Or, “In which our author has a thing to say about current events.”

I have a particular–and particularly weird–relationship with the work of Thomas Kinkade. From the age of about 11 on, I’ve been surrounded by quite a lot of his work. Those reproduction prints with the little paint-daub embellishments? First, they filled my childhood home; after my parents split, the divided collection decked the walls of my mom’s and dad’s houses in Florida and Georgia.

As it was the mid-90s or so when my parents got sucked in, it took several years for Kinkade’s work to reach critical enough mass that I started hearing reactions from other people. With the company I keep, those reactions were seldom positive. Sometime around when you could buy needlepoint Bible covers with his paintings at your local Wal-Mart, slagging his work officially became A Thing. Like with most people of a certain type (of a certain age, temperament, and level of cynicism and sarcasm), I found myself turned off by a certain well-documented treacly quality. This mostly came later, with his weird and ugly forays into impressions of impressionism and his icky NASCAR and Disney crossovers. But his earlier stuff, the paintings of houses and cottages and nice gates and things? They weren’t necessarily what would go on my walls (maybe I’ll show you that some time, for context), but they made people happy, including people I love very much. To me, that can be enough.

Not all art has to say something. Not all art has to be representative of process or the emotional torture an artist went through. I believe it can be enough for art to make a person happy and to evoke certain things in their mind. This is why I hate decorator art – it does none of these things, and so it strikes me as a little sacrilegious, honestly. But Kinkade’s art? A shameless cash grab, sure. But just as surely, it touched a certain place in people. And I think that can be enough.

Lines and Colors has a nice, even look that puts Kinkade’s work in context, particularly when you read the comments too. The image I started with, however, is from here . Part two is here. Most of them are… kind of perfect.

Anyway. I get leery and weary when it gets trendy and too easy to slag the same thing over and over again. There are legit criticisms to make. I asked my gentleman friend, an actual trained artist person, what in particular bothered him about Kinkade’s work. He said it was the formula of it–that so much of it was just a pattern, like Bob Ross’s happy little trees, just glurge regurgitated in a series of forms. And I get that. If someone gets massively successful (especially through a sometimes hard-to-watch combination of smart moves and backstabbing), seeing them poop out the same thing in a fit of repeated muscle memory becomes galling and, yes, worthy of criticism. And, um, dude had his demons (which I won’t link here, because: tired of Googling). But, if you followed his official story without reading the more colorful elements of it, it’s an easy formula to make people happy. Large, beautiful, warmly lit houses surrounded by lush forests. Gardens bursting in impossible blooms. Vividly colored windows into an escape. Is it complicated? No, but not everything needs to be goddamn Pollock, does it?

There are legit criticisms to be made, sure, especially since dude did call himself an artist and try to assume a mantle of seriousness and earned emotional resonance and all that. When I’ve heard people get into a slag-fest, though, it moves past that pretty fast into a fit of laughing at anything with such a lowly aim as making people feel good for a little bit. (Good enough to part with several hundred dollars, that is.) And that, I think, is unnecessarily snobby.

And this is unnecessarily long. But, having been steeped in this stuff for more than half my life, it’s influenced me in probably weird and warping ways, and it’s led me to have some Things to Say on a subject that deserved maybe a Thing at best. But here we are. There’s just an element of the man’s legacy that I haven’t seen addressed much. Through a weird twist of my parents’ taste in art (and a trip to Maui where I spent WAY too much time in a small room as the lights were darkened to bring out the highlights in a series of paintings), I have an opinion on these things. And now I have given it to you.

I did a summer workshop at the Center for Cartoon Studies a couple of years ago, and I found it just unbelievably densely packed with a mix of great instruction, illuminating history, and inspiring ideas. Robyn Chapman has just written a great blog post based on one of her lectures. It’s easy to get stuck in the idea of zines printed on letter-sized paper and then folded in half – it’s easy and effective, and it can be quite good-looking – but WOW, there are a lot more options out there.

