I’ve tried to do this before. Back when I was finishing Furlough two, I thought I might do that issue’s lettering via tablet, thinking that Ctrl-Z might override my natural tendency toward scrawl. But something was not right, and the evening ended as they often did at that point, with a lot of swearing and a lot of changed plans.

Well! I was at my cartooning/illustration group last night, and after some settings wrangling with my friend Tom, we got it to work properly, and my new project is to draw a bit with this every day. Current benchmark of success: it looks like a drawing I might make with a pen. Next: coloring? Details? Textures? We’ll get there when we get past where we are now.

All this is a fancy, backstory-laden way of saying, “Hey, I made this here drawing, lookit.”

I’ve been drawing this nose for a while, but it hasn’t found a home yet.

I’m lucky enough to be friends with Bonnie Tarses, an artist, weaving master, dancer, and several other titles of her own. She wanted to make a promotional video featuring her Almost Ikat drafting technique. I was called in to document it and to edit the result. This is it:

You can see it with some more context at her blog.

What I learned: this is super, super fun. I saw my share of film editing in college (to the point that I’m pretty sure I could splice actual film together with tape, if necessary), but I’d never done anything quite like it myself. Now I want to do more. How to Spend a Day Without Work and Have an Awesome Time. How to Serenade Your Cat Via Improv. How to Ignore a Pile of Stuff in the Living Room for Months on End – For Fun and Profit! The possibilities are endless!

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.

Issue three is currently in the thumbnailing stage. More on that once I have something pretty to show for all my work.

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.)

This was my contribution.

The original comment. (Click to embiggen.)

The artistic interpretation.

I’m working on a couple of short stories for the anthology my cartooning group is putting out this summer. I’m not saying much, but I will give you this hint:

Helpful, no? It’s a nice break from Furlough. I’ve never purposefully wrote one- or two-page stories before, and it’s making me concentrate more on being deliberate and slow. I’m drawing larger for the first time – the book will be 5.5×8.5, a la Furlough, but my layout is 8.25×12.75. Got that? I’m also drawing clean inks onto a sheet of Bristol, using a lightbox so that I can see my pencils. It all looks very arcane when I do it, and it has led to me closing the blinds on some very nice, sunny days lately. The things I do for art.

The original comment (click for actual legibility).

The artistic interpretation.

I’m going to leave this one without comment except to say that this is probably one of the stranger things I’ve drawn, and therefore I like it very much.