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So You Wanna (Honorably)…

The first in a series of comics for the Reed College Quest highlighting the challenges of living in a community governed by the Honor Principle. The Honor Principle (or, as it is often affectionately called, the “HP”) grounds itself in the idea that community members should take thoughtful responsibility for their own actions, always considering their impact on those around them. Of course, with something so nebulous there are always grey areas for free interpretation about what is and is not considered “honorable”. We’ve designed this series to spark discussion about what the HP means to Reedies of all stripes, hopefully resulting in a campus-wide conversation about how we can more effectively incorporate honor into our daily lives. Reedie readers (especially current students), I’m particularly interested to hear your thoughts on this one.

Art

Melville & The Peking

I recently had the pleasure of doing some illustrations for my friend Justin Hocking, whose forthcoming memoir, The Great Floodgates of the Wonderworld, will be released next September from Graywolf Press. Justin is the Executive Director of the Independent Publishing Resource Center, where I got my Certificate in Comics and Independent Publishing. If any of you Portland folk don’t already know about this fantastic resource, I highly encourage you to check it out. While the book goes through final revisions, Justin was kind enough to let me post these here on the blog for y’all to enjoy before they appear in print. So here’s some boaty goodness!

Art

New Figures, Old Injuries

Somehow, I managed to re-injure myself after my neck trauma from a week or two ago, which meant a weekend of lying around on my back in a lot of pain again. I don’t like pain. I don’t like being inactive. So the minute I managed to get to the chiropractor and start healing, it was back to the drawing board. Fueled by the anxiety of not being able to draw for two days in the midst of a ton of deadlines, I’ve been churning through things like crazy. Sometimes I feel like it’s never enough, but there’s light at the end of the tunnel. In the meantime, here’s some figure drawing.

For figure drawing this week, I picked up one of those Pentel pigment pens at the art store because I hadn’t had time to go home and get my regular supplies. I’m not going to lie, I really struggled this session. My figures felt lifeless and poorly planned, painting with the brush was tricky, I invariably used too much ink, I couldn’t get the essence of the model on the page. But I pushed on, and by the end of it I’d done two pieces I was actually quite proud of. I debated putting them up here in isolation, but I want to own up to the days when I’m just not feeling it, so here’s the whole bunch.

This is a pattern I experience time and time again (feeling like my work is rubbish, drawing anyway, getting through it, and arriving at a place of excitement and inspiration), and the more it happens, the more I can say “I know you think this horrible now, but just keep drawing.” It doesn’t make the despair of the earlier stages less horrible, but practice teaches me that it’s just a phase. Hopefully one day it’ll be gone altogether, but given that I hear about it from just about every artist I admire, I don’t have my hopes too high. And that’s okay.

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RIP Chacos

My beloved Chaco sandals bit the dust last week after nine years of dedicated service. They carried me through high school, up the Sierra Nevadas, into the Sespe Wilderness, across Greece, South Africa, Italy, France, Spain, and the British Isles, aloft on multiple tall ships in various seas, into the world of making comics, out of college, and into life. I’ll miss them.

Art

Trek in the Park

Got to sit in on a dress rehearsal for Trek in the Park a few nights ago. Look at these COSTUMES!

For those who don’t know, Portland is awesome enough to have a theater company devoted to re-enacting classic Trek episodes in various parks every summer. This year the crew tackles Journey to Babel, a tense, diplomatic drama with lots of explosions and shouting.

Shows run Saturdays and Sundays for the rest of the month at Cathedral Park in St. John’s. They’re free to the public, but make sure you get there well in advance of the 5pm showtime to bag prime seats. For more info, click through to the Atomic Arts website!

Art

Portraits, Neck Injuries, You Know The Drill

Art’s been on hiatus since I injured my neck last week (boo!), but here’s a commission I did recently to keep you occupied.

Matt was one of my Kickstarter backers, and I was thrilled when he contacted me about doing a portrait to commemorate his first wedding anniversary. These two apparently cook up a storm together, though their kitchen parameters may leave something to be desired. By the end of the painting process, I felt disproportionately happy for them. There’s something about drawing people that makes you get to know them better.

Still learning my way around watercolor scanning, so I apologize for the overly-garish yellow in this version!

Hopefully I’ll be showering you all with new comics in the next few weeks!

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The New Storefront is LIVE!

Hey everyone!

I’ve got a lot of art lined up to start posting here this week, but before we get to that I wanted to let you all know that my new storefront is officially online! This means True Believer is now available to the general public, t-shirts are up for pre-order (probably ready within the next two weeks), and all my other comics are back in stock. Ready to start loading up on goodies? Then point your browsers to

And since I can’t leave you with no art at all in this post, here’s a quick comic from yesterday about my fraught artistic process.

Stay tuned for more!