Mondays

Before I pass out and forget everything, I need to throw this information somewhere for posterity.

I arrived on campus with a bagel and some coffee (rare for me) this morning at 9am. I just got home 10 minutes ago. In the intervening 15.5 hours I…

– Read 120 pages of Rousseau’s political writings

– Attended a lecture on the social contract

– Checked out 5 more books for my thesis

– Wrote a 3-page response essay

– Shipped comics to California, Pennsylvania, and Louisiana

– Read the entirety of Art & Fear and Claire Siepser’s comics-based thesis (~100 pages combined)

– Requested 10 books on inter-library loan

– Cut out and assembled 257 Baggywrinkles buttons

– Read 150 pages of McCloud’s Making Comics

– Wrote critiques of 12 classmates’ comics

– Researched, scripted, and thumbnailed a 4-page comic about the Crimean War

– Revised my thesis proposal

 

I’m really, really hoping this gives me enough of a reason to slack off for the rest of the week. Goddamn. I don’t know why I do this sometimes.

 

A Riddle.

Who’s got two thumbs, a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and is finally fucking done with finals for the year?

THIS GIRL.

Expect more updates now that there’s actually time for that sort of thing. The time is upon us for drawing and scanning and generally having a nice time of it. Woo!

To start the deluge, here’s a quick cover I created for the collection of IPRC collaborative comics.

We had our last critique session on Monday, with a visit from the extraordinarily talented Craig Thompson (!!!) and his awesome girlfriend, who works as an editor at Dark Horse. Getting to glimpse the phenomenal quantity of work that Craig produces was truly inspiring (and kind of terrifying) and seeing original inks for iconic pages from Blankets was akin to a religious experience. Also: Holy goodness, Habibi. That book’s going to be amazing.

Basically: There are some goddamn brilliant artists at work out there today.

My goal for the final was to complete the pencils for the next issue of Baggywrinkles, which I managed in the nick of time. The mere fact that I was putting aside academic work because comics had mentally taken a position of greater importance was thrilling, and led to some work that I’m super proud of. I’ll scan pages individually as next week rolls around so you can see how they changed from the thumbnails. Feedback from the class proved exceptionally helpful, and I think the final product is really going to benefit as a result.

For now, here’s a quick photo from the workbench:

Until soon!