That’s right, you guessed it! I’ve made a long-overdue update to my portfolio page, with…

1 | A T-shirt design for my broseph Dan’s band, BGosh. I drew this back in November, and I just got word that after many delays, it’s being printed.
2 | The cover to an anthology published by Foreign Affairs featuring essays from the magazine.
3 | Another banner for another adventure in the History of Deeds done beyond the Sea by Joseph Kopta.

On another note, a particularly astute reader/father pointed out that I have a certain penchant for the word “bittersweet.” Some research in the Frog Blog archives located in the basement of the Pat Barrett Center for Introspection at Solipsist University has revealed that, yes, I might have exhausted the term. The study revealed five instances of the contraction, three of them in the past summer alone. All efforts will be made to expand the Frog Blog vocabulary and find another way to express the joy and sadness felt especially at parties and events marking departures.

Oh, shit! Bet you didn’t think I’d hitcha with the Greenday!! Well guess what?? Today I finished the second chapter of Petrified Girlfriend! Yes, yes, I know I “finished” it back in the spring, but take a look at what I’m talking about. Here are a few sample panels that my cohorts at the Center for Cartoon Studies (the poor saps) got at the beginning of May.

And now, here’s what you, the faceless masses (my reason for living!), will get to smudge between your grubby little fingers come this Autumn.

That’s all for now! I’ve got other things to do! Away with you all, I’m a very busy, very…very powerful, and very important man!!

These are the notes to myself I have taped above my drafting table. They’re normally squeezed between triangles, a cutting mat, T-square, and some ellipses and curves I never use any more but keep crucifying from long thin nails in each new apartment of every new year.

I think of these missives to myself in the voice of a coach (except for the little one, but we’ll get to that). Specifically one who’s red haired and balding (with a fierce patch of curly neck hair, macheted below his neckline every few weeks). A baby faced and small lacrosse coach/admissions councilor. One with a soft voice that could, through fiery intensity, be brought to a tenor roar. Usually this was in furiously despairing disappointment, but every once in a while it was in uncontainable, genuine excitement. His name’s Sam Gaudet and he would always wear a bow tie to his day job and at games, but like a real jock, I always called him Coach.

That’s the thing I miss most about high school: having a coach. He’s a man that every committed student athlete is a little bit in love with. We look to them for approval like cats that kill rodents and present them to their masters. We’d never admit how much we care about Coach’s reaction. And we’re jealous of his attention, like rival siblings. The other thing I miss is caring about hip hop. Which is why I thought it was still worth posting that little scrap that predates the motivational posters in my studio space.

Here it is, at long last, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, I present to you a fully gesticulated, and subsequently developed, COVAH!

Now come marvel at this wonder of wonders, this stupendously executed specimen of inter-roommate molestation (that’s groping, folks): The Grown Up Babies in The Land with no Women: Oo-White! Rivah! Junctiooooooon! The strip will appear in Caboose, an ab-so-lutely free-of-charge comics supplement to your local MoCCA festival!

Have all you wonderful people not had your fancies tickles enough yet? Might I point you to yet another example of the scientific proof, that’s “proof!” folks, that cartoonists can all get along? Well, then I’ll direct you to an ode to brotherhood and a sonnet to camaraderie,  Tag! Team! Comiiiiiiiiiics! Now sporting a glorious cover by none other than Dennis Pacheko!

And if you’re just absolutely itching to have comics barked to you this weekend, come to the Feast of the Fests, the MoCCA Fest! Table G4! I won’t actually yell things at you! I’m a really nice guy, I swear!!

Sorry my posts have been a bit sporadically lately. There have not only been a whole buncha deadlines, but also there’s been a crazy string of unseasonably warm weather in the V-T (talkin 70s–even 80º!!). I’m also sorry to say they’re gonna keep on bein sporadic until May! I’ll try to keep bringing you something new once a week, at least. I just don’t wanna let nobody down. This might be bad timing, but I’m also starting in on this newfangled thing, the “twittle,” the “tweedle?” Whata you call it? Anyhow, enough of that. Tweet and Retweet went out in a boat, Tweet fell off, who was–http://twitter.com/paddymacjr, OK????

Well, there is plenty of news. Big news! All of it related to this first item: I’ll be at table G4 at MoCCA Fest next weekend, so if you’re in the New York area, please stop on by. It’s Saturday and Sunday at the “Fightin 69th” Regiment Armory on Lexington Ave between 25th and 26th. I’ll be debuting Oak & Linden issue #2 there, which’ll be available at the shop after I get back. And! my work will also be appearing in a few anthologies:

1. Caboose, a tabloid-size extravaganza all about White River Jct, VT, distributed for free
2. Tag Team Comics, “a round robin cartooning adventure” that blends factory-style job separation with jam comic togetherness (a full description awaits you at the other end of the link)
3. San Papel–Westerns! And perfect bound! I drew the cover, remember?

Mayhap this will pique your interest until next weekend. It’s the new Oak & Linden cover some time in its second trimester. I’ll post the finished baby juuuuust before the actual Fest, so I hope your breath is bated!

