SKETCHBOOK

COLLAGE: WHERE TO TURN WHEN YOU GET STUCK

Monday, April 9th, 2007 | Permalink
“I remember great pleasure in cutting out Andy Cap and Flo with manicure scissors, and then cutting little slits in a magazine picture of a big bowl of Beef-a-Roni, and fitting Andy and Flo into them so it looked like they were rising out of the Beef-a-Roni. I remember laughing my head off at that one. I still love collage and I’ve always turned to it when I get stuck writing or drawing.”

—Lynda Barry

Today, obviously, I got stuck.

6 Responses to “COLLAGE: WHERE TO TURN WHEN YOU GET STUCK”

  1. liza Says:

    If you do get a dog, do get a doxie. They are great.
    Beautiful page, as always.

  2. Austin Says:

    liza, i don’t think i have a choice: my wife DEMANDS a female doxie for her 25th birthday! hehe.

  3. Maureen McQ Says:

    Sorry to drop in so late, but the Austin Dachshund is awaiting your arrival. You will have to spend serious time at chez McHugh until you get your bearings and maybe even after.

    And maybe we’ll start a writer’s group or something.

  4. Austin Kleon Says:

    yeah we need to seriously hook up that cleveland writer ex-pats group

  5. Maggie Jochild Says:

    I got reco’d your site by Liza Cowan of Pine Street Art Works, and wowza. Read this one first because I live in Austin. I too am a lifelong devotee of doxies.

    Oh, wait, you mean the dogs?

    The Gasoline Alley strip was stunning, thanks for sharing it and in a format where I could enlarge it to read. My father called me Skeezix as a kid — now, at least, I know where that nickname came from. Also, synchronistically, today’s poem offering from the Writer’s Almanac has 12 lines by Philip Larkin that completely complement the Gasoline Alley strip. Taking the liberty to copy it in below. I’ll be back.

    The Trees

    The trees are coming into leaf
    Like something almost being said;
    The recent buds relax and spread,
    Their greenness is a kind of grief.

    Is it that they are born again
    And we grow old? No, they die too.
    Their yearly trick of looking new
    Is written down in rings of grain.

    Yet still the unresting castles thresh
    In fullgrown thickness every May.
    Last year is dead, they seem to say,
    Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.

  6. austin Says:

    hey maggie,

    thanks for the good words and the larkin poem!

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