Hello, internet! Been a while.

I contributed a super silly two-page comic to my comic group’s anthology. I’m going to turn this idea into an even sillier mini sometime in the next couple of months, so take a good look at the free shit.

We even got a little mention on Slog, and Paul Constant was kind enough to use part of my page as the preview. I was on Slog! And not for being a victim of a crime!

So go get some nice free comics. I understand they’ll work with your schmancy e-reader too. I’ll be squinting and reading them on my three-year-old laptop’s screen. There’s some beautiful stuff in there – I’m lucky enough to know some talented people. Now you go reap the rewards.

I’ll be back in a couple of days with a preview of another story I did for a different, not-yet-released anthology. Cheers!

So the Muppet Rawk show was a blast. I haven’t found a great set of pictures from it yet, but I’ll add it here when I do. So totally worth it, and it was gratifying to see so much great art sell. In the meantime, here’s the full view of my piece.
I’ve done some digital coloring before, but this was the most ambitious thing I’ve done (gradients! so many!). I really like how it turned out, and it’s a great start to what’s going to be a solid couple weeks of processing and coloring. That would be for my comic from the 24-hour comic thing I did earlier this month. The prettified, colored pages are due at the end of the month, so guess what I’ll be up to this week? I’ll be the one in the corner with the bad posture and the Wacom tablet.

I’ll also have art at my drawing group’s annual Halloween show, which will be at Cafe Racer on October 27th. I’ll be telling fortunes too.

In the last month, I’ve gone from two jobs to one job to no jobs, so I’m going to have a lot of time for art (and bloggening) for the next while. Expect to see more, both here and on Tumblr, as I’m going to have a lot of wonderful, long-awaited time on my hands. I’ll have a process post up for the Muppet piece shortly, because I do seem to love showing off my pencils. And once I get any leftover prints from the show, I’ll be selling those on Etsy.

I’m going to do a good and proper preview post this weekend, but it’ll include a lot of the images in this Etsy listing: Furlough 3!

That’s all for now. I haven’t drawn much this week, and I even started knitting something again. Breaks are rad.

And took it to ECCC, where it got into the hands of the people. Some of whom have read one and two and were specifically excited to see it, which was thrilling, I tell you.

Lookit:

It is shiny and lovely and a real, solid object. During the hardest parts of getting through making this issue, this was what I visualized: having the book in my hands, complete and beautiful. It’s a lovely thing to get to the horizon you’ve imagined.

Today was loads of fun. I’ll wander through the show tomorrow or Sunday, but today I talked to people and sold some Furloughs and got recognized from past conventions and generally had a very nice time. Afterward, I went to the Drink n’ Draw organized by the Bureau of Drawers, and we had a really great, varied crowd. Some of my favorite local cartoonist friends (I am too tired to link, sorry guys), and some from out of town who I was very happy to see. My friends and family are far-flung, here and there all across the U.S., so when any group I’m a part of gets something like together in one place, it makes me pretty happy. There was booze, there was drawing, and I got home later than I meant to but didn’t mind too much at all.

Friday was good. Now I need to complete the freebie Furlough promo thing I meant to do earlier and get myself to bed. And console the cats, who are very confused, as this was the longest I’ve been out of the house at one time since, oh, mid-January.

Confidential to the woman who bought the creativity zine from me last year and has since finished writing a BOOK (!!!): your compliment so overwhelmed me that I got a little flummoxed and lost my manners, so I didn’t ask your name. But what you said to me absolutely made my day, and it’ll make me happy to think about for a long time. Thank you.

And you should come out and see it. I have a piece in the show (as well as three others in the series at our ongoing show at Cafe Racer, along with a ton of other great art – seriously, both shows came together so well).

Here’s my piece at the Fantagraphics show:

Sweethearts #1, 5×7, ink and watercolor. One of a series of four. The other three of which I’ll post over the weekend. I signed it after I scanned it.

