prefer eternal work even if it's kind of pointless.
One day, when I was at the top of a ladder putting books on a shelf, I lost my balance and dropped one of the huge books I was carrying: 300 or 400 pages, hardcover, a giant, heavy tumbler: right on Arthur's head.
When I went down to check on him, the book had fallen with its pages open and Arthur was staring at them. when he saw me standing behind him he yelled "get back to work"
but I managed to read the first paragraph. "there was only one house on the street, a mansion falling apart. the door is open and she walks in. inside the mansion is like new. there are miniatures on the wall, miniatures inside glass protectors, one on top of the other, they are in all the walls, from floor to ceiling. the floor is a black and white checkerboard and there are red curtains on the only wall without the aquariums. the curtain opens:
And to close this little letter (which turned out to be a bit long): Laerte:
goals 2023 just to contradict myself from the beginning: I have goals for 2023, yes. but they are few and basically the same as last year. I want to travel and tattoo in other cities. I think this is one of the great advantages of tattooing: the opportunity to meet different people and places! besides going back to SP I would also like to tattoo in Salvador, Recife, Rio de Janeiro, etc. I don't think I have clients in these places, but let's throw the idea out there. by the way, if you live in a city with nice studios and want an tattoo from me, feel free to suggest it. <3 I also want to advance in this new comic that I'm cooking here. do you share your goals or is it kinda secret? Wait, is that for a birthday wish? Anyway, these are mine. Cheers everyone and happy 2023! And thanks for reading.