I’ve crafted in one form or another since forever, as I’m fortunate to come from people who make things. The guest bedroom at my grandma’s house features curtains she made, a rug she hooked herself, and furniture made by my grandfather. I love staying in there. My mom has sewn and crocheted and made ceramics, and my dad is very broadly handy in a mechanical sort of way. Growing up, my best friend’s mom made crafts to sell at craft fairs, and their basement was a wonderland of ribbon and yarn and glue and plastic canvas.

Me? I do some of everything. I actually reined it in early last year, when I realized my dilettante tendencies were keeping me from finishing a single large project. In 2009, I took classes in metalsmithing, lampworking, chainmail, encaustic and acrylic painting, and I’m sure several other things I can’t think of right now. In 2010, I worked on Furlough and finished a scifi novel. And, well, attempted in vain to sort out the rest of my life, but that’s a story for another day.

I’ve made beaded jewelry since I was ten or so, but I’ve only ever sold it individually to friends and, occasionally, on my Etsy page. This weekend, I shared a booth at a local flea and craft market and sold my jewelry in public in an organized way for the first time. Lookit:

Pretty, no? Some of it includes beads I made myself at the torch.

I’ll be selling stuff again at the Punk Rock Flea Market on December 10th. I’ll have all the jewelry pictured plus some, and comics and zines, and my friend (and tablemate) Jenny’s beautiful handmade sketchbooks, and some foodie goodness she and I are going to make.

Because I’m still lucky. Most of my friends are makers of things too. It’s nice this time of year – there’s something about winter that makes me want to tuck into projects. I have about a billion things I want to knit, and I’m about to start on a small zine about my small cat, a companion to my Cat Lady zine. I want to cook a million squash this winter, and maybe knit myself another sweater, and do a ton of sewing.

I’ve also had an idea to make cat sweaters, inspired by a fortuitous visit to the Martha Stewart pets section late this summer. We’ll talk more about that later. It’s seems like a journey to a particular kind of heart of darkness, but I think I have what it takes.

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 have links for you. Nothing fancy.

John Allison shows a bit of Jack Cole’s cartooning advice. Solid.

A process post from Lucy Knisley, one of my favorites.

And a roundup of some art from my illustration group’s recent live drawing show. I have a few pieces I still need to scan. That’s not the only post I owe this blog, but it’s one I should really get to in the next few days. Apparently my work looked noticeably different from what people have come to expect from me, which was quite a surprise.

That’s all. I’m occupying myself with small, complete kind of drawings, with the intention of filling up a small, cute notebook I found at my favorite art store recently. Complete drawings, with few faces – that’s the current challenge. I get pleasantly envious of people who have these little books filled completely with their own work, so I’m going to make my own. I do have books filled with my own work – sketchbooks dating back ten years (!) plus 16 years worth of journals (which I’ve dedicated a half-finished post to, on the event of completing another book about me me me – I’ll post it soon, promise). However, they’re for my own use, which is quite different from having a beautiful little art-filled object of your very own.

And that’s that. I owe you many scans and a few stories. They’ll come.

From when I first started thumbnailing Furlough 3, I knew I wanted the first page to be a single large image, a pinup in a way I hadn’t really worked with before. My artistic tradition started with drawing in the margins of notes in class, so drawing larger has been intimidating to me. I’m getting over it, fortunately.

In ways, the making of this cover is much like the way I drafted the rest of the book. Thumbnail in pencil, light sketch in blue pencil (a nearly devoured nub of a thing whose brand was sharpened away sometime in the last month), a more solid sketch in blue pencil (Turquoise Prismacolor drawing leads in a Koh-I-Noor Technigraph lead holder, HB but feels harder, so it makes me make more defined lines when I use it), and finally the inked drawing itself, done on fresh bristol over a light table.

The rest of the book is ink right on top of my penciled photo-blue lines, but page one and the covers, I did with the light table.

So here’s my rough sketch, based on the thumbnail I drew back in November or so.

Unlike some other pages, this image doesn’t date to when I originally wrote the script in late 2009, but it’s been pretty solid and consistent since I started editing the script for this issue.

Here’s the first, rougher pencil.

I darkened it in Photoshop so you could see what the hell I was talking about, but in person, it’s definitely lighter than pencil two.

As you can see, it’s much much tighter. I did take a photo reference for this, which I am not posting. No no no. It was really helpful, though – I would’ve never guessed that the center of the ribcage would stick out like that when someone was in this position. It also made me miss figure drawing, which I need to get back into. It helped when I was drawing this issue, and I didn’t go nearly as many times as I’d have liked.

I did two inked versions of this. The first had some freakish head stuff going on, and I messed up the couch cushions, so it is currently in my building’s recycling bin. This one is delightfully less mutated. Here, I’ve added the email screenshot inset and the lettering.

