Jam!

Action! Romance!

Pretty girls! Cute guys!

This loop around the rink will have it all! It will leave you begging for more! Ok, ok, I'm just trying to psyche myself up to get working on it. It'll be alright.

Right now, I am wrapping up work on a CAVALCADE SAMPLER, which will include the entire V1, excerpts from V2, V3, and Love is the Reason. It will be a limited run book, perfect for shops who still have V2 and V3 in stock. Otherwise, I will package it with my remaining V2 and V3s as a set, since the jumbo book is about 5 copies away from being out of print.

I hope to finish work on the SAMPLER this weekend. Show the cover layout and the wrap-around to my designer-friend Katha on Monday, make final tweaks, and start FTPing files on Wednesday!

925

Monica's comic about Bonnie is fully titled Bonnie N. Collide Nine to Five and is largely centered around Bonnie's life in a cube farm. She rollerskates around, causing havoc, hullaballoos, mishaps, fandangos, a kerfuffle or two, and some hubbub. She has a crush on the cute guy on floor 3 and has a werewolf as a co-worker.

My story line is a little bit of a side-step, what with an ex in town. However, there must be sexual tension developing as a result of the love triangle—which will take place in the office. I'm trying to stay generally conscious of the office as a venue even though the story arc won't be about office life per se.

Bonnie N. Collide

I ran a few ideas past Monica, and she chose one in particular involving an ex boyfriend who's back in town after a stint with the Marines. That's all I'll say about the story.

But here's one of my brainstorming sketch pages. I need to review some of the finer points of Bonnie and derby. What position does she skate? What is her actual skate #?

I am having fun drawing a true leading lady, which I haven't really done since I was drawing Midge in my never-finished OGN Baby Makes Three.

In related news, I ordered the wrong color of blue woodless pencil. They aren't expensive, but shipping sure is...bummer.

Guesting

Monica Gallagher, my inspiration to use blue pencil, has her thumbs in too many pies lately:

• Gods & Undergrads webcomic
• Bonnie N. Collide webcomic
• Oni's JAM! derby girl book
• Another Oni project well underway

All that and she's a derby girl herself, rolling as Whipstick for the Charm City derby in Baltimore!

She finally admitted she needs to pare back a bit, but was nervous to abandon all her pet projects completely. So what's a girl to do?

Enter me, with my offer to guest on Bonnie N. Collide for a spell. I started sketching Bonnie to gear up...

In the meantime, check out Monica's comics at www.eatyourlipstick.com

Playin' with the brush pen

No pencils on this one at all, 100% brush pen. Her finger's kinda globby, but overall I liked the way the new brush pen glides over the sub-par paper of the sketchbook I was using.

My dad gave me a bunch of art supplies for xmas. I love trying new supplies because sometimes you find a pen or something that you really love. This is one such case: the brush pen he bought me I like even better than the Tombow brush pen. I'll need to order some online.

Scooting part 2

Here's another project that sat in my queue for too long.

My mortgage guy wanted a drawing from me since I am so amazing and famous (ha). Wasn't sure what I should draw for a straight guy who doesn't really read comic books, so I made a variant of my scooter drawing for him.

Here, I have tomboy Debbie whizzing along with her male companion. Her leg looks a little Fd up, but whatevs.

Which do you prefer? the original or this redux?

Womb Chair art

I recently almost bought a Knoll Womb Chair.

My artistic history with the chair goes back a bit. Not only did I include one in my Cannonball story (from the I ♥ Marvel series) but I found a drawing of one in my files dated 1990.

During college I was in a bit of a animation and Disney-esque animation phase. Hundreds of drawings probably amounted to a few seconds of motion.

This drawing was co-inspired by some Rockwell painting. Except I mod-ed it up. Boy in Womb Chair "ignoring" GF as she snootily walks away. I then drew each element of this as separate images: boy, girl, chair. I probably had big ideas to animate this.

