New Year pin-up

May the paths o'er which you wander,
Be to you a joy each day.
Haste ye back we love you dearly,
Haste ye back on friendship's way.

McNeil Island Memoriam

From what my parents have told me, today is the last day that any residents will be living on McNeil Island, and I've been surprisingly weepy about it. It was a weird, lonely place to grow up, but it's also the only place where our family stayed put for more than five years. And I miss it.





I don't have any photos, but here's what I know about our old house:

The Ward House c.1900
South Coast Road Intersection of Buck Road, bldg. 104. This wood frame building, covered with horizontal slats, similar from the front to the Luhr Creek Outpost (no 27) is a one and one-half story residence with embellishments that include some clear-leaded glass windows, two projecting bay windows, a front porch overlooking the water and exposed roof-brackets that are more decorative than functional. An interesting back porch arrangement consists of two open entry areas and two volumetric spaces that function as internal areas. Long sweeping shed-type dormers are located at the front and rear of the house, with asphalt-shingle roof being gabled at both ends of the rectangular house. The front house has been recently rebuilt and a new foundation placed under it, Wood frame outbuildings located at the rear of the house.

And here's another old sketchook comic that I did, and I'm not sure that I ever posted. Drew this one back not long after I'd graduated from CCS, and was homesick for the ocean. BE PREPARED FOR OLD CRAPPY DRAWINGS:








And HERE is a more recent comic I did for the Daily Catch anthology at SPX, about taking the ferry from Steilacoom to home on the island, getting to see porpoises, and feeling lonely. 

Okay. I feel a little less like crying now. Maybe I can actually get some work done.

Happy New Year!

Hope I get the chance to make some more in 2011.

Happy Holidays!

Musicals are a problem

You'll be missed, Dirk Deppey

Today is Dirk Deppey's last day blogging for The Comic's Journal. While it's been made clear that the parting is amicable, and only happened because the magazine-turned-website can't afford him anymore, I'm still pretty torn up about it.

Dirk was the first real "comics industry" person I met, at my first convention, The Olympia Comics Festival, where I was a total embarrassment and had no idea what was doing. He was nice, took a copy of my comic and offered to show it to whoever was reviewing mini comics at TCJ then (that person probably either laughed at it or set it on fire or something, it was really bad).

Withouth Dirk writing Journalista...I don't really have a reason to visit TCJ's website anymore, unless I get a Google Alert or e-mail from a friend pointing me to a good review. But "Journalista" brought me to the site daily. I'm wondering how TCJ can afford to lose him?

More Wizard of Oz!

So remember last week when we all got to go see The Wizard of Oz at Northern Stage?


Dorothy Gale played by Veronica J. Kuehn

There's a few more of my sketches here.

And Jen Vaughn did a great write up of the event, with more sketches from Jon Chad and Jan Berger, at the Schulz Library blog.

And if you scroll to the bottom of this page, you'll see Melanie Gillman's expressive sketches and impression of the show.

Melanie Gillman

It's true.

And Sunday is the day of rest!

Hey, guess what? I finally got around to scanning the last quarter of my NaGraNoWriMo project. Actually, I had to scan it a couple of times because technology hates me.

Go read the whole thing HERE. I'm sorry it's so weird and depressing.



Okay, enough of this. I've got to go build a castle out of waffles (because that's what the holidays are all about).

Comics Night at the Theater

As of September I've lived in Vermont for five years now, and that got me thinking of all things I hadn't done yet even though this is such a small state. Like, I still haven't done the Champlain Chocolates tour or been to the Fairbanks Museum, or seen a show at Northern Stage, even though they're just down the street from me!

I'd also recently read about a program in Portland Oregon called "Comics Night at the Opera", where cartoonists where invited to the Portland Opera's dress rehearsals to sketch the performance. The idea was to give the performers a rehearsal audience, the cartoonists a chance to practice life drawing and see a show they wouldn't be able to otherwise afford, and for the theater to generate publicity for the show.

So, I decided to give it a shot and e-mailed Northern Stage with the idea. Luckily, their Community Engagement Manager, Kyle Silliman-Smith, didn't think I was crazy and totally made this happen. It was a blast!

