Speaking of girlfriends, happy birthday, Caitlin Martin! Your name rhymes!!

Hi friends living the comics dream, and others who accomodate it. Hello spambots and spamesses. Good evening, internet. I have a new plan for life. I won’t go into detail lest I jinx it. Yes, thanks for asking, it does involve cardio-dance-Pilates videos streaming from Netflix.

Starting next Tuesday: A Promise Kept! Look out for a Red Flower in your underpants or a Sticky Substance in your sheets, because this website is hitting it’s awkward phase. I’ll serialize my Petrified Girlfriend comic with the frequency of pimples and pubic hairs, a page a week.

Yes, Petrified may not have been written with the intent of being dragged out that way, but at any rate it’ll give me a chance to find the story another path out into the ether. I want to finish this thing. I hope you’ll enjoy it, and I’m sorry if you’ve already read the second chapter (in O&L #3) because that’s where I’m starting. If you want to refresh yourself on the first chapter, now’s the time to do it. You may notice that between chapters 1 & 2, the style changes. A lot. You’ll have to live with it for now. If you want a consistent look, well, get the damn graphic novel! In, like, 2027 or so.

Over the summer I did some guest instructing at CCS’s Summer Workshops. I taught one class on freelancing alongside Alec Longstreth. We’d done it once before. I also supplemented Jon Chad demonstrating nib anatomy and technique with a lesson on brush inking. It’s always a thrill to get in front of a class of eager grown-ups and talk about comics. Sure, it takes getting over a strong sensation of Who Am I to Tell These People Anything?, but sharing comics energy with enthusiastic fellow cartoonists has got it’s rewards, too.

So I inked these both as live demos. Later I went back in with a pen to tackle the backgrounds and some details. Then I colored em because Everything is Funnier in COLOR!! Even a pair of distressed Catholics. [Buchwald the Repentant Demon, ever-developing character at top. Wilma Whistlepig, who I miss drawing in Farmy Acres, bellow. If you don't know, now ya know.]

There’s been a whole lot else going on since the days when I was last a steady blogger. For instance, at SPX back in September, I debuted a new Oak & Linden mini featuring the Grown-Up Babies. It’s called Dental Damned!!, and if you follow this blog, you’ve read it…

…in BLACK & WHITE!! You poor sucker! It’s a full-color comic! And yesterday I posted it on my website. (I also posted a recent illustration, with layout and colors by Michelle Ollie, and featuring a cousin of Wilma Whistlepig.) Some day soon, when I get my grubby fingers on some capital, I’ll print some more Damned minis and provide them for sale at my shoppe. But why wait until then, when you can read it now for free? Am I a great businessman or what?? I’ll also eventually show you the original art for the covers, and I’ll blather on for a bit about why I’ve grown to love yellow ink.

I drew this in homage to Lawrence Lee Dirk III’s Grim Bard. Last year at the CCS Telegraph Studio, he would warm up for drawing his comics by making self portraits in the adopted styles of his classmates, or eventually drawing the Bard inhabiting his piers’ comics. Then, I think he got back to doodling super heroes like a good member of the Merry Marvel Marching Society. I gave the image above to Law after he had whipped up this little number:

As a longtime superhero reader, Lawrence is a teasing student of showmanship and merchandising. He loves making peripheral products, like posters and plush dolls, archly posing himself as a snake oil salesman pushing his goods on unsuspecting kids.

I think some of his mocking commercialism rubbed off on my Baby Pat material, which has better allowed me to have my own way with autobiography, and I’d say the babies have been better for it. Memoir is a form I don’t take naturally to. It can feel desperate or needy to me for middle class white kids to slavishly record and draw their own unremarkable existence…but maybe I’d better back off that rant for now. Anyhow, our’s is a time of Self as Product.

So anyway, Lawrence countered with Wilma Whistlepig (of much Farmy Acres fame). And get this, he even cut out little stand legs for her so she could admonish me from next to my drawing table. I couldn’t best it. I haven’t. And then at the end of the year, he gave each of his classmates a mini of his complete, funny, Golden Book-sized The Grim Bard and the Immortal King’s Crescendo. So now I double owe him! I’ve also been having lots of fun following Law’s blog, even though I’ve seen everything he’s posted, just because he’s a delightful writer.

