| Transatlantic Action |
[Jul. 3rd, 2009|05:25 pm] |
Funny bunch of sketches here. In New York I fell in love with the Tombo. Strangely, I got back to the UK and discovered the Tombo is not waterproof! D'oh. Back to Faber-Castell, I guess :) Usually some of the fun of sketching for me is coming home and 'developing' the images, adding tone and color. Not this time!
London Tube, June 09.
( Take a look behind the cut for some of a motley bunch of sketches, from New York and London. )
More to come soon.
While I'm here I'd love to congratulate my pals Mardou and Ted May on the birth yesterday afternoon of their daughter Veronica Jean. She's super-gorgeous, and I'm sure will defy genre as magnificently as her parents do.
Congratulations, guys! |
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| Hellos from New York |
[Jun. 10th, 2009|12:37 pm] |
Photo courtesy Marion Vitus
MoCCA was kind of a blast. Plus, I got my new visa the next day! Woo hoo!
Thanks to ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) ztoical and joshpm for being such excellent tablemates. See you guys next year!
Thanks as well to the folks at Studio Deep 6 who have opened their doors to me during this time away from my workspace. They are such nice people, and AMAZING cartoonists! I felt seriously humbled my the quality of work going on in there.
I fly back to the UK on the 17th...I can't wait to come back to New York soon, though! :) I owe my brother a crushing defeat in badminton, if nothing else.
PS Anyone got any tips on good NYC/NJ/Philly area shops that might stock Undertow? Thanks a lot! |
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| Blue Cat (and a quick goodbye) |
[May. 13th, 2009|06:35 pm] |
Thanks to everyone for their kind thoughts regarding my visa situation - I really appreciate it!
I'm in New York as of Monday...time to train for the Japan Day 4 Mile Race in Central Park, hang out with my parents, get some sewing and reading done, and see people! I need to look past the visa stress and enjoy the opportunity to go home.
Thanks to the incredible generosity of ztoical, I'll be at the MoCCA Festival in NYC on June 6 and 7, with Undertow aplenty...please come by and say hello.
In the meantime, enjoy my 'daily' sketch...didn't you know that Bengal kitties and floating fingerprints were natural enemies? |
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| Bad Witch |
[May. 5th, 2009|10:41 pm] |
Feeling a bit weak after some serious visa drama, still unresolved...here's to spending more time drawing, and less time worrying! |
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| Friday night and Wednesday morning |
[Apr. 15th, 2009|01:27 pm] |
Friday I decided to cap off a day in the retail salt-mines with a 7k run. As one does.
So today's sketch is actually a collaboration between my zonked-out, post-run self Friday, and my alert-and-doing-taxes self today.
I may be dragging on these sketches, but someone out there must like me, because the radio is playing "Lipgloss and Cigarettes" by Pulp!
This one's inspired by a particularly Van Dyck-ish photo of 6Music dj and friend of mikedawsoncomic, George Lamb.
Last night Stephen and I went up to Tufnell Park to enjoy the Tombola of Fun night at the Star. Gosh! maestro Nat Metcalfe organizes it, and it was enormous fun, themed around the work of singer, actor, and one-man Brit Brat Pack Anthony Newley. Will Kane gave us a wonderful precis of Newley's career, and Nat got a great lineup together, including my new favorite comic, Danielle Ward (otherwise known as 'the Moneygeddon girl offa Newswipe). If you enjoy humor about stinky vintage clothes, getting your kit off in a Hoxton working men's club, and unsafe football grounds, Danielle's comedy may be for you. If not, head up to Edinburgh to see Nat himself - all the info is on the Tombola blog.
In other news, I just found out in order to renew my visa, I need to take the "Life in the UK" test. Reasonable, I bet you're thinking...I mean, I DO live in the UK. But...to live in the UK, do you really need to know exactly how many people in the UK are Welsh? Or on what day St. Andrew's feast day falls? Or what a quango is? GIVE ME A BREAK. I can name most of the Arsenal starting 11, and I enjoy the music of Richard Hawley - surely that's enough?
Rant over - see you soon! :) |
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| Bureaucracy vs. Sketching: the Final Showdown |
[Apr. 8th, 2009|03:02 pm] |
April is fun month! And I mean that in the most sarcastic way possible: this month has so far brought with it levels of bureaucracy I'd never dreamt possible (naive, I know).
In order to get back into drawing, in the midst of all the crazy, I'm taking a page from jabberworks's book and starting some daily sketches.