Here's my sketches:





Here's the cast:

Glinda/Aunt Em, Jane Brockman
Elvira Gulch/Wicked Witch, Catherine Doherty
Professor Marvel/Oz/Henry, Jason Guy
The Tin Man, Robert Koutras
Dorothy Gale, Veronica J. Kuehn
The Scarecrow, Kevin Loreque
The Cowardly Lion, Ken Prymus
Toto, Sprinkles

About 20 CCS Students, Alumni, Faulty and Staff made it to the events. Here's some of their impressions:

Jen Vaughn
A couple people brought watercolors to sketch with, which was an awesome idea! I love Jen's drawings of the Lady Gaga-influenced tree and Oz citizen costumes.

Lena Chandhok
Lena managed to capture one of the costumes from the "Jitterbug" song, which was an fantastic dance number. I didn't draw anything during that scene, too busy sitting there all slack-jawed in amazement.

Bryan Stone
Bryan actually manages to keep an almost-daily sketchblog (a feat unto itself) and his sketches went up in what seemed like minutes after the performance was finished.

I'll add more links as they come. But in conclusion- this event was great, you should see the show if you can (it runs until Jan 2nd) and I really hope that CCS and Northern Stage can do this again.

EDIT:
There's another post and more link here!

Sarah Polk

I need to draw a black and white illustration of Sarah Polk for a project. But after reading descriptions of her dinner parties like "glasses for six different wines, from pink champagne to ruby port and sauterne formed a rainbow around each plate", I really wanted to do some sketches in color.

NaGraNoWriMo- Catching up

I've scanned and posted up through page 74 over on the flickr set, check it out!

NaGraNoWriMo 2010- DONE!

Apologies for the radio silence, I was visiting family on the West Coast for two weeks with limited internet access. Plenty of time for drawing, though! I finished this year's NaGraNoWriMo project a 8:45 am on December 1st, so slightly behind schedule but I'm still happy with it. Above is a photo of the last page, with Georgie the dog as my witness (she's a good girl).

Now that I'm back home, I can get to work scanning and posting the rest of the pages!

Home stretch

A quick update- I'm in snowy Connell WA with the family, recovering from a turkey coma with just 15 pages left to go. I won't be able to scan them until I'm back in Vermont on December 3rd, but I'll make sure there's a witness to verify that I finished this thing on time.

NaGraNoWriMo- 8

More than half way there! Time to pick up the pace!

Comics Tool Review- Platinum Fountain Pen Converter

This year I decided to do the NaGraNoWriMo project with a brush pen, instead of felt pens like last year. This was instantly a mistake, since our town is going through a "brush pen refill drought", with several of the current cartooning students having decided to ink their entire thesis with the Pentel Pocket Brush.

A pack of refill cartridges at the store in town is $7 here, and the Platinum Fountain Pen Converter only cost $7.50, so I decided to give it a shot.



It doesn't fit my Pentel Pocket Brush, but fits the Kuretake no.8 (and its pricier cousins, the no. 13 and no.40)



I don't like the Kuretake as much as the Pentel Pocket Brush. They both have hair tips, but the Pentel has a nicer point, and the belly of the brush isn't as full with the Kuretake.



Filled it up with Speedball ink. Hope this doesn't clog it up in the long run, I should buy some sumi ink.



Here's the assembled pen and a doodle. Everything is working fine for now, and I'm happy considering the price, if I use it five times it'll be worth it. I'll post more if I encounter any problems.

NaGraNoWriMo- 7

I'm up to page 50 (if you count the chapter break page, and I'm going to because this is hard enough as it is), and back on schedule!



See the whole story so far at the Flickr album.

NaGraNoWriMo-6

I was out sick for a few days, but I'm catching up! Ten more pages to the story, over at the flickr album.

NaGraNoWriMo- 5

Still plodding along. Don't run with knives, kids. Especially stolen ones.

You can read the whole story so far here.

NaGraNoWriMo-4

I was sitting on the couch, watching a movie and laying out panel borders, when Jonch leans over and is like "Draw me on this page." And I'm all "That doesn't make any sense, you don't even know what page that is." But he insists. So here you go.

NaGraNoWriMo- 3

Hasn't been a NaGraNoWriMo update in a few days, because I've had too many guests! Our favorite mystery man was in town Tuesday to turn over the reigns of I Know Joe Kimpel (not to me, that's too much of a challenge) on his way out to the west coast. Good luck, dude!
Then yesterday I had six people over for dinner in my tiny apartment. Which was a crazy idea because I only own two chairs, but totally it worked out.

The weekend will be all about eating leftovers and drawing this comic. I promise.

In the meantime, there are two other friends who have taken on the challenge:
David Yoder is working on his fictional vaudeville autobiography, and Josh Lees is going all space cowboy this month!