Wednesday, February 17, 2010

ROTA race flyers


IF you happen to find yourself in Richmond Virginia on March 4th, and if you happen to love the shit out of your bicycle, then come on down and hang out with me and my homies in ROTA for their second annual really fun RACE TO PURGATORY, with sweet prizes!

DATE CHANGE: MARCH 14!!

mark your calendars!

Thursday, February 11, 2010

Jimmy Lounging


I wanna do more experiments with gradients. I hardly ever finish something off in black and white or greyscale anymore... a habit I'm going to have to learn to break if I'm trying to get cheap and DIY about publishing any of my comics.


Monday, February 8, 2010

picture post!


I think it's official that I have now spent 1/2 of my total money pool on comic books instead of paying off my student loans. ah ha... ha ha ha... hahaha... hahahahaHAHAHA ! oh no.



recent reading both old and new:

Last Call by Vasallis Lolos
completely nuts. This guy's inking drives me crazy, I must have read this little buddy a dozen times and I still can't stop looking at it! It makes my eyeballs feel soooooo goooooodddd. Lolos is maybe my favorite illustrator right now.

Notes for a War Story by Gippi
I love love love love love Gippi's scribbly linework. His sensitive watercolor over top gives it an effortless, and yet somehow carefully premeditated, thoughtful feel. Plus his stories are so sad and good, in weird slice-of-life ways, even when the book itself is about something as major as what war does to people.

Unloveable by Esther Pearl Watson
more bathroom reading, really, but every girl (and sometimes guy) has felt like Tammy at least once. I feel like we were friends in another life.

A Drifting Life by Yoshihiro Tatsumi
Taking in both Tezuka and Tatsumi to figure out who is the real grandfather of japanese comics. My experiences thus far with Tatsumi have been thought provoking and mortally depressing. I'm learning all about gekiga, cool!

Red Blinds the Foolish by Est Em
a weird and rare BL novel that tells a couple of really provocative, well written, and realistic stories. Especially poignant is one short about a grown man whose lover, a shoemaker, discovers an old cherished family memory, and makes his sean connery-lookin ass boyfriend a pair of beautiful red high heels.

MW by Osamu Tezuka
Scary, disturbing, and on/off hilarious. Tezuka's childlike style throws me off a lot of the time, making it weirder and worse when something really especially sick happens. But I think that might be what I like so much about his stuff. It's going to take me a lifetime to collect his complete body of work. I think I also like that.





New House plants from the Lowes for my drawing table! That honking cactus-lookin palm was only 10 $$$! Say whaaaaattttttt? Thanks damaged plant cart. Brian and I are planting an herb garden in our kitchen window too, look out springtime!

Expect better photos next time, as these are courtesy of my laptop photobooth. Macs are better than PCs, the end.


Saturday, February 6, 2010

self portrait



I realized today that I hardly ever draw pictures of myself that aren't giant wads of dough with legs. Hahaha! I totally did myself some favors here! But this was a pretty fun 30 minute experiment. I look like some kind of crazy squishy somnambulist.

Friday, February 5, 2010

Afrodisiac full poster

Here's the full poster version of my entry for Velocity Comic's AFRODISIAC book release contest! And guess who won? Yeah, that's right, go ahead. THIS girl. uh-huh.


The event itself was small because of terrible snowy weather, but good. Actually, I always tend to enjoy things more when they are on the small side, due to my inability to always be able to navigate around awkwardly loitering nerds. I hate awkward loitering, and find myself doing a lot of it whenever at a signing of any kind. So it really doesn't help the situation when there's ten other dudes doing the same thing, except way taller and/or fatter and weirder. Not that I can't appreciate my own kind, but I sort of wish more lady nerds had come out. Street Angel was an important project for me as a lady, especially a lady who has had her fair share of destitute living situations. But whatever, their loss. Sorry nerd ladies.

So Jim Rugg was obviously there, celebrating and signing copies of AFRO, as well as talking up Street Angel. It seemed strange to me how many people were there that hadn't even heard of Rugg's work. What? Why trudge through waist high street-sludgy snow in the rainy dark just on a whim? Though maybe those were just the people I was lurking on while attempting not to awkwardly loiter. A difficult task, when Velocity is all chockablock full of comic books instead of floorspace, and every other dude there was like some hugely tall yet softspoken geek over the age of 26.
In retrospect, there were a lot of questions for Jim that I had that I ended up completely blanking on, when it was my turn to stutter stupidly for six or seven minutes about how I loved Street Angel so so much and especially issue 4 and especially when this thing or that thing happened etc etc. But hindsight's 20-20, they say, and I'm left wondering only if the one photo I saw someone take with me in it will turn out with me looking glazed and pink in the face, with dribbles of sweat or spit somehow irreversibly dripping down the side of my fat face. I feel like I'm 14 years old, kind of.

EDIT: that picture. AWKWARD LOITERING EVERYWHERE

Rick Spears was also there, who is a little younger and who I've met before, so it was both a relief and a lot of fun to talk to him about his projects. He's a pretty nice guy! I had a good time, I think! And winning the contest was a nice thing. Jim apparently liked my print enough to ask to keep it, so I'm stoked! I'm happy he likes it! I actually can't really comprehend it, but I can appreciate.

Hello Velocity comics, hello hello! Tomorrow I return for my winnings. Thanks Pat! yessssss... yessssss

Thursday, February 4, 2010

Harris Mendel CD design



For my friend Harris's CD release! His shit hits the shelf Feburary 26th, check him out!
http://www.myspace.com/hornandtusk

I like making CD designs... somehow the organizational structure makes me feel zen.

Spera-comic.com

ch-ch-check it out! My part in the Spera online comic anthology can finally get posted because part II is now officially live! See some sweet writing by Josh Tierney, and a host of other cool artists in the complete story at spera-comic.com


it really is a cool project, a lot of really stupidly excellent people are involved. Look at it!

spera-comic.com
spera-comic.com
spera-comic.com

!!!

Afrodisiac poster tease



In light of my comic book store's release party for Jim Rugg and Brian Maruca's book AFRODISIAC, I decided to enter the event's illustration contest. Here is a small snippet of my entry, the whole of which I will post after it goes up at the event. I really love love love Street Angel, and I love my squeaky new copy of AFRODISIAC, but I think what I love the most is that they both feed into the history of the same fictional city. cool!

Read more about the event:
http://www.adhousebooks.com/
http://www.velocitycomics.com/

richmond, WUT WUT