The only rule: they have to be fun. REAL fun. Which for me, means fashion, flowers, and color, with the occasional bit of collage. For today, anyhow. :)
Enjoy...more on the way. |
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| Undertow, by Ellen Lindner - available NOW! |
[Mar. 23rd, 2009|03:39 pm] |
(photo courtesy jabberworks and the Deptford Project Cafe- thanks, Sarah!)
It is my very great pleasure to announce that my graphic novel, Undertow, is now available in print!
Jessica Abel, creator of La Perdida, Life Sucks, Radio: An Illustrated Guide and many more, wrote me an amazing quote for the back cover:
"Undertow by Ellen Lindner gives us a close-up view through the back
door of Brooklyn in the sixties—with all the delinquency, drugs, and
trips to Coney Island that implies. Beautifully drawn in sinuous,
sharp style, Lindner's characters, and their fight to do more than
survive, are unforgettable."
Thank you, Jessica!
Now...how to get a copy...
You can have a copy shipped to your door for a very reasonable amount: $11.25 or £8, plus shipping and handling, via the redoubtable Lulu...
You can buy one from me at one of the following events:
The UK Web and Mini-comix Thing - London - THIS Saturday, March 28th - click here for more information.
MoCCA - New York, June 6+7 (conditions TBA!)
LUC 176 - London - June 27th
And, as of next week, I'll be selling Undertow in London's best comix shop, Gosh!, with more stockists to be announced soon.
UPDATE:
You can now buy Undertow from the following stockists in the NYC zone:
Desert Island - 540 Metropolitan Avenue, Brooklyn
Rocketship - 208 Smith Street, Brooklyn
Jim Hanley's Universe - 4 West 33rd St., Manhattan
St. Mark's Comics - 10 St. Mark's Place, Manhattan
St. Mark's Books - 31 3rd Avenue, Manhattan
And, as always, at Gosh! Right across from the British Museum in the Big Smoke.
Thanks so much to these retailers for their support!
Any questions? Ideas for promotion or review? Comment here or email me at ellen at-symbol littlewhitebird rhymes-with-hot com |
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| MoCCA table? Anyone got a MoCCA table? |
[Mar. 4th, 2009|05:20 pm] |
I got some bad news this week - there's no room for me, or Whores of Mensa, at MoCCA! (Darn USPS-only application system! What are us foreigners supposed to do? :) )
Anyone got any extra space? Otherwise I may have to resort to selling Undertow and Whores of Mensa cigarette-girl style! Maybe I'll hit the Tabla-to-go line...or all the Shake-Shackers! The possibilities are nearly endless...but, it must be said, they're not quite as cool as a real live MoCCA table.
So, if anyone knows anything, SPILL! Please?!
All this MoCCA angst has not kept me from steaming ahead on my March 10th deadline for Undertow art. Here's a newly colored panel - enjoy!
PS Anyone who CAN help me, I will provide you with an amazing present of your choice from my country of residency, the United Kingdom! Or, within reason, the EU. Put your thinking caps on...Greater Europa is your oyster! |
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| Holga-roid-a-rama |
[Feb. 25th, 2009|09:36 pm] |
I've been quiet on the blog, but very busy...with house stuff, friend stuff, work stuff.
But also fun stuff. My pal Jane's been staying with us, and we've been playing with her Holga-roid. (Check out her photography site - it's amazing!)
I'm thinking of using this shot as an author photo - what do you think?
PS I'll be back soon with Undertow news...but in the meantime, if you're curious, take a peek at my new page on the I-spot! |
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| Back from Angougouland |
[Feb. 3rd, 2009|11:59 am] |
Sketch: Uli counting out the money at La Passe Muraille after the best meal of the festival.
Plenty of more venerable bloggers than I (Bart Beaty at Comicsreporter.com, for example) will be writing about this year's Angouleme festival...but...here's my little contribution.
Top 5 Favorite Things about Angouleme 2009:
1. Winshluss, Winshluss, Winshluss. His Villemolle 81, shown as part of his exhibit at the Centre International de La BD et l'Image, is my new favorite film (think Waiting for Guffman mixed with Shaun of the Dead - the tagline is "In the Tarn, no one will hear you scream."). And his prize-winning Pinocchio looks pretty great, too.
