Category: Uncategorized

A Visit in the Park

I taught a comic drawing class at Langara in the fall, and the big project was a four page comic. So I drew a four page comic as well, which was good as I didn’t draw much of anything for the three months I was teaching the class. I may put this story in Vinegar 41. It has been a while since I put fiction in an issue of Vinegar.

Don’t worry. I have not gotten deadly serious. I am still all about poo and fart jokes.

Here in the future

So this is 2019. Hard to believe we have been in the 2000s for almost 20 years. I guess I have done a lot of comics in that time. Looking back at my sketchbook from 2000, I already had notes for my comic The Adulation, which I wouldn’t draw until 2014. I was working at a dot com. Drew Jason and the Really Long Commute. Did my first comic for the internet, Down at the Black Box.

On the other hand over the past couple of months I have certainly not done a lot of comics. December was this mad scramble where I drew nothing. Just this past week I have finally gotten drawing a little again. Finally drew a couple of pages of cat comics, tentatively titled Yard Cats.

Things to Draw

When I don’t have an active comic project to ink away at, I will find myself looking for something to draw, to give myself something to do while I listen to a podcast. So here are some of the random things I have drawn recently.

Here is Mark Rothko. Someone posted a nice photo of him on twitter, so I tried to draw it.

Rothko

Manien buzzed my hair for me again, and I was trying to think of a Halloween costume, and I thought “El, from Stranger Things!”

Stranger Things

There is this website called Filmgrab, and its random post feature sometimes comes through for me when I am looking for something to draw. This is from Upstream Color, a movie which I might put in my top ten.

Upstream Color

At some point this year I was looking at a photo of all the different body shapes of Olympic athletes, and I think that planted the idea that it might be interesting to draw different women athletes. I found shot putters on youtube and boy they go through a lot of postures in a single throw! And they make great faces when they are lost in that moment of throwing. Then I did some javelin and discuss throwers too.

Shot Put 1

Shot Put 2

Shot Put 3

Javelin

Discus

I came across something claiming that Carl Jung was a spy in World War 2, and his codename was Agent 488. So I drew that secret agent.

Agent 488

After drawing lady athletes, I thought it might be fun to draw old time-y boxers for some reason. I couldn’t find much in the way of interesting photos of them though. I did find this.

Fisticuffs

A comic I’m trying to get rolling has a part involving a temple, so I drew this temple in India.

Temple

Another comic I’m developing has me looking at eco houses, including Earthships. Here is the Earthship Hive.

Earthship Hive

I was trying to find some more old time-y people to draw and eventually came across these Yukon gold rush gamblers.

Gold Rush Gamblers

Twin Peaks Roundup

Since Twin Peaks ended it is tempting to just watch/read endless interpretations of what was going on, especially the last episode. I like that the show is open and mysterious enough that people can project many different ideas onto it.

I don’t really have any profound thoughts on it all at this point, and as I heard David Lynch say in an interview, what’s important is what it means to YOU when you watch it. One thing that I read that I thought was interesting was that since it is 25 years later and the actors are all older, it gives a certain weight to it. The characters have had lives since we last saw them. Anyways, it was such a joy to have this show to watch all summer.

I have been working on material for a new issue of Vinegar. This will be issue 40! Here are a few pages I drew about my experience of watching the new Twin Peaks.

Twin Peaks Summer

Twin Peaks - Death of the Log Lady

The End of Twin Peaks

Summer of Twin Peaks

Happy Summer Solstice. I think it is tomorrow.

I have not updated in a while. VanCAF was ages ago! I had a really good show, possibly the best show I have ever had actually. The comic jam we had in association with the show went really well too. Lots of people came, many many pages were drawn.

I updated my store, so now you can buy Fir Valley and the most recent Vinegar issues there.

Since VanCAF I have been drawing, trying to figure out what I want to work on next. The past couple of weeks I was hanging out with Manien while she was on vacation. Relaxing on our lovely balcony, going for walks. On one particularly early walk we actually saw the beavers that live down by the Olympic Village.

Oh, and we have been watching TWIN PEAKS. I can’t tell you how happy it has been making me. Such a joy to be back in that world, with old characters and new, mysteries and histories. To have decadent hours and hours of new David Lynch. Even the novelty of having to wait for new episodes (I honestly could not tell you the last time I did that) is making me savour it all the more. Luckily Manien has been loving it too. Why, here are a couple of comics from Vinegar 39, drawn before the new show was released, one about visiting Twin Peaks, one about anticipating the show.

Vinegar 39 A

Vinegar 39 B

Manien and I went to the Island to visit her sister and family. I traditionally do a “Mission” with my niece and nephew, which is a fantasy adventure with a map and hazards and so on. This mission took place mostly in a witch’s cottage, with the heroes shrunk to mouse size. I had way too much fun naming the various creatures they encountered.

Mission Creatures

And here is the kind of thing I draw to relax while I listen to podcasts, from Google Street View.

Brooklyn

Rebuilding

I had to switch up my hosting for my site, and ran into some technical difficulties. This was just when I was pushing to finish Fir Valley, a push that has ended up lasting four months. So I did not have the time or energy to sort out the site. But here we are, perhaps back on track at last.

Currently Cloudscape Comics is running a Kickstarter to fund Fir Valley as well as Sean Karemaker’s Feast of Fields. It just has a few days left. Go help us blast past the goal.