I can be kind of staid with matters like this, and I’ve been considering form more for my next few projects, now that I’m feeling more practiced at creating content. Articles like this get that particular part of my imagination firing.

Just not drawing tons these days. I’m letting myself have a little creative furlough (hey-yo!) before I get going on my next big project, which I believe will be Furlough 4: The Ultimate Volume. Other possibilities: editing that novel I finished last year, expanding the creativity zine, making a full outline with drawings of this great idea that came to me while doing laundry last week (seriously). There’s a certain logic to taking a pause to do something else, but there’s also a certain urgency to OH MY GOD I COULD FINISH THIS SOON WOOOO that kind of overrides everything else.

I’m trying to cultivate a tumblr habit. You can find me here. It’s random sketches (with more to come) and reblogs (re… tumbs?) of quotes and things I find interesting or important or inspiring.

Once again: Furlough Three on Etsy. I need to buy a bridesmaid dress – help fund my support of my friends’ love by nabbing yourself some sweet indie comic goodness.

I will not be having a table at Stumptown (April 16-17, and… yeah, well), but I will certainly have comics at the Bureau of Drawers table. I am not sure yet of whether I’ll be there, milling around and looking generally disreputable, but I’ll let you know. Oh, there’s also this, the Etsy store of said drawing group. Remember the anthology box I was part of last year? You can get yourself one there. They’re rad. I don’t say that lightly.

So, yeah. Alive. Letting the field lie fallow. Trying to regularly get enough sleep. Spending my time reading, rather than working on my own stuff. Such is life. I saw Eugene Mirman on Friday night, and my friend Jenny was the best and funniest audience-member-pulled-onstage ever. Saturday night, I had a tiny, delicious key lime pie. Tonight, I was given a silver sloth necklace by two lovely friends, and then I came home and tried to comb a dreadlock out of bigcat’s armpit.

I’ll be back soon, and properly, with sketches and some more spam drawings – I have some really special ones saved up for you. I’m doing ok. I hope you are too.

I am 85 percent done with Furlough three.

35 pages are penciled, inked, and corrected. One is penciled and will be completed tomorrow – first thing, I hope. The covers are penciled and need to be inked and painted. I need to finish scanning, to do digital correction, to letter. This will all be done by Sunday night. It’s going to be a busy weekend, but it’s exactly the right amount of work. Far from insurmountable.

I’m going to do a process post in the next couple of days. My method evolves with every project, and it’s with great pleasure that I see my techniques evolve and see, immediately and vividly, what I’ve learned from previous projects. This time, I’m bringing the lessons from Sausage Stew (varied line widths), my pages in the upcoming Bloor anthology (drawing larger, shrinking down), a couple of art shows (revision), and months and months of high-volume drawing to these pages (a more refined style), and I’m thrilled to be able to see it. My biggest hope for my newest project, whatever it may be, is that it’s the best thing I’ve made so far.

I also love seeing the tools and materials other people use – cartoonists are greedy to know what nib, what brush, what ink, and I’m no exception. Hope Larson included a note about her materials in Mercury, and I was elated. I wish everyone did that. So I will here. I’ll also post all the steps that went into the covers too, since I actually have several versions of sketches for that. I meant to show the evolution of a page, but I wanted so badly to just get things done that I never scanned any of my in-process pages. You’ll get the idea anyway.

Tonight will be the second night in a row I’ve been up til six am. Tomorrow may well make it three. Sunday night, I upload to the printer. And then next week… next week will be the miscellany week. I’m going to replenish my zine inventory, make fun little things to sell, package the print sets I’m making, create new and prettier table signs (inspired by the lovely ones my ECCC tablemate, Chris Furniss, made), rehearse my display, and… oh yes, work my day job, try to get enough sleep ahead of the show, and pretend at normal life a little bit, since I haven’t been lately.

