Wednesday, January 31, 2007

The inkfly.

Monday, January 29, 2007


I draw a piece of ginger for about 15 minutes every morning.

Sunday, January 28, 2007


Tonight I'm putting up a page that I finished drawing back in May, and then didn't have any time to do anything with until this past fall. I finally scanned it, and then spent all of this time trying to get the shadows out, from the scanning. The original's 11 x 17 and the scanner' 8.5 x 11.

Saturday, January 27, 2007

There were no buses, but there were chickens.

Windy day. Cold air from the floor. Japanese chick on the stereo. Last name Minekawa. First name Takako? Don't remember.

There were no questions, but there were quarters.

Friday, January 26, 2007


Where'd I go? Oh yeah, here I am. Lots of printing and editing on the computer lately. Sent out the scholarship entry today, so it should be at CCS on Monday. Express Mail. Listening to an old Of Montreal album, with the line "I like it here like it here like it here like it here LIKE - IT - HERE - " you probably get the idea. Have an old chicken.

Tuesday, January 23, 2007

Okay, so Blogger wasn't being cooperative one night, and the other night, I just forgot. So I missed a few days. Been spending waaaaaay too much time on the computer, and I've probably got another week of that ahead of me yet.

I FINISHED THE SCHOLARSHIP ZINE. Oh hell, finally. So I gotta staple it, fold it, and send it off. I'll spend the next week getting the rest of the application together. So here's one more page, edited and with text this time:

Last thing for this evening. Thank you to Michael Slack for writing a pretty damn amazing letter of recommendation for me. He had this thing showing at a gallery in old town Portland this fall:


He's got lots of other cute-yet-disturbing stuff at his website www.slackart.com. Most of his stuff is digital illustration, and he's got lots of prints available. He was trained as a painter, and everything he does has these pretty amazing textures:
There's also a comic from a few years back that he won a Xeric grant with:


So, should Michael be reading this, THANKS AGAIN.

Saturday, January 20, 2007


It's Saturday, but I got up early and finished the last three pages of my comic. Spent my evening writing the scholarship essay. Heidi says it's OK. Even had time for a short run. Went biking through North and Northeast Portland until the sun started going down and my fingers went numb.

Friday, January 19, 2007


Tonight, everything is wet and the ice and snow are almost completely gone. Back to damp and cold.

Another summer postcard picture.

Thursday, January 18, 2007



Listening to some goofy Serge Gainsbourg dub album. Actually, it's OK. Mellow, of course. One page tonight. The drawings are gettings smaller and smaller and I've got fewer grays going on, so that I don't lose the figures. Keep in mind, the originals are 8 1/2 X 11.

Wednesday, January 17, 2007


Another all-day inking. A little break in the middle of the day to run in the slush again. I'm feeling a little panicky cause tomorrow's the 18th and I have to send all of this in by the first. I'll finish it, but it's going to be a little frantic, putting the whole portfolio together and writing the essays. No easy weekends. the tendons that run from my upper arms to my forearms are a little sore from being up on the drawing board all day. My back's a little tight. Nothing that makes swimming or lifting any more difficult and nothing that a little ibuprofen can't cure, but still... lots of stretching when I stand up for breaks. I'm rambling.

Right now, I'm listening to Benny More. Reminds me of listening to Spanish-language oldies on the radio in LA, with the numbers belted out by some dude who's probably got a real thick mustache -- CIENTO TRES PUNTO NUEVE !!!!! (then the singers:) recuerdo....

Tuesday, January 16, 2007



Okay, then. It snows in Portland. Apparently, it's supposed to fall from the sky and melt right away, but it's still here. So here's a couple of pictures from this evening when I went for a run by the river when the sun was about to set. Snow's a pain in the ass, but it glows really nicely when the lights go down.



Let me take little knock-on-wood moment of thanks to remember that some dude's car slid into mine when I was spinning my wheels trying to start from an incline at an icy intersection. He was only sliding at about 2 miles per hour, and while it did suck to watch him gliding in slow, slow motion, thinking, "yeah, he really is going to hit me and all I can do is sit here and watch," there was no damage and no big deal. So I took a look, waved him off "it's cool," and went home.

Other than that, I'm listening to Beach House right now, which some reviewer said is supposed to remind me of driving down the Southern California coast, but really, it just reminds me of sitting around listening to all that 4AD stuff and getting drunk at night in college in Minneapolis in the middle of winter.

And Heidi says I should write about the neighbor kids who built a snow fort on one of the streetcorners outside and then started dancing to some hip-hop song they were playing on a boom box. "Do the Walk" -- something like that. Maybe not. I don't remember. I should've got a picture.

Another page, too. Still brushing the ink on.

Monday, January 15, 2007


Tonight, I'm showing page 6. I wanted to try out the text with this layout and decide whether or not I ought to add more black or stronger borders.

Sunday, January 14, 2007


Finally the grays! All done with the basic lines, stubbing the tips into the nibs of pigment pens. Went running in the bright, cold sun, down by the river. Tired. I think this is page 3 of the story.

Saturday, January 13, 2007


Eh. Lots of drawing. Didn't read much of anything today. Biked to northeast and then to northwest. Coldcoldcold. Need better gloves. I spent too much time in LA for the temperature to be below freezing during the day.

