Tag Archives: featured

CALMING WORDS

An illustration of a monstrous woman comforting a person in a patient's gown.
CALMING WORDS, Digital, 2022

for me, the most frightening thing is being brave enough to fail publicly again. i realised how disappointing and numbing that was recently when i didn’t meet my goal of posting this painting on the day i said i would, and all i thought was a vague ‘oh well, not again’. without being able to anchor myself at markets or in communities, i haven’t been creating so many comics lately and most of my artwork i’ve kept private.

i want to be disappointed again, knowing that i tried my hardest. i’m not sure how to celebrate successes.

i still post to instagram if you want to see my sketches. true to form, i mostly post studies and fujoshi F1 and K-pop fanart content on there.

thank you for coming back.

Pfffft, so posting regularly was a habit that went out the window. Baby steps it is.

I have also had some issues with my email lately, so if you’ve sent me something and not heard back – please try emailing me again!

I recently had the good opportunity to illustrate for Oscar Wylee for their opening in my local shopping centre. It was an absolute blast meeting everyone and drawing for them, and I’ve posted some of my favourites to my instagram. It was my first digital live drawing session, and hopefully the first of many. The Oscar Wylee team were very well organised and accommodating, and an all round pleasure to work with.

Next month I’ll be at the Impact Comics Festival in Garema Place, Canberra. It’s been a while since I did a comic book just for me, but I’m steadily chugging out a comic at the moment. More news on that to come soon!

preview of the latest comic - coming soon to SpAE makes art
preview of my latest comic
Digital, 2017.

Building habits

 

Portrait of Callan, by SpAE - digital 2017
Callan
Digital, 2017

I recently discovered I miss blogging, or at least that doing things on the blog isn’t as scary as I remembered it to be.

One of the goals I’ve set for myself lately is to do more finished paintings, as opposed to the many – and extremely useful – rougher studies that I’ve mainly been posting on instagram. This painting isn’t exactly finished, but it’s as close as I’m going to get for now. So far I’ve been pretty successful all year with my goal to draw something once a day (posting those daily drawings – not so much). This portrait was completed in Clip Studio Paint, which is a change for me as I normally prefer painting pieces like this in Corel Painter. The Carp, a painting I did this year that I somehow managed to forget about, was painted mostly in Painter until my computer had a fit, the file corrupted, and I finished everything in Clip Studio Paint.

The Carp - by SpÆ 2017 - spaemakesart.com
The Carp
Digital, 2017

So. More regular painting, experimenting with new production methods and – in the background – I’m working on a few comics. It’s been a while since I wrote my own comics, without a theme or a concept ordered by someone else, so this feels a little like starting from scratch again. Now that I’m thinking of blogging again, it feels like I’ll have a legitimate excuse not to do so so often!

Thank you ComicGong!

We’re back from ComicGong and it was great!

Sweets Galore for ComicGong! Photo by Callan O'Donohoe - https://500px.com/stealthelf
Sweets Galore for ComicGong! Here’s a collection of some of the sweets I took down. Photo by Callan O’Donohoe

ComicGong was my first big show in a while and I can’t speak highly enough of how well it was organised – it was like a bigger version of the also impressively run Goulburn Comic Con late last year (which I hope I hope I hope will be on again this year!)

I don’t have any photos or media from the event just yet, but there are already some very cool photos on the ComicGong facebook page. It was such a busy morning I forgot to take a photo of my table before the crowd poured in!

Now to get back to the comics making…

new comic and new event: reCOLLECTION at ZICS

reCOLLECTION: cover
The cover for reCOLLECTION, an anthology of previous works

It feels like it’s been a quiet year for me, but here I am again. After thoroughly enjoying Brisbane earlier this year, I’m heading back to finally participate in ZICS, an event I’ve had my eye on since it first started. It’s next weekend, and I’m excited! I’ll be sitting with the Queensland(ish) side of the TTTSNB crew, Wraithdragon and DZYNE studios.

I’ll be bringing reCOLLECTION, my newest comic. Well, not exactly my newest – my newest comics are still works in progress, and not something I can share yet. But reCOLLECTION includes a number of completed pieces that I am very very proud to share.

a preview of the stockbox for ZICS...a preview of the stockbox for ZICS…

ABOUT reCOLLECTION

Three of the comics in reCOLLECTION were written by the brilliant satirist Xeg, a very patient scenarist who has been emailing me his excellence since we met via BD Zine some years ago. I’m particularly grateful to Xeg as Experts are us, one of the scenarios he wrote that is included in reCOLLECTION, was him turning my grumpy frenzied ranting into something coherent, hilarious and lots of fun to illustrate.

Other stories include Talkback and Enso, both gratefully published in ACT Comic Meet anthologies. Finally there’s a brand new never-shared-before comic by me. And an illustration section.

reCOLLECTION is published with the permission of XEG, and with thanks to ACT Comic Meet and CSFG who held first print rights to some of the other pieces in the book.

How to get reCOLLECTION

Everyone who purchases the physical book at ZICS will get a coupon for a free digital download of the book as well!

The digital download is available here for pre-order until ZICS. (This is totally a ZICS first thing…I’m very excited about finally going there!) An absentee pack, including the physical copy of the book, will be available soon!

See you next week, Brisbane!