Pssst… I finished penciling Furlough last night. I’m going to start preliminary inking tonight – mainly panel borders, as I’m tired as hell and probably shouldn’t try to do anything in the way of nuance until I’ve slept for about twelve hours. I’m going to do a post in the next couple of weeks about my process for this one, since it changes with every project. This version involves two kinds of non-photo blue lead, drawing at 150 percent of the finished size, and (of course) ye olde inkpot and nibs. Plus I’m becoming a more confident penciler, so I’d rather like to show you that anyway.

I call it… Sausage Stew. I debuted it this weekend at the Portland Zine Symposium, and now it’s on Etsy. It’ll also be part of my cartooning group’s anthology box, which is due out soon. Information about that when I have it…

I used to call myself a dilettante, but that was never entirely true. The truth is that I just have a lot of interests. Mix that with the fact that I’m generally pretty capable and learn fast, and you end up with a person with a lot of hobbies. Between June and December of last year, I took classes in acrylic and encaustic painting, metalsmithing, and lampworking – and that doesn’t include all the stuff I pursued on my own.

This year, one of my big changes has been NO NEW HOBBIES. My idea was that I had plenty to do and a predilection for starting and exploring things without actually finishing them. If I just channeled my energy and time in a really specific way, I’d probably accomplish some amazing stuff. And I have so far – two issues of a comic this year, several shows and fests, a thriving affiliation with a local comics group, lots of new friends… it’s been a good and transformative year.

So when my friend Bonnie offered me a trade deal where, in return for some work for her, I’d get to weave a shawl based on her Color Horoscope Weaving method, using her beautiful bamboo yarns and her amazing, enormous loom, how could I say no? I may not be taking on any new hobbies, but I was glad to take on an amazing opportunity. You can see what she was up to that made this loom monopolizing make sense here.

I wove for a few hours here and there over two weeks. It was excellent timing, for several reasons, some of which I may address in comics… someday.

Cutting it off the loom - dramatic!

All ten-odd feet of it, unspooled from the loom's apron.

Untying the knots from the other end, and setting the shawl free!

The shawl, with tied fringe.

I still need to weave ends in and give it a fluffing-up wash, but it’s beautiful already. I’m looking forward to fall, when I can walk around swathed in my own bit of rainbow, looking very bright and dramatic.

After a most gratifying trip to the copy shop yesterday, I can say that I’ve officially completed my newest mini. It’s a short illustrated story about social weirdness surrounding my gym and its pool area. When I showed my cartooning group yesterday, it inspired a spirited and lengthy discussion of ball-related behaviors in the men’s locker room, so I think I hit some vein of truth there. It’s called Sausage Stew, and it’ll be part of an anthology box we’re releasing early next month. I’ll let you know when single copies are available too.

Here are two illustrations I made for this that didn’t make it into the book.

Self Portrait with Goggles

I originally planned on using this for the back cover in some capacity, but I came up with a better idea.

Sausage Stew, a small study

This was originally going to be the front cover, small and dwarfed by the blank space around it, with the title. This kind of thing is what caused this project to begin with – I became fascinated with drawing the eye contact-avoiding inhabitants of the hot tub. I’ll post some of my many pencil sketches later.

So: Sausage Stew. Coming soon, in large and small portions.

I picked it up on Friday, debuted it at the Olympia Comics Festival on Saturday, and now I’m properly putting it out into the world.

Behold!

I updated the Complete Works of Breanne Boland accordingly. Oh yeah.

And now, a preview of what’s inside this new issue of mine.
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Here is the state of things.

Furlough two is finished. This is the front cover:

I pick them up tomorrow. Whew/woo. It was a long weekend of arting, and I am very excited to hold the thing in my hands. And also to sell it to you at the Olympia Comics Festival, which is where I will be this Saturday, June 5. I’ll be putting the comic on my Etsy this coming Monday. Announcement to follow because that is, well, what I do here, among other things.

I went to my cartoonist meeting last night (yay), and among pages and pages of highly random sketches, I made this:

I’ve had the good fortune lately of seeing people and thinking, “OH, I MUST DRAW THEM.” I thought about it, and I think maybe this hair… arrangement… is to keep one’s carefully straightened hair from getting all fuzzy and hinky while you’re sprinting on the treadmill? Maybe? At any rate, I’m glad I’m happily curly-haired and somewhat apathetic about this area of the girlish arts.