Etsy Store

Hey! I finally caught up to the rest of the internet and opened an Etsy store.

It's been a while since I've sold paintings online. I used to sell pretty regularly on eBay, and my move from Olympia to Vermont was partially funded through those sales.

Any money I make (if any) from selling work on Etsy will go to pay off my medical debt from an emergency room visit in early 2008. I have insurance, but there was a $1,500 deductible that I'm slowly paying off. This is a lot of money for a cartoonist/library assistant (insert your standard rant about the problems with the U.S. health care system here).

More paintings will be added as they're scanned. Thanks for looking!

Queen of Blood!

I am not quite ready for Halloween to be over yet!

Based on this old movie poster.

In other news, I have come up with a very stupid plan to keep me drawing all November.
Details tomorrow!

Two for Tuesday!

I took Monday off for Memorial Day. To make up for it, here's two of my favorite public domain children's classics.

Rootabaga Stories by Carl Sandberg.

"Jimmy the Flea was a climber. He climbed skyscrapers and flagpoles and smokestacks and was a famous steeplejack. Blixie Bimber liked him because he was a steeplejack, a little, but more because he was a whistler.
Every time Blixie said to Jimmy, 'I got the blues—whistle the blues out of me,' Jimmy would just naturally whistle till the blues just naturally went away from Blixie."

Ozma of Oz by Frank L. Baum.

"Now I must explain to you that the Princess Langwidere had thirty heads--as many as there are days in the month. But of course she could only wear one of them at a time, because she had but one neck."

Monday Portraits 4

"Persuasion" is my favorite Jane Austen book. I realize half the internet has the hots of Mr. Darcy (or rather, Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy in the BBC miniseries), but I think Captain Wentworth is a much more interesting character (or rather, Ciarán Hinds as Captain Wentworth in the 1995 film).

Monday Portraits 3

I never said I was sticking to fiction!

Guests of the Sheik, an ethnography of an Iraqi Village, by Elizabeth Warnock Fernea. Mrs. Fernea and her husband (an anthropologist) lived in a Iraq from 1956-58. As he wasn't able to interact with the women, his wife did that part of his research for him, and wrote several books on her experiences there and in other Middle Eastern countries- all of which are wonderful!

She later became a Professor of. Comparative Literature and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. She passed away this December, and I regret never writing her.

Notes on the image- I made the women's hair and skin so red, because Mrs. Fernea writes about them dyeing it with henna. Also, in her first visit to the Sheik's harem,the women are afraid of her and keep their abaya's on (which they usually only wear outside), except the head wife, Selma. Mrs. Fernea is given the nickname "Beeja", as the women deem "Elizabeth" too hard to pronounce.

Monday Portraits 2

From the Prisoner of Zenda by Anthony Hope. Subtitle, "Being the History of Three Months in the Life of an English Gentleman". It's the first of three novels Hope set in the fictional country of Ruritania, which is where we get the term "Ruritanian Fiction". The copy I have is illustrated by Charles Gibson.

Another next week!

Monday Portraits 1

I work in a library, and, when I'm not drawing, I spend much of my time reading.
Having recently enjoyed several other people's portrait series, I decided to do one of my own.


20 portrait from my favorite books! They're gouache on toned paper. I'll post a new one every Monday. First is Titus Groan, from the Gormenghast Trilogy, by Mervyn Peake. This is Lady Fuchsia Groan and her new brother, Titus.

"...a girl of about fifteen with long, rather wild black hair. She was gauche in movement and in a sense ugly of face, but with how small a twist might she not suddenly have become beautiful. Her sullen mouth was full and rich -- her eyes smoldered."

Titus is just described as ugly.