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Hey, I recently did an interview with khuantru.com, a gallery website that does these kinds of things with artists. It was a lot of fun talking about process and current and future projects. I’m still “breaking in” so it felt weird doing something I feel a little unqualified for, but I hope people enjoy it.
This was the other birthday present art I was talking about before. Today’s his birthday so now I can post it!
I think this is the fourth birthday piece I’ve done this month. I wanted this to be a little tighter but I’ve been wicked sick this week with an awful flu.
Birthday sketch for a friend. I’ll probably tighten up the hand at some point and tweak some other stuff, but in the incredibly likely event that that never happens: here it is.
[Update:]
Pretty self explanatory. For a sweet girl my girlfriend babysits.
Every now and then another angry or threatening comment will crop up because of my Muhammad piece from Muslims who miss the point, and exacerbate unfortunate western perceptions of them. A sampling:
From “Muslims community” on my original video blog post:
We Muslims from all over the world celebarating antidraw Muhammad PBUH day. Don’t do this again difficulties more for you.Go to hell shitty cartoonists
Various YouTube commenters:
thats one of ur unknown dad ,bhenchod, that ur mom dont know, u fucking bastard, he should have fucked? ur mom wearing a condom, that u would have never born.
muhamad man its you son of? the bitch where are u pal you should come now and share us our sit in gay marriage
After the second one I told him to try a translator because I couldn’t even understand how I was being insulted. He responded thus:
hay muhamad its you? son of bitch where are you fucker we suppose to meet in our set in gay marrieg
The commenter is from Egypt, so I assume that’s meant to disparage me in some way, but I can’t exactly deduce how.
Today I woke up to this in my inbox, a full 8 months after my Everybody Draw Muhammad Day post:
from: hassan <so_what0**@*****.com>
to: luke*****@*****.com
date: Wed, Jan 26, 2011 at 8:30 AM
subject: (Website Mailform) ur site gona bannedremove the picture of our MUHAMMAD (Peace be upon him).otherwise ur site gona be closed.i m gona take strik action
student
I’m fairly sure this is an empty threat, but I wanted to make it public just in case he tries to hack me.
It saddens me when I get comments like this on my Muhammad piece. As I wrote in May:
Freedom of speech and belief are linchpin virtues that civilized society and discourse are dependent upon. You have every right to believe that Muhammad was a prophet and that he instructed not to be depicted, and you even have the right to be offended when people don’t follow that. You do not have the right to demand that people who don’t share those beliefs adhere to them, and you remove yourself from serious discussions of respect when you threaten censorship and violence upon other people for exercising their freedoms.
I was never trying to be overtly offensive. Sure, the face I drew was intentionally goofy (and smiling), but believe me some artists took it much further. The point of Everybody Draw Muhammad Day is that in a society that values freedom of speech it is precisely those beliefs and expressions that we find distasteful that must be protected. To threaten and exact violence on those who offend beliefs they don’t even hold is barbarous in the extreme.
Respect for a belief, authority, person, or ideology must be earned. To attempt to impose it collapses the very idea of tolerance.
I’ve turned the first image into a flyer for the show that fans can download and print out/xerox and distribute at shows or just post places.
I started listening to this most excellent political podcast/radio show Citizen Radio. It’s exactly what I’ve been looking for and has really motivated me to get more involved. They recently went independent so they could stay free of corporate sponsors they didn’t support, so now they rely on listener donations and memberships to continue the show. Membership isn’t something I can afford at the moment, but I wanted to do what I could for them so I offered my artistic abilities and sent an unsolicited interpretation of their logo:
They were super awesome and really receptive, so I’ll be doing illustrations, cartoons, flyers, etc for them in my off time. Often I’ll think about, or worse, commit to, projects for my free time that never happen, but this is something I believe in and have had nothing but fun doing.
Even though I think it stands on its own to some extent, the second image I’ve done is a bit of an inside joke so you should really just go listen to the show to get it:
…
Hopefully someone can tell that the guy is Tony “I’d love my life back” Hayward.
My girlfriend sent me this picture while she was road tripping with her friend. I couldn’t resist.
We have to do are doing Next Gen for Hallowe’en.
My great aunt’s dogs. Most adorable thing I’ve ever painted? Perhaps.