I want to jump right into Furlough four, because I have some good momentum going right now. But I’m going to take at least a couple weeks off post-ECCC. My dreams are modest. I want to sleep and read, to get more exercise, to go out to dinner, to watch more movies, to have a few days where my fingers aren’t stained with ink. But then it’ll be back to it, because the thrill of finishing this, of completing what’s basically a graphic novella, is too thrilling to dodge for long. I’m already thinking about what to do next. I want something fantastical – I want to draw tentacles and more cartoonish faces and more outlandish people and places. I’ve joked for a while that my next story will be about amoebas vs. cubes in a featureless white void, but it’s becoming more of a joke than it was for a while. (I’ve been envying the simplicity of xkcd, all the while knowing that I embroider things far too much for that style ever to work for me.) I don’t know what’ll be next, but I’m so excited for it.

Fewer words and more pictures tomorrow, I promise. That’s also a good summary of the day I hope to have.

See you on the other side.

I met a new friend today, and told her about my cartooning and my art and all. She entered my name in the address bar of her browser, and it… automatically completed my name. “Breanne Boland” was the third suggestion by just entering “Breanne.” When I enter it into Google now, it’s number two.

Google is good? I don’t know what it is, but I like it.

Tomorrow: more spam. Good night, everyone.

Well, hello there. Please, sit down. I’ve had a lot happen in this past week; I would tell you some of it.

Friday was the last day of the full-time job I’ve had for the last three-and-a-half years. I quit to pursue my art. (I love saying that because it sounds so deliciously pretentious and self-indulgent.) I quit because it was time. And I saved some money, so I’ve bought myself some time.

I’m planning on spending the next couple of months doing nothing except what I damn well feel like. Happily, what I feel like is working on my sci-fi novel and starting, working on, and completing Furlough issue two. I started editing the script today. Thumbnailing will be tomorrow, I think.

Mostly, though, I’m taking it easy this week. 3.5 years is a long time; I was 23 when I started that job, and just a couple years out of college. Now I’m a nice full-on adult of nearly 27 (the day is next Thursday, woo). I’m giving myself some time to shed old habits. I’ve realized, both through observing myself and listening to other people, that one of the perils of being an adult is becoming a slave to ruts, habits, and assumptions. Time goes faster as we age, but I think it’s also speedier in ways to which humans have yet to adapt. We become content with ok or acceptable, stopping short of what’s actually good or right for us, just because our daily lives don’t actually actively hurt us.

I’m thinking of this because of some of what I heard while exiting my former job. Everyone was happy for me and excited; everyone said nice things and thought I was making a perfectly wise decision. But some people would pause then, a melancholy look in their eyes. “I wish I could do that,” they’d say. “God, that sounds so good.” Those haunted me; I mean, I’m quite content with being some kind of aspirational figure, if it doesn’t require too much effort on my part. But some people just looked so sad, so resigned. It hurt to realize that it was the surfacing of something they carry every day.

It was a lot to process. And I realize I have it in me too, so it’s a lot to undo. I think that our ease of settling into habits is a rather generously given coping mechanism for the repetitive nature of most people’s lives. It ends up being a lot to fight against, if you’re the kind of person who wants to.

So I’m doing what I can this week. I’m not making myself do much; instead, I’m getting a sense of how I’d like my days to be structured, and what makes the most sense. Monday I went and did lampworking all day, ending up with a nice pile of beads and a good sense of what I need to get better at. Yesterday I had a pinata of a good day, with too many details to describe. Today I edited, and completed the budget that gave me a better sense of how much of my freedom I can buy with my little happy-day fund in the bank.

This week is a pause. Next week? That starts the lunge toward the things I’ve been half-assing for so long. I’ve spent the last several months narrowing down how I spend my time these days. I’ve started no new projects, and I’ve taken on no new hobbies. I’m going to finish things. And that race to the end starts next week.

P.S. I’m in the process of registration for several different fairs. More details once I get actual, real confirmations about them.

I learned, whilst in the thick of making Furlough issue one, that one of the keys to being creative without making yourself crazy is to make sure you have a clear delineation between Work Time and Free Time. (Actually, I was reminded of it – I learned it from Alec Longstreth at the Center for Cartoon Studies last summer, in one of the many lasting lessons from my week at comics camp.)

