I have pictures to show you, but I have scanning to do, so you’re not seeing them now. Instead, I’m here to tell you to get yourself out of your house tomorrow and come down to the Punk Rock Flea Market. It costs one slim dollar to get in (which benefits low-income housing – come on, guys, just come), and you’ll see all manner of marvelous things. Including me, selling comics and offering unlicensed psychiatric advice, Lucy Van Pelt-style.

Seattlelites, it’ll be like 75 degrees out. You don’t want to be in your house. Come to the market instead and feel like you did something worthwhile with your day.

Thoughts:

1. The Olympia Comics Fest is one of my favorites. It’s small, but packed with great people as it draws from both Seattle and Portland – and Olympia itself, too. Chelsea Baker does a great, careful job of running this, and it always runs smoothly and enthusiastically. Seriously – everyone’s always so happy. The whole thing was put together and taken apart in just a half-hour, as the space was to be used for a couple other things that day. I’ve come to prefer comics fests that don’t charge admission – you get a better, wider crowd when you don’t charge $25 to come inside and buy things.*

2. I was too tired to stay around for anything afterward, so I basically vanished at 6:20. Yeah, well.

3. I sold some comics. It was good. I did an interview with a woman named Alison, and I found that, when asked what my advice would be for women who want to start doing comics, I would say the same thing to anyone of any gender interested in comics. Just do things, make things, draw constantly.** She’s going to compile her interviews into a zine. I’m looking forward to buying a copy.

4. This blog has an interesting roundup of the fest. I’m mentioned (well, pictured) here and here.

5. I need to make new business cards and handouts. Yes, yes I do.

6. I’m still tired. Just the state of things these days. I feel like I’m getting closer to starting my Next Thing, since I just have one issue left to complete for Furlough and since my brain is going to art and story things again for the first time in a while. I still don’t know what it’ll be. Maybe a big, found-fabric art sculpture that just functions as a cocoon for me to crawl into and hide. All hand-painted and hand-stitched. I think it’d be kind of nice. Hermit Nest, Breanne Boland, 2011. Roughly 400 square feet, made of mixed media and studio apartment.

*I get why those charges exist for some fests, but I still wish it wasn’t necessary.
**Ever have one of those weird moments where you realize you speak the truth, but know you’d benefit from taking your own advice? Yeah.

A helpful comic about drawing anatomy.

Why hello! How nice to see you again!

I’ve been busy with work, helping a friend redesign her website, and reminding myself that I do indeed like drawing, following the gulag-like six weeks that preceded completing Furlough 3. It’s a full schedule these days.

I just rejiggered my Etsy store, adding Furlough 3 to my complete works and replenishing inventory. (The real-world parallel of this was putting most of my comics inventory on my bed a few minutes ago. This process had to be curtailed, due to proverbial curious cat.)

I’m going to be at the Olympia Comics Festival this Saturday the 21st at table 22. You should come by and say hello. Even if you don’t, you should just show up anyway – Olympia’s fest is small but impeccably run and full of the nicest, most interesting people. It was one of my favorite fests last year, and I’m excited about this one too.

On June 4th, I’ll be at the Punk Rock Flea Market here in Seattle. I’ll have comics, but I may be doing something interesting with the table I’ll be sharing with my friend Jenny. We shall see. But there’ll definitely be funnybooks to be had, as well as a ton of other stuff.

And… yeah, that’s life right now. I’m gearing up to my next big creative project, although I haven’t narrowed down which idea I’m going to pursue next. One of my cats has pinkeye. I’m eating a lot of vegetables these days and doing some awesome cooking. I’m going to be in a wedding in a couple of weeks, which I think means I’ve officially entered my late 20s. I’m reading A Wrinkle in Time for the first time and wishing I’d had that story in my life as a kid. I’m delighting in the enchantingly abundant flowers that mean spring has arrived in Seattle. It’s good times. I hope you’re having some too.

And, with that in mind, I went to see some arts tonight. The original incentive to go was that my friend Nikki was in a pretty big damn deal kind of show. But since I’d gone to the trouble of going to Pioneer Square, I did a little wandering.

My favorite gallery is the Davidson. They largely specialize in prints, and their shows are wildly eclectic. I love at least half of what they show there, and tonight was no exception. I have a lot of things I need to buy right now, but suddenly a bit of art flew to the top of my retail lust list.

Frontispiece for Part II. From The Tales Of Edgar Allan Poe. By Fritz Eichenberg, 1944.

It’s even more beautiful in person. And they have SO MANY amazing works by the artist that they spilled out into a book of original prints sitting casually on a counter, which contained the image above, ever-so-casually sitting in a plastic sleeve. Damn. Guys, if you suddenly buy $175 worth of comics from me (which I have on hand, in boxes in my apartment), I would absolutely support the arts and buy this and look at it every day with the kind of longing you feel for an object you own and love, but that you couldn’t create yourself. It’s a good kind of longing. You and your comics-loving friends could make it a reality.

Mmph.* I need to get back to making soon, as I knew I would. But I’m going to enjoy a last few days of just reading and watching and (sometimes) sleeping for now. Then ambition and frustration will call me right back to my desk.

*This is my theme sound lately.

This is not the only reason why, but it’s now on the long list. Chester, anyone? Anyone who is not on a work computer, I mean.

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’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.

I have in front of me a stack of collated, but not folded or stapled, copies of Sausage Stew, How to Be More Creative, and The Accidental Cat Lady.

This last one, I think I’m going to let go out of print after this run is gone, so grab it while you can.

ECCC, here I come!