Well, I’ve done it. I made an internety webstore. Right now I only have my comics available, but in the coming weeks I’ll be adding original art, prints, T-shirts and other curios for you to clutch in your rabid, stuff-deprived little paws. Tell your friends! The first one’s free! No Credit? No problem! Looking forward to serving you with an API CMYK RGB account structured to fit your needs. [ shop.patbarrett.com ]

Annnnnd, howda ya like this? A pitch for a kid’s book! About Ireland’s original badass, Finn MacCool! As you can see, I’m really into doing these watercolors right now, and I think that separate paper for the colors technique is really working wonders. Oo! Plus, for the black uncial (Celtic) lettering, I actually used a calligraphy pen, instead of faking it with different Rapidographs like I usually do. The upshot is that it not only looks better, but also is a lot faster to do! We’re making progress here, folks.

Youse can enlarge this last one.

Alrightch’all, I know I’ve only been giving you dribs and drabs lately. Hell, just a bunch of sketchbook doodles. I know. And I’m sorry. It’s time we got to some meat and potatoes. Or at least some seitan and wild rice. Would you like to see how I made another cover drawing, with colored inks and all? Well tough noogies, ’cause that’s what you’re getting!

I was asked by fellow CCSer/Springsteen fanatic Nomi Kane to draw the cover for an anthology she edited featuring stories set in a fictional Arizona town called San Papel. It was inspired by a papercraft kit assistant editor Jon Fine was assembling at the end of last semester. Despite these humble, cute beginnings, Tales from San Papel is filled with some pretty tough stories of predatory people in the mean, wild West. And some talking animals.

I’m not gonna go into as much detail concerning tools or the sketching process this time as I did with the Oak & Linden #1 cover, but I’ve got lots of pictures to show you, and lots of them you can click to see bigger. Suffice it to say that the pre-production was long and tortuous, with lots of different concept scribbles, and lots more of monogram sketches that I didn’t use for anything.

Then I spent a day making a big chunk of Victorian Arts & Crafts-y text, only to scrap it because it took up too damn much space (plus all the creators are credited in the table of contents, their individual pieces, and a contributors page at the back, so this would probably be some seriously narcissistic over kill on the cover).

I tried to make up for time I’d lost making that by rushing headfirst into the actual cover drawing, with little more than a doodle of a coyote twisted up in some barbed wire to guide me. That was a mistake.

I suppose it isn’t terrible, but I felt like it needed more breathing room, that the image wasn’t clear, that the coyote’s body should have more of a sense of twisting and bending over itself, and that the page design could use some bolder shapes. So then I did some actual thumbnail sketches, flipped over the piece of bristol I was drawing on, and drew the following.

Now for the inks, with a good helping of white out. I drew the ear at least three times before I liked it, and the coyote’s back I eventually had to paste-up with some new paper. This is more what my inks usually look like (as opposed to the Oak & Linden drawing, which I was crazy careful with because I did inks and colors on the same piece of paper). You can see I keep my pencils fairly loose and make a lot of changes at this stage (check out the buildings and mountains, and the coyote’s head). I don’t know if this is artsy-fartsy talk, but I think it keeps some spontaneity in the line.

Then I drew the title, on a separate piece of paper, which is unusual for me. In this case, I did the cover drawing at print size. I wanted to draw the lettering at “half up” so I could give it the detail that it deserves. So I did.

I put ‘em together with Photoshop, and here it is: the cover in glorious black & white, trimmed to eighth-inch bleeds.

Now, this time I tried an old-school comics coloring technique I’ve learned here at CCS. I printed the inks in 50% cyan on a sheet of watercolor paper, and then colored on that. The true old-fashioned technique is to to also print the inks in black on a transparency which you can use to see what the color will look like with the black over it. I don’t have any transparencies for my inkjet printer, and I didn’t want to face the below-zero winds of Vermont to get down to a laser printer at school last night. So I did without. I did have some trouble. When I wet the paper, I lifted a lot of the cyan ink and spread it everywhere. I don’t know if I should have waited longer to put water to the thing, or if inkjet ink really hates printing onto sized paper, or what, but consider yourselves warned if you plan to try this sort of thing. Anyhow, here that is.

Put ‘em all together and whattayou get?

New year, new beer, y’know? I’m trying to figure out the best way to set up a “shop” on my site, are you excited? Thinking I should probably find something without so many fees as Etsy. I have Oak & Linden issue 1 camping out there and so far it has cost me $4.00. Does anybody have any recommendations? How many questions can I squeeze into one post?

And yeah, I’m gonna keep these doodle posts going for another week or two.

Here’es another Segar-esque strip, drawn in class. Hour anna half? Hour forty-five? It was quicker, and in some ways I think that made it truer to the source material. Def the hardest part of being a waiter is remembering all the different people’s different needs.

Here’s this comic. The faces are inconsistent and I’m sorry. But, you might recognize the actors. And maybe that’s part of the problem?