While making Furlough, I basically had two jobs. Consequently, I treaded close to All Work and No Play territory, although since it was a finite process, I knew I’d be ok. Two weekends ago, I was at the Emerald City ComiCon; I decided to take the week after that and do NOTHING. No drawing, no editing or writing unless I damn well felt like it. Sleeping and eating properly and getting some exercise: that was my schedule.

So last weekend, I was happy and ready to start working again. Then: The Plague.

Well, ok, it’s just a freaking bitch of a cold, but it robbed me of my brain’s higher functions and rendered me unable to do anything but sloth about, whine, and drink tea. Pleasant. So: schedule pushed off for another week.

I am no longer a snot factory, and I’m on the Nasty-Sounding Cough of Rehabilitation stage of the cold. I’m ready to move on, thank god.

Step one was to clean off my desk, which had become covered with the clutter of two stymied weeks. I’ve come to believe strongly in space being a most important step for actually creating action. I don’t think it goes so far as, say, clearing out half your closet in anticipation of the mate you’re trying to attract, but I do believe that if you have a pretty, easily accessed space where you can Do Your Thing, you’re far more likely to. So: there we go. Check it out:

I realize Afters are much more affecting with Befores, but just picture about 20 more pounds of papers, books, and assorted shit, and you get the idea. Included in this picture: my adjustable drawing surface, my sewing machine, my newly designated Pen and Brush Mug, my acrylics box, tonight’s to-do list, a piece of cloth I wove at a friend’s house, and a piece of self-done embroidery from a shirt I used to love.

Step two: survive this week. It’s going to be emotionally tumultuous, and I’m hoping The Work will be a nice respite. This is my last week at my job of 3.5 years. I’m officially departing the Full-Time Office Life for something else.

Which brings us to step three: a drawing commission from a friend. Exciting.

April is going to be a hell of a month. I can’t wait.

Final Furlough inking is done. A version of lettering is done – hand-written, straight on the drawn pages. It remains to see how I like it (and how my Legibility Panel feels about it). I completed a bullshit strip* to make the story an even 24 pages. Three printing quotes requested, and now I’m on page six of scanning so that I can go in, tidy everything up, lay that shit out, and send it to the printing shop of my dreams.

And so much is left to be done! For instance:

• The cover: penciling, inking, painting.
• Try to finish this cat zine of mine so I can have it at the convention
• See if I have a good night to devote to doing the drunk zine
• Decide what on earth I want my booth to look like
• See about getting paintings printed

And so on. I could make this list 40 items long, if I felt so inclined, but these are the things I’m actually thinking about. There’s also a larger item, entitled “Do not make yourself insane,” which includes things like exercise, reading, and not shorting myself of sleep. However, I know me, and adding such an item would only make me unhappy that I managed to do no such thing.

I’m at a good place; T-minus 13 days, and the bulk of everything is done. It’s just hard to see that right here, and it will be until I’m sitting happily in my living room atop boxes of printed books.

I didn’t help myself tonight; I spent a weird amount of time (like an hour!) reading old Questionable Content strips. I’ve gotten a vague impression, from the small amount of webcomics-related criticism/bitchery I read, that it’s kind of popular or trendy to slag QC, but I really like it.

I like that if you read the whole of the archives, which I did in three nights when I first found it, you get a very specific picture of one person’s artistic education. I like the banter and the swearing and that the characters are just far enough away from regular life to be fun to watch, but not so far that you’re drawn out of the story. I like that it’s about half a universe away from ours, so you can get some really wonderfully strange “And now for something completely different” moments now and then. It’s also nice to read a graphic story about (mostly) regular people doing regular things. As those are the kinds of comic stories I tend to write, it’s reassuring to see that kind of story being told and to see that it’s not made boring by its generally domestic setting. I even enjoy its glacial pace. I think there’s an honesty to it about the pace of graphic storytelling.

