Another one I'll never get to.

Tag line for a comic series. Or a book. Or something.

"Every man must face his demons, but in this case, they're real."

It's a bit weird, because I do NOT want to imply that non physical demons are any less real, but I was trying to think of a simple, snappy tagline. 

The idea is that his internal problems create / spawn tangible monsterous creatures. Perhaps based on the 7 Deadly Sins.

So he has to fight them on two battlefields - in his mind and with his body. 

Seems like it could be a lot of fun. 

Maybe I'll do some daydreaming / sketch / concept work on it if I get some time. 

So belief in something creates a god (or goddess or...) of that thing. Even a small amount of faith - by billions of people - adds up.

Goddess of Footwear.

God of the Monsters Under the Bed.

Goddess of Walks in the Park.

God of Brunch.

You get the idea.

I'd love to collect a series of short stories by authors more skilled than myself for a compendium where I illustrate each god(dess).

I could imagine short stories on everything from their daily existence to their creation to the indirect effects of their existence on the rest of us.

Diversity in both the sorts of gods as well as the types of stories would be the point. My art would be the only consistent thing throughout the book, because I think there needs to be a visual consistency to avoid being distracting.

Consider this Creative Idea Number 734098450893278 that I won't ever be able to get to. :(

Anyway - the image up top is the latest Twitter thing I'm doing. The place is a cess pool, and keeps glitching for me, but my little corner seems (relatively) unaffected, so I keep going. Seems like it is (overall) circling the drain though.

If any of you would like to play, I made a template that prints out to 8.5 x 11 with light lines so you can use paper and pencils/pens:

I had the good fortune to have brunch with the lovely Miss Knapp this morning. As is often the case after spending time with creative people, this has me on a bit of a high and feeling very creative / inspired / wanting to be productive.

So that’s the mood I was in when I hopped in my car and started heading back down to Maryland.

All of that is backstory to explain where I got the idea to create a Knappucino’s for Illustrators.

So here’s some thoughts I’m working through to see if this would be a worthwhile venture:

1. Would it be worth it for me? What’s my objective here? I mean, the arts are generally not a side hack you want to start if you’re looking to get paid. You either go all in, or you go home. There just isn’t room for ‘half way’. But maybe money isn’t the point. It’s certainly not what triggered the idea. The idea was feedback from the audience to the artists. Much like the original Knappucino’s wasn’t so local unknowns could get paid, but rather that they could try things out with an attentive audience who cared about such things. It’s a different starting point than most gallery showings I’ve come across.
2. Do artists want feedback? I know that I want feedback, but maybe I’m an oddball? Maybe it’s more of an illustrator thing. Since we tend to be more mercenary about our work than fine artists, the audience opinion matters more. Or at least, their feedback should. 
3. Do I want to invest this kind of time and effort? I know that Jill put a lot into the original. Perhaps much of this was emotional effort (I don’t want to presume to speak for her) but I have a pretty simple live right now. Chop wood, carry water. Repeat. More possessions and more activities create more stress. This is something I have to pay attention to.
4. Would I want to do this as a ‘pop up’ concept? A long time ago, I came up with an idea (I wasn’t the first) to do pop up galleries utilizing unused strip mall space. Getting folks to come through would potentially lead to business for the mall property owners, and it would provide me with free (too much to hope for?) space for the shows. This seems like an obvious extension to that idea. Would that just be making things overly complicated though?
5. How would it work? Simple is obviously the name of the game. At least to start with. So here’s my rough idea:

5a. I would try to control the flow of the audience through the space. Nothing super rigid, but creating a ‘direction of travel’ will help with some of the other elements we’ll find below.

5b. No artist’s statement. Start with the art.

5c. At the end of each artist’s section, there are printed forms for the audience to fill out. The forms are crazy simple: 3 questions to direct the flow of the feedback (see also: the Start with This episode dealing with Feedback - https://beta.prx.org/stories/273387) AND a space for people to write in their email address if they want to join the artist’s email list.

5d. Rinse, repeat for each artist in the show. (Initial shows would be kept to something like 3 or 4 at most - because KISS.)

Anywho - that’s what my brain is chewing on right now. Oh, that and the charity illustration I’m doing. Speaking of which - I should really get back to that now.