2. Meeting new people - knockout Chinese artist Li-Shan (her Cutie B, a teen book for Dargaud, is as adorable as the title implies), Edmund Bagwell of 2000 AD fame, Aggs and Son, UK comix legends, and the endlessly impressive Cambourakis crew. And seeing old friends - Sara Varon and Charlie Orr made it over, which pretty much made my Festival.
3. The Dupuy Berberian expo - fantastique! Must...sketch...always.
4. The restaurants. Chariot de fromage, anyone?
5. I feel juvenile typing this, but...well, some irate cartoonists destroyed the portrait of Nicolas Sarkozy in the town hall. Cool? Terrible? It felt exciting at the time.
( A couple of dinnertime sketches beneath the cut! )
Of course I came back from the Festival with a wicked cold. Hopefully the Cold-Eeze and good memories will heal me up fast and I can get back to work.
A la prochaine!
EDIT: My boy Stephen Betts just put up an excellent - and exhaustively illustrated - Angouleme post on his Comix Influx blog, for those who are curious for more details: http://comixinflux.com/influx/blogpost/43 |
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| Hungry and busy |
[Jan. 23rd, 2009|02:01 pm] |
| [ | music |
| | Cat Power - Ramblin' (Wo)man | ] |
As Stephen and I prepare to head off to Paris and then Angoulême, and I prepare for a long-delayed lunch (Madhur Jaffrey's cabbage stir-fry), I'm working to finish penciling the 10 page epilogue that will cap off my Undertow graphic novel, which I'll be self-publishing this spring.
It's been a long slog but I'm so happy with the new pages. And, here are some new toned pages - with the
( beginning of crazy Chapter 5 )
By the way, if you're in London this weekend be sure to check out Zine Fest in the east end this weekend. I can't make it because of work but I'll be there in spirit, as will Whores of Mensa.
Off to lunch...and in a little while, France! A bientôt.... |
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| L'Avant-Blog: Molotov |
[Jan. 12th, 2009|06:07 pm] |
Going through some old files, I came across this piece, a poster I did while living in France (circa 1998). A friend and I got in with the crowd at a local indie-rock bar, and they asked me to do some art for their 'Molotov' night. It was quite a title for an evening heavy on Belle and Sebastian, and a good opportunity for some watercolor pyromania.
I haven't seen those boys much lately, despite living in the same city as one and across the Channel from the other...Romain Titeux, if you're reading this, get yourself a Facebook page, already! :)
In the spirit of an odd day, I'm having trouble with Webcomics Nation, so I'm placing the last six pages of Chapter 4 of Undertow under the cut, for posting on WCN later on. Please beware: there's some strong language, as befits a passage peopled almost entirely by sailors and tattoo artists. I say that with no offense intended to either! But you do like to swear, don't you?
( Read more... )
Chapter 5 - the last before a short epilogue - starts Monday...get ready!
PS Thanks to Ms. jabberworks for her coloring help on one of these pages... |
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| Graphic Classics out in June! |
[Jan. 5th, 2009|01:46 pm] |
This weekend I finished off my work for Tom Pomplun's Graphic Classics series, which brings together a wide variety of cartoonists to create a comix adaptations of classic literature.
My assignment: a 30 page, full-color adaptation of E. M. Forster's sci-fi classic, The Machine Stops, from Tom's excellent script!
The book is out in June...
( ...but there are many, many sample pages under the cut! ) |
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| Comix New Year |
[Dec. 17th, 2008|02:25 pm] |
| [ | music |
| | Hold Steady - Stay Positive | ] |
Ah, it's almost Angouleme time....which is like comix New Year in the Bettsner household. Time to take stock! And go hell for leather on Undertow.
In that spirit, go check out four new Undertow pages up at Webcomics Nation.
A bit of news - I'm hoping to self-publish Undertow in time for the UK Web and Mini-comics Thing this March. More on that soon!
Also, I wanted to give a preliminary shout about a webcomics project I've been working on for a little while. Considering it's for a client I've been given a huge amount of freedom to do whatever I like. The story is a fictionalized examining of the year when I left New York and went to work and live on a college campus outside of Philly. A really exciting part of this project is that it's a loose collaboration with a friend who left MoMA around the time I did, excellent photojournalist Jane Hahn. She's now based in Accra, Ghana, and I want to use the comic to explore our parallel, but very different experiences.
More to come! |
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| Coucou! |
[Dec. 10th, 2008|01:35 pm] |
After a perfect storm of parental visits, travels abroad, birthdays and holidays, I wanted to make a quick post to say hello and that, in case you haven't heard it anywhere else...