*I got this term from Dan Clowes, who used it in a derogatory way about the stories in Twentieth-Century Eightball. However, I usually use it in a complimentary way. The stories in that book are my favorites of his, and I like pretty much all of his work anyway.

While on vacation, I got a really good sense of the work ethic I’ve built up for myself for writing and drawing. I’ve written about creative methods and discipline before (see my Etsy store for the zine about it), but I have a better sense of the long game now. I want to write about that, but I’ve also been meaning to come at it from another way: what I wish college had taught me about practical, everyday creativity.

At my parents’ high school, everyone was required to take a class that was basically Everyday Life Skills. Checkbook balancing, banking, budgeting, getting licenses, owning things: this class wasn’t home ec, but it did teach basic everyday skills that one might not learn at home. It’s the class my mom remembers most fondly, the one she felt proved more useful more often than anything else.

I wish my college had a similar class, a kind of cap for four years of sheltered life and abundant time. My last semester, I did a creative thesis, wherein I wrote a 75-odd page draft of a novel.* It was an incredibly fruitful time for me – I met my advisor once a fortnight, and in between visits, I wrote my little 20-year-old ass off. A friend said she had a hard time getting two or three pages done every two weeks; I was handing in 10 or 14 pages at a go. I had a beautiful room on Beacon Street in Boston with a picture window as long as my bed and taller than me (I’m not short) that overlooked the frozen waves of the Charles River. I miss that room. I sat at my computer, spent most of my days alone, and wrote and wrote. I’m not sure I’ve come close to being that generally satisfied since then, which is both sad and heartening.

That winter, I graduated, and after that… nothing. Almost nothing at all for several years; it’s taken some shaking up in the last 12-18 months to get me to a place where I consider myself creatively worthwhile, to shake that underpinning of self-loathing for not doing what I’m designed to do.

I’ve given some thought about what I would have liked to know. What should they have told me about bringing that hothoused college-based creativity into daily life? What hot tip might have kept me from being mostly creatively dormant for the better part of three years? What could the academic establishment have told me about matching a day job with your creative dreams and needs?

In the meantime, I put it to you, internets: what would you have liked to learn in your last formal education that might have brought you closer to what you actually wanted to do, and more quickly? A class, a suggestion, a mantra? What would have sorted you out earlier? Or if you’re one of those lucky people who managed to do it right, what were you told? How did you approach it?

*This novel has suddenly been showing up prominently in my thoughts, which is weird. Maybe I’ll finish it properly one day after all.

1. My first thought on unpacking yesterday, upon arriving here in Vacationland, was, “Oh, thank goodness, my bottle of ink didn’t leak.”

2. I had a dream before I left that something ended up broken in my luggage. That thing? My nib.

3. One of the things I was most looking forward to (aside from four days with one of my best friends, which is number one) was time to sit and draw and write. I’m very much in that mode right now; I love it.

4. I’m thinking about the rigorous drawing schedule I need to get on when I get home, and I’m very much looking forward to it.

5. What did my friend present me with, once we were finished unpacking? Notes on Furlough.

6. What did I do tonight, once we got home from eating out (Italian and – mysteriously, in Arizona – Tasti D-Lite) and shopping (Nordstrom Rack)? I inked.

That’s Escape Pod coming in through those headphones.

I had two penciled drawings I did at work this week, and I finally got to work on them some more. I probably won’t paint them until I get back, though… although I did bring watercolors, it was just my dry palette, not my tubes. I’m not sure I trust them for work I consider more detailed – and certainly not for flesh tones.

Being in this area of Arizona is odd; in any given room, my friend and I are usually the only people under 50, and possibly the only ones under 70. I got here yesterday and I’ve been carded three times. That’s more than usually happens in three months. I think it’s a good antidote for us, though – we both suffer from the malady of feeling and acting like we’re a million years old, when we’re still pretty young, by the scale of our day. Feeling past your prime, acting like your useful years are behind you? Have I got the tonic for you: visit a town in the southern US in snowbird season! You’ll feel spry and nubile again in no time.