Well, after all this, my boyfriend Ben got a bit jealous and made a mashup with three of his own characters impersonating three of mine–one of whom has not yet even made her debut to the world outside White River Junction. (So look out, cause Anita’s cooommmmmin!!*)

I love Ben and I love his Grump Toast comics. From bottom-left that’s Unfortunate Face as Izzy, Asphalt Monroe as Anita and Pinky Palms as Steve. Ben actually drew this when I was pretty deep down in the dumps, feeling both stretched thin and disappointed in myself.

In particular, I felt like I’d stopped seeing any progress on Petrified Girlfriend. I’m in the middle, which people always say is the hardest part. I’m ready to persevere, now, and this week’s New Yorker profile on Pixar writer-director (/new-delver-into-live-action-adventure) Andrew Stanton was inspiring to me. The article [pay link, sorry], by Tad Friend, compares the Pixar production method with the old Studio System. I love sentimental Old Hollywood stuff, and I love most of Pixar’s movies. I want to keep sight of their spirit of upholding a duty to entertain, and to always edit, revise, and improve.

*To the tune of “Rosalita,” not “Santa Claus.” [BACK]

I’ve been really refraining from making any of those typical “Sorry I haven’t updated” posts–and believe me, it’s been a struggle–but Jeezum if I haven’t had a hard time getting back into the swing of blawging after my thesis hiatus. But the worst part about those apologies is that they assume there’s some vast audience just clamoring for new content from some unknown artist, and then feeling disappointed every day when there isn’t.

Anyhow, lately I’m catching up on projects I’ve wanted to get to since back in May, but you’ll see them when they’re ready. Meantime, did you know that a little-big con happened not long ago? Called SPX? Did you know that sweetheart Rob Clough said I was an artist to seek out there? Gahd, what a doll he is. He’s also reviewed my latest comics.

Well in other news, I’ve scanned a buncha doodles from the past year, but I’m not sure how I’ll present em to yizzall (here’s one for now –> ). Still got another big stack more to scan, so really, at least I shouldn’t be lacking in visuals on here for a while. Trynna get back in that weekly swing of things.

Also trynna remember how to get things done without a deadline…to be honest, trynna learn it. My secret thus far has always been to actually impose deadlines, for posting things online or bringing things to a convention, or what-have-you. Or to go to school. Maybe I’ll start promising comics to you, dear The Internet. Howzzat? After all, I really haven’t kept you up-to-date with what I’ve drawn over the last year. Why did this just occur to me now??

Back in June, Caitlin and I made this birthday card for our dear Devon. Cait collaged some old screen prints, some rock rabbits (cute, right?) from Wild Life the World Over (1950), and money. Then I drew the Queen Rock Rabbit. Fun in different media, you guys! That’s the theme. Now hold on tight because I’m about to gush.

Remember how I said this was gonna be the Summer of Collaboration? Well, I did. And well, it has been, and actually still is. Just as I started to feel like I’d taken on too many projects, some started to finished, and I’ve realized that this was exactly how I wanted to follow up two years of intensive cartooning study and practice. I got what I wished for! At times, I felt anxious, or like I wasn’t doing any of my own work, but with some distance–and some time spent with family and with old friends–I realized that it’s worked out perfectly, and in many ways better than I could have hoped.

For one, I’ve been a color assistant for Joe Lambert, whose work (posted on Drawn!) got me to take CCS seriously in the first place. Last year, after some discussion that included my offering to be the Center for Cartoon Studies’ indentured servant, James Sturm offered me the gig. Oh, what? Work with my friend, a cartoonist whose work I continue to whole-heartedly admire and aspire to? Yes, please.