Whores of Mensa 4 is on sale now!
Go to our website for previews and ordering info, not to mention a fab blow-up of our collage cover. You can also pick up Whores 4 in my Etsy shop.
I'll be back soon with Graphic Classics, Undertow, and a lot more...
But in the meantime, I wanted to say thanks to Sarah, Jim, Gary and Will for their birthday drawings!
Here's a sneak peek...
Consider my heart WARMED! Thanks you guys! |
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| On the horizon.... |
[Nov. 18th, 2008|01:21 pm] |
Lately I've been feeling like a lot of interesting things are on their way.
For one, the layout for the new Whores of Mensa is 99.99% complete. I can't wait to see my, cleanskies, and mardouville's stories in glorious, photo-copied print! If all goes well copies should be at the Comica Comiket this weekend at the ICA, London - details will be forthcoming at whoresofmensa.
I've also started the hard slog through my first pass on Graphic Classics. My plan is to make one pass, refine, and then add textures and shading. This is one of my favorite pages - you've seen it before, in black and white - and I'll show it a few more times, most likely, as I keep refining the color. tozocomic and jabberworks have been oh so generous sharing their coloring expertise - thanks, guys!
Oh, and speaking of long waits, Undertow continues this week over at Webcomics Nation - enjoy! (To start from the beginning, go here - thanks for reading!)
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| Gainsbourg at the Oval |
[Oct. 31st, 2008|12:19 pm] |
I'm getting a late start on what is for us here a very sunny Halloween. S. and I were fortunate enough to be invited to comix hero Paul Gravett's birthday last nite, and I'm still nursing a Coca Cola hangover - jabberworks has loads of funny pics up at her blog (thanks for the bunny ears, Rian!) True to Paul's rep as not only a great journalist and scholar but a good one for bringing people together, we mets loads of interesting new folks, including Dutch artist David Enker and Canadian comix writer TJ Behe. The venue was incredible - a converted tram station in Tooting, south London. (A charming nutter at the bar told me, "You're small and unintimidating - I love it!" Ah, Tooting. It's a special place.)
Here's a suitably Halloween-y sketch from something I've been working on lately, a portrait of the all-time king of the chanson, Serge Gainsbourg. Our new pal Will (proprietor of the excellent 60's style blog World of Kane) lent us a load of wonderful Gainsbourg DVD's, full of proto-videos, interviews, and French TV appearances. I've just cracked the surface, but I'm starting to remember why Gainsbourg is one of my favorite things about France.
Another fave French thing: comics, of course. Over at Comix Influx I've just started a new translation of Jacques Tardi's arctic adventure Le Démon des Glaces - I am a life-long Tardi fan, and it's pretty unbelievable that this great, Doré-inspired shortie was never published in English. I'm also thinking of starting on Bizou, by Lucie Durbiano (I can't wait to read her Trésor, currently up for the grand prize at Angoulême), and the Henriette books by Dupuy and Berberian. All criminally un-translated.
EDIT: one last thing! There are a million - okay, six or so - new Undertow pages up now at Webcomics Nation. Check 'em out! |
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| The Machine Stops...and other updates |
[Oct. 22nd, 2008|08:32 pm] |
After a super-busy summer, the fall has seemed sedate. Perhaps too sedate. But with the forthcoming release of Whores of Mensa, issue 4 - now officially complete, content-wise, and getting laid out - I am getting pretty excited about the coming months and what's in store. Check out whoresofmensa for previews and all the details on our release date - and, eventually, our release PARTY (look out London!)
In other news, the schedule for The Machine Stops is getting pushed back a bit - that's giving me a lot more time to work on color. I'm finishing up the computer work on the inks this week - for a mini-gallery take a look ( behind the cut )
Here's the first page - the grey notes are on another layer, for eventual coloring.
And Undertow - what about Undertow, hmmmm? Well, never fear, three new pages are up on webcomicsnation.com....you can view them here.
As big projects stabilize and/or near completion, I'm getting excited about putting a lot more energy into my sketchbook, and writing. I'm working on a script for a 40-45 page comic that I'll start work on once Undertow is finished - mostly a fantasy right now, but by the new year, my somewhat delayed 30th birthday present to myself - finishing and, possibly, self-publishing Undertow, will be a reality.
I'll keep you posted on my progress, either way. Bye now! |
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