Listening to TV on the Radio. Sort of like listening to a soul version of Joy Division or Echo and the Bunnymen. Very nice.

More line work tonight. I've got two pages left of lines and then I start erasing my pencils and laying on the grays for the 18 pages I've got to do. Then scanning, tweaking, etc. Got to find a better method, though. Maybe start with a brush, work bigger. The pens are frustrating, running out of ink, or not flowing smoothly, or getting the nibs stubbed into the metal mountings. Too much little tense work. Eh. I bought these kinda expensive Copic pens, and they're awful with the ink flow, barely letting the ink out the tip. I even changed out the nibs and ink cartridges. Went back to the assortment of pens that I have laying around of things that kinda-work-sometimes-if-I'm-careful. Lots of screwing around with drawing tools.

A little more wine and then bed.

Friday, January 12, 2007

Tonight was Vietnamese food and a walk in 25 degrees. Frozen mud. Rice noodles soaked in a turmeric solution. Bright sky. Cold apartment. Definitely. Cold apartment. On the stereo: a compilation from some electronic label called Moodgadget.

So, the images: page with the before pencils and then the after. preliminary ink lines without the really bold lines or grays.

Thursday, January 11, 2007


Hmmm... lots of inking with copic pens and a wrist brace. More grays tomorrow. Listening to something called the Undertow Underground or something like that...

This picture's a postcard that I sent to Heidi from LA to Portland at the end of the summer when I was lonely. I've got 40 of them, and I'm putting them into the booklet for the portfolio for something that's a little more loose but not just sketchbook pages. Goodnight.

Wednesday, January 10, 2007


OK. Posting is always the last thing of the day. Listening to Sun Ra. The Nuclear War album: "Now whatchoo gonna do / without an ass?" Gotta turn it off and get to bed. Anyway. Tonight, trying out the narration with my pages, which I'm scanning separately cause I'm not such a great letterer. I give you Page 1 With Words.

(Applause.)

Tuesday, January 09, 2007



Oh boy. The temperature's dropping and I just started reading Pale Fire by Nabokov. It seems boring already, five pages in, but what the hell. Moby Dick was pretty damn boring for the first few pages too, and that turned out to be a great book. Moby Dick was, like, the end of my summer and the whole wigged out move up to Portland. I still love thinking bout the scene when the little whale boat gets towed into the center of this massive pod of whales, where the whalers are all just sort of quiet and tripped out and there are babies and mothers giving birth and couples mating in this whole spiral that goes deeper and deeper into the clear water. All of this sort of calm that could be, and a little boat full of a bunch of stinky guys with spears.

Anyway. Listening to Radio Citizen. Tonight, page 1 and 2 of the snowman zine, but without the narration. Hello to everybody, hello to nobody. I'm so glad this little story's finally coming together.

Monday, January 08, 2007


*YAWN* almost forgot to do this. No new pages today. Justy inking in the outlines, haven't laid in the tone yet. Time for bed. Orchestra Baobab on the stereo. Cold. Old picture tonight, from my Virgin Islands Comics idea, that never got past a dozen or so drawings. This was after I read the book that was all word balloons, by Kenneth Koch. Don't remember what it was called. I think Matt Madden was credited in it. Anyway. Tonight in color: a lonely road sketch from St. John's Island. New Year's Day, 2005, I think.

Sunday, January 07, 2007


Longish day. Up early on a Sunday morning, before sunrise (not so hard on a rainy January morning). Listening now to some mix from a dance label called Moodgadget. I'll have a glass of wine and sleep.

Went to a matinee of The Prestige, which was fun to watch, even as the story got a little frayed. Been reading Ode to Kirihito in snippets. Very weird. The Human Tempura.

Today: The front cover and inside cover of the snowman zine. Not finished, totally, but pretty close.

Saturday, January 06, 2007


Second consecutive day, and after a gin and tonic, not much to say. Listening to Black Devil Disco or something like that, that I downloaded from Emusic today. My wife's booking flights to Minneapolis in February. Finished my Murakami book last night. It didn't rain today. Dreamy, chilly Saturday in Portland. I woke up at 6:00am.

The picture's the parking robot character in my comic. I was trying to figure out how to draw the pose of "Stop! In the name of love...." or something like that.

Friday, January 05, 2007


Hello to everyone (if anyone) who is reading this. This is where I get serious about posting. I've been telling myself I'll post daily for a while now, so let's start with seven consecutive days and see how it goes.

The idea is basically a little note and an image daily. I'm working on a portfolio for the Center For Cartoon Studies in Vermont, and I'll post some of the stuff that I'm sending in. Tonight, I've got a page penciled for the "snowman, a robot, yourself and a piece of fruit" comic that's aimed at the Diamond in the Rough scholarship.

Other than that....

If you're wondering who I am, I'm a guy who lives in Portland (where it's rainy and windy and cold right now), having moved up here three months ago from LA. I was a teacher, and I've probably got some more teaching in my future. I'm married. I'm listening to The Pharoahs right now (which I think is some semi-obscure jazz/ funk reissue from Ubiquity). I draw a lot. I write a bit. I'm almost finished reading Hard-Boiled Wonderland and The End of the World, by Haruki Murakami. Been looking at Kramers Ergot 6 for the past few days, too. Other than that, I swim, run and ride my bike.