Monthly Archives: April 2018

Here Comes the Sun!

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This blog is on fire. And it’s lit.

Even though teachers in Arizona are walking out on Thursday #RedforEd and don’t know when they’ll be back, it was time to change out the early spring bulletin board for the late spring bulletin board. The cool, blue aesthetic of the early spring bulletin board did not reflect the reality of the temporal environment, and also the letters were coming off. This design is more accurate for the next month. The fox there is something foreboding in the color scheme, like: WARNING! Arizona summers are brutal. But I like them.

This piece was pretty straight forward. I used a protractor, a ruler, and a folded piece of construction paper to get the shape of the red bottom layer perfect. Then I used that layer as a guide to get the middle orange and top yellow layers to match up, and cut the random little sparks that I added on top for more depth. For the lettering, I drew freehand and then cut all the layers at the same time. I doubled up the paper for the letter that repeated, meaning that the letter E involved cutting 12 sheets at the same time. One of the Hs is upside down and the centering is a bit off but otherwise the lettering is my favorite part. The image took 4 hours and the lettering took 3.

Tomorrow I’ll go back with the rubber cement and the stapler and make sure everything’s tacked down. Although this board will probably only be up a month before I do the summer one, it’s a little known fact that rubber cement becomes increasingly less adhesive the closer you get to 100°. And it’s getting close to 100° around here.

Return of the ’52 Ford Bus!

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The man’s got a plan. And a van. But he’s not getting this bus.

Just a quick shout-out to the ’52 Ford Bus T-shirt! This is the one I drew for The Man after he saw the Vampire Bat posing gothily on a real ’52 Ford Bus and became unreasonably obsessed with owning a ’52 Ford Bus. I told him this was the only rusty old bus he was going to get while he was married to me. I did it out of love. Tough love.

And he finally got around to acquiring one, and here you see a rare shot of The Man modeling like the handsome hunk of manhood he is. I really neglect hyping my RedBubble shop, where you can buy this, and other fine designs, on a wide variety of quality products. Someone should get this design on a onesie. It would be charming.

Someone did buy a onesie with my Athena, Goddess of Wisdom design. I thought it was the Fox but he said it wasn’t, and then I saw that the customer had actually sent me a message about how happy he was to find an Athena onesie because his daughter was named Athena. You go, baby Athena. You are the most classical baby on the block.

You can get your own ’52 Ford Bus here!

Laughing Deer

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I don’t know if that deer is laughing at me or with me.

You know you’ve spent too much time on the Wacom tablet when you try to control-Z a piece of paper.

This is just a quick sketch I did before I went to Florida (I’m back now) based on a selfie I took the week before. Although I still have some Dragon Comics to finish, I’m also working more in pencil lately, trying to be less dependent on the tablet and Photoshop. Been working on a big project that might take the rest of the year, but still trying to update this blog semi-regularly. Seriously, I drew this picture just to remind myself that I could draw.

The original photo was taken at a place called Rooster Cogburn’s Ostrich Ranch, about 45 minutes north of Tucson. It’s a tourist attraction petting zoo where you can feed little deer, miniature donkeys, goats, sheep, bunnies, parakeets, lorikeets, ducks, and sting rays. I might be missing some creatures. Oh, yeah, the stupid ostriches, which I ignore, because the rest of the attraction is much more fun. You get a lot of joy for $10. The deer are my favorite, but the sting rays are pretty cool. And the bunnies are bunnies.

Clue: Breakfast Edition

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You can see it in her face. Mrs. Butterworth is *guilty*. GUILTY! She always seemed a bit too sweet.

If this isn’t simultaneously the funniest and stupidest idea I’ve ever had, I’d be happy to entertain alternate nominations for those superlatives. Anyway, Colonel Mustard looks like a bitter pill.

If Mr. Plum turns up dead tomorrow, it will be because he was in the icebox looking delicious, so sweet and so cold.

Don’t Take Me Down

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And did you further know what I am applying to myself right now?

This one started out as an extra page for the American Salvage book, a little introduction to the history of and academic discourse about comics that could explain the project’s intellectual value, but I could never figure out the last panel, how to bring it full circle or tie it in to the rest of the material. Like, where was this narrative going? Was there any joke in it? And how many copyright violations did I dare produce?

In for a penny…I drew all the licensed characters. I believe that this comic constitutes fair use but you know fair use is only for people who can afford lawyers.

Tonight I just decided to draw something for the last panel. I don’t know if this comic succeeds in saying what it wants to say, but at least it’s finished.