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.
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.
Inking on the primary 35 pages are done. I’ve gone through with that gunky white correction stuff (which is rather like painting with marshmallow fluff) and done some preliminary fixing – further operations will commence tomorrow, along with the scanning and initial digital fixins. Sometimes I wish I had an intern.
It’s happy times around here lately. I have some other good news, but I’m not going to blare about it until everything is done and done and done. That’s one of the few ways in which I’m superstitious.
So! Furlough two, coming soon. The precise when of that has yet to be determined.
I also did this today as my warm-up drawing.
I hate when food tries to absolve me of emotional issues, especially the ones it thinks it would cause itself. So unbecoming in a dessert. Don’t apologize, brownie. Just be. (Also, it is ironic that a supposedly more healthful brownie, when sliced, promptly turns into something resembling sundae topping.)
I now finally, finally have my copies of Furlough, and I’m surprised how satisfying it is to have actual physical evidence of this thing I worked on for so long. I’ll be putting it on Etsy on Monday (and posting when I do); in the meantime, here’s a four-page excerpt.
Hint: our heroine does not receive welcome news at this impromptu meeting.
The full issue runs 24 pages, plus a lovely, shiny cover.
The first day of the convention was entertaining and illuminating – I didn’t get to walk around, and instead the convention came to me. I had some really, really nice conversations, shared cat craziness stories with people, saw friends, and forced myself to overcome certain aspects of my shyness. More later, including Lessons Learned From My First Convention and pictures of my really rather pretty booth.
“Cat,” I said earlier, “you aspire me to create works of art.” So: cat as muse. Right then.
I’m posting this because I can’t stop laughing at it.
Please do click to enlarge; it has nice details.
I’m putting this together right now, laying it out so I can print it tomorrow and offer it to the public on Saturday. I actually just changed the title, as I realized that the original one, “Crazy Cat Lady Comics,” was a bit of a misnomer – for starters, I only have the one cat. Two pairs of Danskos, yes, but only the one cat.
Off to finish laying out so I can hit the copy shop tomorrow afternoon. It’s been a momentous week so far; it’s a state I think will continue til Sunday.
Finally, after all this tagging and “No, I’m totally going to!”-ing, I have actual evidence and ephemera for you. I’ll be posting an excerpt on Friday, just in time for the Emerald City Comicon. Which I will be at. Where you should come see me.
In the meantime, behold my promotional art!
Pretty, no? More details as the week goes by, I swear. I’ve been holding myself back from posting, because RSS-based senseless squeeing doesn’t benefit anyone. So I’ll be back later to discuss how much I love printing, how I will basically be sitting amongst my comics RSS feed at the convention, and what else I’m putting together to offer up at the convention.
If I were not so tired, and if it were not so late, this post would just be a drawing of myself, holding two stone tablets out to the masses. Tablet the first would say: FUR. Tablet the second would say: LOUGH. For it is done and it is currently uploading to my printer of choice.
It is very late, and I won’t get very much sleep tonight. I really, really don’t care. It’s done. It is done. IT is DONE.
The Emerald City ComiCon is on Saturday. I’ve got things to do, oh yes, but for the next two days? Nothing! Nothing, I say. I will play with my cat and watch some movies and talk to my boyfriend about something that isn’t comics or Photoshop and, oh yes, sleep. I am terribly excited about these things.
But not as excited as I am the upload finishing in the background of my overtaxed computer. Yes yes.
More previews to come in the next few days – oh, the pretty pictures I have to show you.
It’s amazing to contemplate the mass of paper-based records I’m going to accumulate in my life.
Why am I thinking of this? Because:
Because that’s 23 inked pages in my hands (two pages per sheet of bristol), and I feel toward them the way many people seem to feel toward their children. This stack feels like an artifact I’ll be carrying around for the rest of my life. The longest graphic work I’ve completed so far.
This is only a step. Here’s what I have to do still:
It’s enough to make a person want to go to bed.
Oh, in the interest of being honest in media and not giving the children misleading ideas about what ladies actually look like, I’m TOTALLY Photoshopped in that picture.*
*True – I’ve got a really painful zit an inch above the spot between my eyebrows, and it’s been bugging me so much that the idea of preserving it in any way bugged me too much to allow. Smoke and mirrors!
Scout’s honor. 23 pages, last panel penciled tonight. I’ve kept up a pace of at least three pages a day for the last week. I am very, very curious of what kind of pace I’ll be able to keep when I start inking Wednesday. (Prediction: MUCH SLOWER.)
Here’s my stack o’ bristol on my lovely handy drawing pedestal device.
12 pieces of paper, 23 half-size pages.
I’ve scanned them, and I’m going to back up the files online, because I’m so paranoid I might as well add a nice tinfoil chapeau to my collection. This is partially because I realize that if anything went awry tonight, I would, as the kids say, cut a bitch if anyone tried to hurt my pages in any way, shape, or form. I have no desire to do this. Hence, I will be placing them out of reach of the cat.
My head hurts, but I’m jittery excited right now. Man, this is fun. Wednesday: inking. Tomorrow, however, I have different plans:
Today, by the grace of craigslist and a man named Mark, John and I managed to score tickets to the sold-out Science Fiction + Fantasy Short Film Festival. I’ve gone for three years now, and it’s been interesting to see their submissions evolve. A good third of the first one was just about full-on terrible, because a new festival didn’t attract the best-quality filmmakers. It was worthwhile even then, though, and it’s gotten markedly better year after year.
Still, I found myself more critical this year, and I think I really enjoyed fewer than I usually do. However, being in a script-writing state of mind, I found myself pulling lessons from them. Such as:
And this, I admit, is my own damage:
So, when not entertaining, at least educational. That’s good.
I’ve been painting and drawing a lot this week. Here’s one I finished last night.
Bring on the bizarre Google searches!
I’m looking into making art prints, so I’ll be posting far more pictures once I have a means of getting them to people.