Slew of Stuff

Well well well. It’s been a while. I know. Believe me. But things have been happening! Good things! Some of them are even comics related!

So let’s get on with that.

If any of you happen to pick up a shiny copy of the IPRC’s July + August catalog in the next couple weeks, you’ll be able to see my work on the cover! The illustration basically encompasses what I wanted to be doing back when Portland wasn’t cooperating with the whole “Summer weather” routine. Fortunately those days are over. Time for sidewalk chalk and lemonade! …and comics.

Here ’tis, reproduced on the web for your viewing pleasure.

I’ve also secured a table for the Portland Zine Symposium in August, where I’ll have Baggywrinkles 1 and 2, well as some copies of Tales from the Fragment (remember that?), and maybe some hand-bound blank journals. Woop woop!

However, I have to admit that these last couple weeks have involved very little drawing. As may not be completely apparent from this site, I spend a hell of a lot of time social dancing when I’m not making arts, and summer in Portland means huge dance events all the freaking time. I’ve driven to and from Colorado for Aspen Blues Recess, a week of dancing in marble quarries, aspen groves, pedestrian malls, and artisan hobbit holes, placed second in the local Jack and Jill competition with the ever-talented Kai Hayashi*, and danced over 8 hours a day (often until the sun rose over Mt. Hood) for four days during the Portland Blues Experience.

Needless to say, having limped home from the last of those events on Tuesday morning at 7 a.m., I’m a little shattered, but hopefully the next few weeks will bring recovery and lots of artwork into this magical internet of ours.

*For those of you who don’t know what blues dancing is, or are just interested in seeing the competition, here are a couple of videos from the finals!

More Wherefore Stuff

(Because I love you.)

Essentially, these are preliminary images from the project I’ll be doing over the summer with this here (not really very) hefty (but still insanely and awesomely useful) scholarship. I tried to take climactic or iconic moments from throughout the storyline and give them a bit of illustrative weight. Numbers 4 and 5 appeared in a previous post, but I’ve added them again here for the sake of continuity.

Oh boy oh boy oh boy!

Untitled, Oct. 10th

NOT DEAD. STILL HERE.

Don’t believe me? Then have a full photo walkthrough of my major project for last semester’s Book Arts class! Untitled, Oct. 10th is a rendition of a poem by my dear friend Hallie McPherson (whose insanely powerful work can be found on her blog), illustrated, designed, hand-printed, and bound by yours truly. The project was a fantastic opportunity to delve further into letterpress, since I had to turn all my illustrations into polymer plates for printing, as well as setting all the type by hand and devising a new stitch for the binding that wouldn’t obscure the type. The process was incredibly labor intensive (both the paper and the covers were all dyed by hand) and I still have 4 more editions to bind, though the printing is thankfully done. All in all, I’m really happy with it, and doubly so that the poet now has a copy of her own, so I can finally splash it all over the internet!

[slideshow]

A more detailed description of the process will be up on the Bookmaking page by the end of the week, so if you’re interested in any of that feel free to check back on Sunday for goodies — and throughout next week for all the work that I haven’t had a chance to photograph yet! Yippee!