NewOldRare

The art and comics tagged newoldrare are from an original series/collection I’m working on. It’s about Louis and Neil, two kinda-punk guys in the 90s. They’re a gay couple, Louis is FTM transgender and Neil is cisgender, and some of the work is about that, but it’s mostly about music and movies and the part of growing up you do in your late twenties and early thirties.

I'm calling it retrospeculative, which means that it’s not quite historically accurate, more like viewing the past through specific filters, particularly my own experiences. It’s nostalgia for something that never existed.

I’m not making things in order, so here is the chronological reading list for the comics. (A lot) more will be added as I do them.

This is a bootleg I made on New Years Eve 2006, in the garden of the Arthouse Hotel in Melbourne.

The song they're playing is a version of 'Shut Down' by a band called One Inch Punch, which Adrian Lombardi was a guitarist in. One Inch Punch later became Mid Youth Crisis. Adrian was also in Caustic Soda with Donnie Dureau, and when that band broke up, Donnie and Adrian formed Blueline Medic. Sometimes they'd play acoustic sets together, like this one.

I used to take a digital camera I had to concerts and stand there holding it, looking like I was too distracted to take photos when I was actually using the audio record function. This one, I just put the camera on the table and recorded the whole set. I remember it being oppressively hot that night, over 30 C at 2am. The quality isn't great, but I'm glad I've got it.

Messing around with separating out colours from traditional art to turn into riso prints. These are just experiments and I don't like them, but it gave me some ideas for how I might do it in future.

Two risograph versions of this coloured inkwash illustration, set up with CMYK. The one on the left, I did almost nothing beyond splitting the channels and used bright red, yellow, blue, and black - printed on white. The one on the right, I did some "post" work after splitting the channels and used yellow, bright red, teal, and black - printed on off-white.

Some old fake storyboards.

A little fluorescent pink/purple/cornflower blue print (on off-white) of a greyscale inkwash drawing.

Holiday card risograph prints.

The mouse is four colours (yellow, bright red, teal, purple) on ivory paper. The penguin is three colours (sky blue, aqua, fluorescent pink) on off-white paper. They're both about 4x5 inches.

A little 4x6" sticker sheet I designed and printed recently. It's 1993 somewhere?

Louis hanging out, reading some articles.

Four colour risograph print (yellow, fluorescent pink, black, blue) on letter size. If I redo this one I'll tone down the blue a little to get more of the subtler pink tones.

i2 is based on a cat I had about ten years ago named Paul. Unfortunately I had to find him a (great) new owner. I didn't have any other options and the choice was made with his well-being in mind, but having to give him up is one of my biggest regrets.

Paul was a brown tabby of indeterminate age, with one missing fang and a tail far longer than a normal cat's tail. Paul gave hugs when you picked him up, loved spooning in bed, and would hold your face to lick your eyebrows. Paul weighed as much as a toddler (and loved being carried around like one) and could look over the kitchen counter when he stood on his back legs. Paul accidentally headbutted an entire pane of glass out of the living room window. Paul had such an awful tortured meow that his new owner emailed to ask if he usually made that noise. Paul was so dumb and so sweet and I loved him.

That's my hand, which is 7" long.

He is the only thing I want back from that (mostly awful) time in my life.

Unlike Louis, I recently invested in a second cup.

Moving was a bigger pain than anticipated and I'm riso printing this comic tomorrow, so all the asks (which I appreciate hugely and am looking forward to) got bumped down the queue.

Louis and fish.

Ink and acrylic gouache over risograph texture. 7x5 inches.

Concept art for a story about mods and rockers set in the south of England in the 1960s. It's about music and homosexuality and motorbikes because what else is there to write about anyway.

One of my hobbies is making ephemera and VHS stickers are a lot of fun to play around with. The 3/4" dots I printed myself, the bigger colourful ones I got done through stickermule. I'll probably sell them if people are interested.

happy valentines day. make men over six feet tall sit on your lap.

Louis (left, listening to Rites of Spring) and Neil (right, listening to They Might Be Giants), probably before they met.

Ink, watercolour, and acrylic inkwash; pencil and watercolour, both on paper.

They were going to be missing Mineral, but I saw Ted Leo do a fantastic solo set last week so they're missing Chisel instead.

The physical printed cover will have real stickers on it.

I'm open to suggestions.

Old self-indulgent sketch from when I was just developing the characters, still kinda like it.

Ink and inkwash on (weird colour-absorbing) paper.

A small selection of the sketchcards I use as business cards, and one of my printed business cards.

Each approximately 2x3 inches. Watercolour, gouache, ink, pencil, whatever.