Rather lovely, no? I’m really happy with how it came out. It feels like the culmination of a solid month-plus spent drawing and doing little else. I inked with Higgins Black Magic Waterproof Ink (I’ve tried others and always wound up pissed off or disappointed), a Hunt 102 nib, and the larger silver kind that isn’t an A, B, or C something or other. I just tried to Google it and had no luck, so I’m just going to hope you know what I’m talking about.

So that’s page one. There are 35 others in Furlough 3, which is going to be an actual, physical object by Friday, which you can buy from me this weekend at the Emerald City Comicon. (Table M-27! Stop by! Bring friends!)

This week will be another mad rush of preparing, but after the slog of finishing this comic (which concluded with an 18-hour spree of page completion, lettering, and questioning the value of human life), it all seems like the easiest cake that ever did cake.

And documented:

So that’s her. Furlough 3, in her two-fifths-complete glory.

I’m a listmaker by nature, and I must say, my lists for the next three weeks are hilarious. (Sometimes hilarious is an upbeat synonym I use for “freaking unbelievable.”)

The Fantagraphics and Cafe Racer shows went great. I didn’t take pictures, but some of my fellow Bureaucrats did. I’ll post some later. I sold some comics that night, and that might be even more exciting: my comics are currently being sold at Fantagraphics. Woot!

Enough chatting, time to work.

I’ve penciled 29 of 36 pages (whew). I originally planned to finish this weekend, but I inked five different pictures today. They’re for the shows my illustration group is doing toward the end of the week. That ate most of the evening, so the grand completion of penciling didn’t happen quite as I’d like. It’ll work out ok, though.

To warm up tonight, I made this little… thing.

Yes. Well.

I’m going to pencil a page or two, go to sleep, do my day job, and then tomorrow evening… more. More and more and more still, all the way to the Emerald City Comicon.

It’s January, and I’m coming out of hibernation. I’d kind of like to stay in it for a while longer, but I can’t.

I’ll have a table at the Emerald City Comicon again this year at table M-27.

I’m lurching out of inactivity to get good and properly ready to work on Furlough 3. Just two more issues and it’s a complete story. I can’t wait.

I think I might’ve figured out what I’m doing next – or at least what the next comic story I’ll be working on developing will be. (After so much real life in Furlough, I feel like I need to do some fantasy shit, or something with dramatic amoebas or something. Just no more drawing cubicles, please.) I’m also going to be in not one but two Valentine’s Day shows – details to come in the next few days, with previews, as I’ll be getting to work on my art well in advance. Do you hear me, Breanne Boland? Well in advance!

Here’s the earliest drawing from what the next project might be. This is also an enigmatic explanation as to why I’ve been awfully quiet over the winter. And yes, the drawing is me.

I’ve updated this page, reflecting a few more of the phone calls and inquiries I’ve been making this week. Yes, that’s right, you can now go to physical stores and buy my books, oh my brothers and only friends.

I’m still working on thumbnails for Furlough three. Did you know that as you get to know more about something, doing it can actually become more difficult? It’s true. I’m also devoting part of my day to the scifi novel I’ve been working on for the last year or so. Did you know that if you assign yourself a daily word quota, you get more done? Also true!

I’ll have a new spam for you soon. Did you know that there exists ink that is merely water resistant? That’s a fact. Do you know why they make ink like that, that will briefly seem to maintain its integrity as you sweep watercolor across it, only to blur after you’ve put some work into it? If you do, please tell me, because I’m rather at a loss.

I find myself editing much more ruthlessly and plotting even more carefully for issue three than I did before. If I maybe missed something in issue one or two, I had plenty more pages to make up for it later. But now, if I drop something and have to casually throw in some vital piece of information in issue four, I’ll end up doing that kind of borderline-retcon action that makes me so crazy when other artists and writers do it.

You know why they do it, though? Because sometimes, despite your best efforts, it’s really hard to avoid. Especially if you’ve been releasing parts of a work bit by bit, rather than a single, complete work.

I’m not complaining – actually, I find this fun – but it’s surprising to see how my focus changes without any conscious effort on my part.

This is just what I was hoping for, when I decided to start one longer work. I’m happy. I’m hoping to start thumbnailing this week. That’s the other happy realization: I miss drawing this project. Being too mired in the words for too long makes me start getting antsy.

(That said, after this comic full of cubicles and desks and office buildings and other havens of the right angle, I think my next work will be about a bunch of jellyfish visiting a bubble farm.)

It is a weird feeling, using my own comic as a reference. But let it be known that, for all I make fun of people who make exhaustive continuity error entries on the IMDB, I do think it matters.