Monday

Surprise outcome after yesterday’s mope: I have rather abruptly returned to being a person who says she’ll do things and then feels capable of doing them???

I’m not saying nature is healing and Portland Lucy has reestablished herself, but the ambient back-to-school energy I’ve been craving is certainly doing something.

This is what it takes:

  • The feeling, however trivial, of control (over my movements, my schedule, my food intake, my sleep)
  • Microscopic movement in the direction of something that’s been scaring me—I’m talking truly microscopic, like moving a pencil five inches closer to a notepad and then calling it a day
  • Letting the dog see the rabbit
  • Securing caregiving help during the week
  • Moving piles of mulch from one end of the property to the other in a wheelbarrow, raking them over the parched earth, watching the ur-heap on the concrete shrink bit by bit
  • Leaving the house at least once every day
  • Asking for help, accepting meals from friends, letting them lighten the logistical load
  • Starting the process of buying a friend’s old car so I can have my own reliable transportation
  • Undergoing a healthy dose of heartbreak
  • Getting in the sea
  • Allowing myself to fuck around in the afternoons because the fact is I feel lethargic and dismal every day after lunch, so if I’ve done something early enough it’s not a hardship to watch Ted Lasso or read a book or stare aimlessly into space
  • Making diary comics again

It’s the shift when weeks of broken promises to myself stop feeling like impenetrable, sticky guilt and instead alchemize into rocket fuel. Suddenly everything is happening and the urge is to ride the wave, tackle it all in one fell swoop, but my most important job is actually to do less. Rest must be just as much a part of this as consistency. The hardest discipline.

I feel so much relief in my body.

Drawing Marathon!

Hey Gang! Sorry things have been a bit quiet over here. I’m currently deep in a Three-Project Wormhole thanks to some foolish treble-booking on my part, but NEVER FEAR. I am kicking ass and taking names in my usual style.

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The good news is this means lots of new stuff for you to look at in the coming weeks. Read on for the whole rundown.

postcard

 First up, I’ll have another story done for Cartozia by the end of the month. Tom Motley designed the awesome promo postcard pictured above, and you can even read a couple stories from the first issue of the series on the Cartozia site! The more I work on this project the more excited I become. It’s wonderful to be collaborating with so many enthusiastic creators. I also get to incorporate some super cool characters and environments into this next tale. Should be a grand old time.

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Second, I’ve been collaborating once more with the great Shannon Campbell (the writer behind Navy Ink) on a submission for Rock Ink Roll — a totally rad music/comics anthology involving some of my favorite people: fellow boat-lover Kevin Cannon, fellow Lady Cartoonist Brittney Sabo, and fellow Cartozian Lupi McGinty. Shannon busted out a story in no time flat, with a pitch so delightful I couldn’t wait to get started. I think this one’s going to be a lot of fun.

RaccoonStudies1Finally, I’m illustrating a secret project that I can’t say much about. It should be finished by September, at which point I’ll be able to share more information, but in the meantime this elusive coon in the only hint I can give.

That’s all from me for now! Back to the drawing board.

Doing It Anyway

Although it’s been one of Those Days, I’m excited to say that I’m finally through to the backend on my first story for Symbolia Magazine! Here’s the whole thing all tinylike (no spoilers!) before I print it out and start inking.

Progress

After spending all this time researching uniforms and protocol and environments and guns (oh God, the guns), I’m really excited to work on other projects next month. Give me environments I know full of things I can draw! Still, this has been a fantastic challenge so far and I’m really excited to finally get it off the computer and onto the drawing board. Until I’m splashing ink on things, it just doesn’t feel like making comics.

In related news, I scripted out Baggywrinkles #4 is a sleepless fever last night.

Turns out everything I thought was hilarious at 2am held up in the cold light of morning. Success!

The story will be around 12 pages and should be out in time for the Stumptown Comics Fest in April. But first, I’ve got another story to pencil and ink. So I’ll get back to that.

Onward, ever onward.

True Believer: The Final Countdown!

Oh man, dudes. Things are heating up.

In the final few weeks before True Believer hits the printers, I’ll be coloring up a storm, making buttons, designing business cards, investigating screen printing, and also trying to format that other weird written thesis thing I was supposed to have written by now. Just kidding. I wrote it. Mostly. But that guy needs to go into LaTeX and boy howdy I do not know how to work that program yet. Still, baby steps.

I thought I’d drop a few images in here from the next stage in the process. You can see the whole beast on the wall here:

Which I will now proceed to color using this completely delightful Indigo I picked up at the art store this week.

Here are a few tests:

And here’s a page of ink lines printed at 10% grey with watercolor shading:

I’ll be scanning these in and merging them with the digitized line art to create the final images, which should look something like this:

I can’t tell you how excited I am to pull all this stuff together. The coloring will go much MUCH faster than the inking (thank God), so hopefully I’ll blow through 31 pages in the next week and get this thing printed! In the meantime, I’ve got a few illustrations to stick up in the coming days, as well as a requested post about my perspective on the art/writing divide in comics.

Stay tuned!

Progress Report

So, you guys may’ve noticed that things have been a little quiet here on the comics front. Fear not! Things are happening and this post will hopefully clear up a few questions about where my energy’s going these days and when you can expect to see some new sequential work.

Oooh! Aaah! Pages!

I’m currently neck deep in my 34-page thesis comic (tentatively titled “True Believer”), which should be out in time for Stumptown this year. I wrapped up the pencils last week after a grueling page-a-day push through February, and am now taking the opportunity for a little downtime over Spring Break. I’ll begin inking in the next few days, then do color, layout, and printing in April. This is, of course, on top of full-time school commitments and a few freelance jobs, so there may be delays, but the progress in February was really encouraging. I’ll be posting some more pictures as I start inking so you can get a sense of what it’ll look like.

In the meantime, the blog will be featuring (surprise, surprise) more illustrations! I’m making the shift from my little Pentel Pocket Brush to the real deal Windsor & Newton Series 7 for this project, so I’m trying to do as much freelance work as possible with the W&N to get the feel of it.

Thanks for hanging in there, everyone! I’m getting really excited to share this new work with you. So excited, in fact, that I’ve taken to walking around like this:

Yup.

And with that burst of absurdism, I bid you adieu.

Baggywrinkles #2 Inks

Hey, y’all remember when I was doing that nautical comic thing way back in the day? The one I said would be finished “in a few days” about 6 months ago? (At least, that’s what it feels like…) Well, hopefully I can make good on the promise soon, but just to prove I haven’t utterly forgotten: some inks! Half of them, even! (Easy to say when your story’s 8 pages long.)

There are technical tweaks left to be done on the blackboards, since I need to make them, well, black. But apart from that they’re pretty well finished. I’m trying to move beyond straight “line art” into something that’s a little more dimensional, so critiques are welcome. The latter 4 pages are more complex, so I’ve been procrastinating on them for some time, but the plunge will come sooner rather than later, I assure you.

Shutting up now so I can get on with the last few projects of the semester.

SO CLOSE, YOU GUYS. SO CLOSE I CAN TASTE IT.