Owl Dollars

More arts! A while back I did an illustration for folks over at the Reed College Annual Fund. They’ve just launched a fundraising campaign to get recently-graduated alumni to donate to the college. This is what I came up with for their branding:

If you look closely in there you can spot a number of Reed-related gags (I think 6 in total). See if you can find them all!

Has this image compelled you to fling money at my alma mater? Great! You can check out the campaign here.

Stay tuned for some preview art from True Believer later this week as I wrestle with the second half of the inking process!

 

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.

Buttons in the Emporium!

I know, I know. I said this was going to be done long ago, but the wait is finally over! You can now purchase Baggywrinkles-related buttons to confirm your place at the head of the seafaring cartoonists’ community.

Choose three buttons from the image below and they will miraculously appear on your doorstep in short order.

Want the entire range? Go for The Whole Shebang and get yourself a free doodle with your purchase.

Single Button Pack (3 buttons)…$2.00 + Shipping

[There’ll be a field where you can specify which buttons you’d like before you complete checkout!]

The Whole Shebang (9 buttons and a doodle)…$5.00 + Shipping

Sketchbook Update

This week I revisited an exercise given to me by my awesome mentor Eben Matthews almost ten years ago.

In one of our early meetings Eben asked me what my least favorite thing to draw was. Like any budding 13-year-old artist I immediately pulled a face and said “hands.” He smirked and told me to come back with 100 of them drawn by our next session. I glowered and grumbled, but truth be told it was a deeply valuable exercise that stuck with me for a long time (even after he made me draw 100 feet the following week, the scum!).

While recently looking at lots of inspirational animation captures of beautifully rendered, expressive hands, I realized how long it had been since I’d drawn those first 100 and decided to do it again. I sketched a lot of them during classes, but also used various photo references and even some of the animation stills to get an idea of how to effectively simplify the anatomy.

Rather than a week, this took me about five hours altogether. It feels so good that I may have to start doing it more often. A decade is a little too long.

As you can see, I devolved a little at the end there and started drawing eyeballs and classmates — one of whom happens to look an astonishing amount like the female protagonist of Dylan Meconis’ spectacular comic, Family Man. Who knew?

And, to round things out, here are a couple quick sketches of puppets from the amazing John Frame exhibit currently showing at the Portland Art Museum. Strange, fascinating stuff if you get the chance to go see it.

That’s all for now! I’ve got some really exciting news and projects on the horizon, but I can’t share them quite yet, so I’ll try to keep the little illustrations coming.