#LineworkNW 2016

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Studio Q+A: Kinoko Evans

Linework NW is at its heart a gathering of remarkable creators, editors, illustrators, cartoonists, and publishers who represent some of the best work that is being produced in these mediums today.

Each day from now until the show we will be highlighting the amazing creators of Linework NW in a series of short interviews on their process and studios. Today Q+A highlights creator Kinoko Evans.

Where do you live? These days, it’s Portland, Oregon.

Where does the majority of your creative practice take place? Magnetic North Studios in SE Portland is my main workspace where I can make a mess and tinker. My desk at home is where all of my design, scanning & correspondence happens. Radius Studios PDX is where I throw clay, fire and glaze ceramics.

What are your favorite tools of the trade? The Pilot Pocket is my absolute Go-To favorite, and I have a mix of other brush pens that I use for texture and play. My Rapidograph .60mm is another favorite, and I like drawing with under glaze pencils on ceramics.

Do you keep any posters, toys, artwork, etc. in your creative space for inspiration? YES!!!! Sometimes so much that I have to trim that stuff back like hedges, just so I can get some work done.

What are you working on for this year’s LineworkNW? This year I will be at my table on Sunday with my comics and prints, as usual. I have also been making a ton of character narrative ceramics. I also have some brand new stickers and tote bags too! Oh yeah, and a zine and a VERY limited edition mug design I created with CoffeeBeer.me just for LineworkNW. There are only 70 of them. I’m pretty excited to share all this new work.

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Studio Q+A: Hazel Newlevant

Linework NW is at its heart a gathering of remarkable creators, editors, illustrators, cartoonists, and publishers who represent some of the best work that is being produced in these mediums today.

Each day from now until the show we will be highlighting the amazing creators of Linework NW in a series of short interviews on their process and studios. Today’s Q+A, conducted by Kinoko Evans, will be spotlighting artist Hazel Newlevant.

Where do you live? Ridgewood, Queens!

Where does the majority of your creative practice take place? Home? Studio? Café? Other? The real creative stuff happens in conversations with friends, or in my therapist's office. Since most of my comics are autobiographical, that's how I synthesize the important stories about my life. But I do most of the drawing in my bedroom.

What are your favorite tools of the trade? I love the feeling of fluid on a brush, so I work with watercolors and brush inks. My new thing is to pencil a page, watercolor it, and add just a touch of india ink on top to bring out the areas of highest contrast. My compact lightbox gets a lot of use as well. I enlarge my thumbnails and then lightbox them to create my pencils—that way, I can retain the composition and spontaneity without frustrating myself trying to draw the same thing twice.

Do you keep any posters, toys, artworks in your creative space for inspiration? Right next to my desk is my "Wall of Friendship." This is how I keep from getting too lonely during long hours at the drawing board! It's got drawings and photos of me and my friends together, a great picture of Nick Bertozzi and David Mazzucchelli (two of my favorite teachers from SVA) Photoshopped into Mazzucchelli's "Daredevil," and of course Prince EP covers.

What are you working on for this year's LineworkNW? I recently finished issue #2 of No Ivy League, an comic about my crappy summer job as a teenager, pulling ivy in Forest Park. There's tons of drama—culture clash, crushing on my boss, et cetera. I'm excited to share it with Portland comics fans who will catch the references and landmarks!

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Studio Q+A: C.M. Butzer

Linework NW is at its heart a gathering of remarkable creators, editors, illustrators, cartoonists, and publishers who represent some of the best work that is being produced in these mediums today.

Each day from now until the show we will be highlighting the amazing creators of Linework NW in a series of short interviews on their process and studios. Today’s Q+A, conducted by Kinoko Evans, will be spotlighting artist C.M. Butzer.

Where do you live? I currently live in Providence, Rhode Island, but I'll be moving this summer either back to Brooklyn or to Hawaii- it's a long story

Where does the majority of your creative practice take place? Home? Studio? Café? Other? Currently, I spend most of my time working at my home studio. If I'm in the sketch or development stage of a project I prefer getting the out of the house to a cafe. Almost every comic or print design I've done has started with sketch or thumbnail created in a cafe. I also leave my laptop at home so no internets to distract me.

What are your favorite tools of the trade? Whatever it takes. I work in some dramatically different styles so the project defines my tools more than anything else. That said, I love the Pentel Pocket Brush Pen and my Wacom Cintiq. The Pentel Brush pen is waterproof, refillable, maintains a good tip for a long time and cheap enough that when it starts to go I don't mind buying a new one. As for the Cintiq, I resisted doing anything other than post-production digitally for a very long time. A few years ago I was doing some storyboards onsite at an agency and they let me use a cintiq. I had been using drawing tablets for years but the tablets never really captured the experience of drawing for me, but the cintiq does. I do most of my pencils digitally now and then print them in non-photo blue and hand ink and letter them. I haven't made the step of creating fully digital art because hand inking is my favorite part.

Do you keep any posters, toys, artworks in your creative space for inspiration? Right now, not really. which is weird for me. I guess it's because the place I'm staying in right now was always meant to be temporary so I set up a basic functional workspace. Most of my favorite things are packed away until I know where I'm moving. That said, last year I shared a studio with five other artists in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Being in that environment really inspired my work. Everyone in the studio is an illustrator, cartoonist, or printmaker- we shared a lot of similarities but it differences is where I really learned and received motivation. Too many times to count one of my studiomates would show me a much better way draw/paint/print/fix something that I had been doing the stupid/harder way for years.  