Yes, I know the Womb Chair isn't tufted.

Credenza town

My new place has very limited wall space, 25 windows—and no closets. There are 3 walls that are "full walls" floor to ceiling. Of which, two are ear-marked for closet construction. But around the perimeter of the unit runs the heating pipes and a half wall, sitting underneath the 25 windows.

Hence, the credenza becomes a fantastic furniture option for both storage and as room dividers.

I bought my first via Craiglist for a fair price for the quality of the construction. I bought another for an super price at the MIT Furniture Exchange (considering it has beautiful tambour doors). The third I found for an AMAZING price ($10), with a catch—it was missing the shelves, 5 of the 8 shelf pegs, and doors. And, the back has holes cut from the low-grade plywood.

Thanks to my dad and his collection of scrap wood, he has made a shelf and doors. To stay a bit authentic to the period, I will cover the doors with cloth. And add finger pulls. I will take a photo when the project is complete.

In the meantime, enjoy the sketches I made, and instructions to my dad. As I said, he ended up using scrap wood and not buying inferior stuff from Lowe's.

UPDATE

Interior: I took a wooden dowell and made 5 shelf pegs. My dad made me 2 shelves, so it's wonderfully functional.

Back: I folded the edges of a piece of natural burlap and stapled to the back. I replaced the poorly-fitting make-shift cross board with a properly fitting one, and covered it with the same burlap. Now, the piece looks clean and neutral from the back and can be used as a room divider should I wish to.

Front: My dad made 2 doors from scrap plywood, and bevelled the bottoms so they would fit into the rubber-lined slider track. I wrapped them in "celery" colored burlap (period-appropriate grasscloth is tough to find in the colors I wanted!), added the finger pulls and inserted.

Now, I think this Canadian-made Paul McCobb-esque credenza looks far from perfect, but fantastic.

Fix me

Meant to post this some time ago.

We had quite a rainy spring, and therefore I was taking the subway more often than usual (you may recall that my primary transport to work is bicycle).

Those familiar with the Porter Sq subway station know its giant escalators are in frequent disrepair. Its usually annoying when you have to walk up or cram onto the only working escalator, but on this day, it wasn't annoying at all.

The two repairmen assigned to the job both cleared 6' and were each very cute in their own way: one skinny and scruffy, the other something like an ex-Marine. Put the pair in matching jumpsuits and you have the intro to a porn in the making.

I moved away from the Porter Squarea in May.

Disco Inferno!

I was asked to contribute to the Twenty Six Tiny Tombstones tribute blog last fall. I drew this in November, and finally got to color it. It will run soon on the blog.

Scanning through the alphabet, I chose "R is for Rhoda, consumed by a fire." I couldn't get the image out of my head of a disco signer, consumed by a fire, both literally and figuratively. A true disco inferno.

It feels good to be catching up on all the art projects I am behind on, and turning to new ones!

Inbound #5 Preview

You may recall I did a last-minute 1-page story for the Boston-based comics anthology Inbound #4 last summer. It was the "Boston history" issue, and my story was a factual account of Bernadette's special talent from the locally produced PBS children's program ZOOM.

This year, the beautifully produced anthology's theme is "food." I was delighted to be asked to participate, as I'd hoped it would help get me out of a drawing rut. Rather, lack of drawing due to my home purchase, move, renovation.

I was blanking on the ideas and script, so it was Goo Goo to the rescue, providing me with a shortie after some brainstorming back-and-forth.

The issue I believe will be for sale in time for MICE, the new Boston indie comics show in late September. In the meantime, I will tease you with page 1!

Into the closet

I'll spare you all the renovation chatter. I will, however, remind you that my new home (a live/work loft in an artist association building!) has no closets—not one!

In my sketchbook are pages and pages of closet/murphy bed idea sketches. My dad is going to start building it in 2 weeks, so I had to convert the rough sketches into more precise drawings on graph paper for him.

The first one!