Joe’s written and drawn the latest in the Cartoon Studies Presents series of biographies published by Hyperion. It’s about Helen Keller and her mentor Annie Sullivan, but it’s a whole lot more than The Miracle Worker. I’ve tried to treat this project like any other work, which means striving to do it as fast and as well as I can (productivity! America!). So, my read so far has been only cursory, and has focused on finding clues to help my coloring. Even still, it made me cry twice. I can’t wait to sit down and read the finished book.

Jess Abston as Tibby Bonet as Paradisa in Nymphonomena. Photo by Colleen Frakes.

Doing the first pass of colors (Joe has been revising them, and our pal Dakota has co-assisted on the last leg of the project), I felt like a cinematographer, trying to help establish mood or location with lighting and set colors. For the swelter and hazy humidity of a Southern summer, I pushed up the atmospheric perspective. For certain scenes, I aimed at romanticism, or grim drudgery, or shock. I don’t know how much of this Joe has chosen to use, but he’s the director, you know? He doesn’t have to take every suggestion I throw at him.

Speaking of movies, this summer the Nymphonomenauts have been taking our little collaboration about a gender-bending space rock opera in new, exciting directions. More on that later.

In the meantime, I’ve mostly taken a break from drawing comics. I think I needed it. I’ve been doodling idly in my sketchbook, making new oddities, and thinking vaguely about character designs. I’ve been building Legos and coloring/printing some of my comics from the past year. I’ve been reading comics like crazy, and devouring anything I can find about comics online and in the Schulz Library. And now, I miss drawing them! I can’t wait! Sure, I’ve still been making a new Farmy strip every three weeks (and I think this running collaboration is going to better and better places), but I’m truly excited to make some new little comedies, and I’m starting to think that maybe I won’t give up on Petrified Girlfriend, even.

—- ++++ —-

As things turned out, we became close friends, and he and his wife Becca are one no-foolin aspect of what makes a prolonged stay in White River Junction appealing. Did I mention that Caitlin and I are sticking it out in Vermont for another year? Well, we are. [BACK]

If you didn’t go to art school, that means making things grayer/lighter/bluer as they recede into the distance. Aren’tcha glad you know now?? [BACK]

[Props to Jen May, who loved to say that and then pump the Jock Jams, once upon an undergrad.]

Here it is, folks. The culmination of a year’s work at the Center for Cartoon Studies. This thesis book wouldn’t be nearly as neat-o without the hard work of my best half, Caitlin. She diligently cross-stitched eight individual covers; three for the thesis committee,* one each for the library, archive and gallery,** one for CCS Director James Sturm and one for my masterful thesis advisor, Brett Warnock. Caitlin zipped through British Period Drama after British Period Drama while she embroidered, and would come home from work, cook, eat, and get right to business. She is a wonder and they look lovely.

The stitching on the front was based mostly some sample alphabets I found online. Thanks to flickr-er “superminx” for posting the inspiration for the shadowed title lettering. The single-thread  “comics by…” part I invented from whole-cloth, after seeing some examples of script and sans-serif lettering styles designed for gridded fabrics using a single thread, as opposed to a series of Xes.

The look of the front cover sorta dictated the design of the pages within. I chose Gotham Condensed Thin as my body type, since it feels like a cousin to that tall, skinny, humanist thread lettering that I made up.

Hicough & Belch in color, as they appear on Top Shelf 2.0.

Here’s a sneak peek at Petrified Girlfriend chapter 3: Invasive Species, which will come out in some form or another some time, I think.

And can’t for-get about the Farrrrm-yy Acres.

– – – –

*President Michelle Ollie, and cartoonist-instructors Alec Longstreth and Jason Lutes. Thanks to Alec for letting me keep his copy, and for looking forward to getting the individual books of the separate projects as they come out. Which, I assure you, he will, or my name isn’t…!

Aaaaahhh…whatever it is.

**Images from the CCS gallery show, featuring both original and finished art by each of the graduates, are up (thanks be to Josh Kramer) at the Summer Showcase blog. Lotssa talent and lotssa interesting work up there, my lovelies. (See if you can’t spot your red-faced Irish host, too. Oh, and his work.)