What are you working on for this year's LineworkNW? I'll be debuting "KITTENS #2 The Sounds of Indifference" at Linework NW. I'll also be bringing a new zine that I just finished this April called "Giant Robot vs Giant Monster". KITTENS is about unruly punk rock cats and Monster Vs Robots is about Robots vs Monsters!

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Studio Q+A: Matt Leunig

Linework NW is at its heart a gathering of remarkable creators, editors, illustrators, cartoonists, and publishers who represent some of the best work that is being produced in these mediums today.

Each day from now until the show we will be highlighting the amazing creators of Linework NW in a series of short interviews on their process and studios. Today’s Q+A, conducted by Kinoko Evans, will be spotlighting artist Matt Leunig.

Where do you live? In a land called Oakland, CA

Where does the majority of your creative practice take place? Home? Studio? Café? Other? I am lucky that I have a small studio underneath where I live.  It ain't big but is where I have my drawing table, homemade flat files, an area for prepping orders & a stereo for cranking my sweet sweet tunes.  When I need to use the computer setup inside the house. 

Since I spend most of my time in the house or studio I tend to go stir crazy and try to force myself to work when possible at coffee shops in the neighborhood or down by the Lake (Lake Merritt).  I tried looking at work/space options and co-op art studio spaces to be able to be around other creative folks but at the end of the day I realized I was spending too much money on something I had for free at home.

What are your favorite tools of the trade? I am a big pen & ink person,.. and prefer my Faber-Castell pens.  There are probably better pens out there but its become almost tradition I've been using them so long.  I try to keep things as hand drawn as possible but have been seeing a lot of peers switching over to the Cintiq and am tempted.

Do you keep any posters, toys, artworks in your creative space for inspiration? A ton.  Sasquatch is my spirit animal so I try to collect Bigfoot/Sasquatch art to inspire me.  My studio is lined with a slew of classic 60's gigposters and newer prints from some of my favorite artists as well as random trinkets & totems from stuff I collected on the road or from past projects (working w/ TMNT, etc..).

What are you working on for this year's LineworkNW? I will be having a gallery opening the same weekend as LineworkNW in Portland so am throwing together some new art prints, some smaller sized items... and hopefully a nice hairy-themed PDX piece if I can get my shit together.

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Studio Q+A: Bruce Zick

Linework NW is at its heart a gathering of remarkable creators, editors, illustrators, cartoonists, and publishers who represent some of the best work that is being produced in these mediums today.

Each day from now until the show we will be highlighting the amazing creators of Linework NW in a series of short interviews on their process and studios. Today’s Q+A, conducted by Kinoko Evans, will be spotlighting artist

Where do you live? Corbett, Oregon

Daughter in the Studio

Where does the majority of your creative practice take place? Home? Studio? Café? Other? I have a secondary building at home that is the studio workspace.

View from Studio

What are your favorite tools of the trade? I do the majority of my work with pencil and paper and then finish the artwork digitally in Photoshop.

Studio in the snow

Do you keep any posters, toys, artworks in your creative space for inspiration? My studio is loaded with posters, and artwork of a variety of my favorite artist.

What are you working on for this year's LineworkNW? I just had a new graphic novel released from Dark Horse Comics titled The Zone Continuum.

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Studio Q+A: Çiğdem “Chi” Michalski

Linework NW is at its heart a gathering of remarkable creators, editors, illustrators, cartoonists, and publishers who represent some of the best work that is being produced in these mediums today.

Each day from now until the show we will be highlighting the amazing creators of Linework NW in a series of short interviews on their process and studios. Today’s Q+A, conducted by Kinoko Evans, will be spotlighting artist Çiğdem “Chi” Michalski.

Where do you live? I have recently moved from San Francisco to Seattle. Now I live in a cute house surrounded by green which is such a luxury for me after my small SF loft.

Where does the majority of your creative practice take place? Home? Studio? Café? Other? I work out of my home studio but I make sure to go out regularly, visit a local coffee shop or a park every day, daily life always inspires me.

What are your favorite tools of the trade? I love pencil, pilot pens and newsprint paper. I sometimes play with indian ink too. Improvisation is a big part of my process so I doodle a lot. Once I have a rough idea what I want work on I switch to my digital tools. I mainly draw my work with wacom tablet on Photoshop unless the project requires a vector output. In my works, I like to include natural textures and use various types of natural media brushes.

Addition to my illustration work, last year I started to explore block printing. After designing them on Illustrator I’ve build my own blocks using laser cutter. I’m currently printing small edition of art scarves and exploring this medium. 

 Do you keep any posters, toys, artworks in your creative space for inspiration? I’m not an avid collector but I enjoy having illustrated books and magazines around. I love patterns so I can’t help myself buying wrapping papers as well as small objects and postcards. I love boxes. I like rearranging them. They feel like my private installations, intended for my eyes only. I don’t like labeling them, then it looses the surprise factor.

What are you working on for this year's LineworkNW? This is my first time in the festival. I’m very excited to share small editions of my art prints and loads of fun postcards.