Marc Johns has a blog.

A BOOK! Serious Drawings to be released in April

Mar 26, 2009
16 comments

I'm so excited to announce that a book of my drawings is being published and will be released in April. Yes, that's next month!

It's 144 pages, full colour, hard cover. It's being published by teNeues, the venerable art, architecture, and photography book publisher. Serious Drawings is how I've unofficially labeled my work for a while now, and seems like a pretty good title.

I took a bunch of photos of the proofs from the printer and put them on my blog. Get a sneak peek here.

Moving the blog

Feb 23, 2009
9 comments

In October of 2006, I took advantage of a Vox beta account, and was thrilled that draw.vox.com was still available. I started making drawings on post-it notes, and uploaded my first batch on the 25th. I made the drawings specifically for my Vox blog. I felt the simple format was perfect for sharing online, especially since they would end up being viewed on a screen at pretty much actual size.

Shortly after posting my drawings, Vox came out of beta, and officially launched. One of my drawings was used in the Team Vox launch blog post, and a link to my drawings was on Vox's home page. 200 Voxers added me to their neighborhood over the weekend. I was thrilled. Vox has been good to me ever since.

There's a pretty nice sense of community here, one you don't get at most other social networks. It's built in a way that gets you up and blogging pretty easily, receiving comments early on, and growing an audience quickly. I'm so grateful for all the friends I've made over the past 2 years. Vox has played a huge role in all the good things that have come my way: a partnership with Moo.com, exhibition and publishing opportunities, art sales, interviews, and amusing conversations.

But it's time for me to move. I needed to overhaul my main site, marcjohns.com, and a blog format seemed like the best fit. And now that it's up and running, it just doesn't make sense for me to post drawings to both blogs. I'm not going to close this account. And I'll probably put the odd drawing here now and then, but my energy will go to my main site now. I've been posting to it over the last few weeks, and I like my new home. I'm using Typepad, which is great. I'm a graphic and web designer by trade, so I could have set up something more custom-ish and self-hosted, but I want to focus on drawing, not fiddling with plug-ins and combing through endless help forums, so I went with a solution that does its job, so I can focus on mine: drawing. Technology shouldn't absorb you. It should give you a hand.

Stop by the new site and don't be shy, say hi in the comments. And, if you subscribe to the RSS feed of this blog, please head over to marcjohns.com and subscribe to the new one. I've already got some new drawings up there. And I have a big announcement to make soon, which I'll share over on my main blog. Stay tuned for that :)

Thank you Vox, for everything.

Post-it note art: Vox

3 comments

forgetting to buy milk

Feb 4, 2009
4 comments

forgetting to buy milk (click to view on Flickr)

ink on paper, about 5x7 inches.

5 framed drawings, off to a show

Jan 26, 2009
6 comments

(click to view on Flickr)

These five drawings got all dressed up and have been shipped off to be in the Fresh stART benefit exhibition and sale, Feb 7th at Arena 1 Gallery at the Santa Monica Art Studios. The proceeds are split between the artist and Para Los Ninos. Lots of great artists that I admire are participating, inlcuding Evah Fan, Saelee Oh, Mark Todd, Jill Bliss, and Megan Whitmarsh.
I hate framing, and it's hard to let my work go sometimes, especially one like Beard Bird that was blogged about a gazillion times!
So if you want to get your hands on any of these originals (and you're in the Santa Monica area), head over to the Fresh stART website and get your tickets.

Emery CD cover

Jan 16, 2009
10 comments

(click to view on Flickr)

I don't do very many commissions. But I've always wanted to do a CD cover. So when the designer from Tooth & Nail Records got in touch with me, and said that one of the band members from Emery had asked to have me do the cover of this EP, I was excited. The band were pretty clear about what they wanted, so the overall process went really well. Thanks Emery!