Archive | February, 2012

DWT at MONA market

22 Feb

Pages 58-60

21 Feb

Synopsis and overview
First chapter – Friday
Previous pages in Saturday

Pages 58-60 (note page 59 is incomplete at this stage)


Next pages – 61-64
This last page is one of my favourites … the fun part about adapting something is that you can pretty much do anything you want with the words because they have no images associated with them. The image of the old man in the backyard singing the Tingari images with Craig’s words about imagination I thought was a great idea … it took me a little by surprise when I’d finished it and stood back to look at the image … as with all things comic based – it’s hard to imagine what it really will look like until you have finished the damn thing. Perhaps the more experienced people have a better sense of whether something won’t work at all … but I still suspect that even experienced people are taken by surprise when their ideas REALLY work.

As I mentioned in the last blog about the long weekend, the image of the map of Iraq is left unfinished at this point until I can get a copy of Craig’s actual map – even though it was only 100 years ago, it’s amazing how many place names look totally different on the modern map versus the old one. I liked the old map sooo much that I wanted to use it in the comic … so I’m waiting on Craig to take a photo and send a copy to me.

The first page here owes a lot to some of the notes in Bardon & Bardon’s amazing Papunya Tula book. It’s a truly monumental book which details so much about the PT movement in the Western Desert that it’s beyond belief – it’s a little like trying to read Strehlow’s works … it sort of saturates the mind and you kind of … implode a little trying to comprehend what it all bloody means … until you put it down to tend the veggie patch.

In other news – Craig San Roque himself is off to America, the land of the free where you shouldn’t forget to tip. He’s going to visit the CG Jung Institute of San Francisco  and he’s going to present some of this comic in a presentation that he’s doing over there … how terribly exciting. I did attempt to send him a booklet of the first 60 or so pages of this comic by Express Post … but apparently Hobart to Alice Springs would still take 5 working days to arrive at Craig’s doorstep (this is EXPRESS post we’re talking about people) and he leaves for the states on Sunday … so no dice! So – digital it is!!

Pages 51-57

10 Feb

First Chapter – Friday
For general synopsis and whatnot go to the menu bar at the top and click on The Long Weekend (Graphic Novel)
Previous pages in second chapter – Saturday


Next pages – 58-60.

These pages were endlessly interesting for me – doing lots of ridiculous research into Iraq and Lebanon … the map of Mesopotamia is incomplete as I haven’t had the time to look at Craig’s old map as of yet … but for the sake of people reading this I have put it up anyways. It’s at this part of the essay / comic that the scope of the ideas start to branch all over the planet. Perhaps those readers more accustomed the the Western application of archetypal behaviour will be more at home with the presence of Adonis and Inanna / Ishtar / Venus (and all the other goddess analogues you can think of). The drawings of Saddam Hussein were also fun to do … I checked on the web for photos of him and was a little shocked to find millions of copies of the video of his hanging available for anyone to have a gander at … well, I assume it’s not propoganda material and it’s real, happy to be corrected of course if anyone knows of the details of that video … anyway – I chose to use it, one of the flashes of cameras as he was swinging served as a good model for the drawing. i haven’t decided whether or not I wish to spell it out to the reader what it is they’re looking at or to just leave it as an image … though I appreciate that not all will get that that’s the same bloke as the picture above it with the poor Kurdish folks in the background. any thoughts, comments people? Please leave below.

Hope you’re all well.

Incidentally – Australian comics just got better with Pat Grant’s beautiful Blue now available!!

Live videos for DWT (2010-2011)

9 Feb

Drive West Today has been sprinting around the continent Australia a fair bit for performances, here’s highlight reel of the last two years.

A performance in Sydney December 2 2011

Performance in Hobart September 30 2011

Performance in Sydney June 25 2011


2011 Acousmatic Ecology Tour promo video 1

2011 Acousmatic Ecology Tour promo video 2

Performance in Alice Springs, Northern Territory – Electric Ecology May 3 2010