It's been a really busy week of work. I love to work! I'm basically not making any money right now, so my funds are dwindling, but the stuff that I'm working on makes me happy. The money will come. Right now, I'm thankful for the job that I've invented and hired myself to do.
I started my next book this week. I stayed up late one night and wrote the first hundred pages or so, fast and messy. Now I'm going back and working out the pages more carefully. The book is called "The Thought Cloud Family" (book one) and it's going to be an ongoing series of graphic novels. This first instalment will be 200 pages or so. I've decided that making these books is my real job, and
I'm hoping that the world will take me seriously and stop making me do things that aren't my real job in order to pay rent. Hear me world.
I'm also preparing for
ArtFest. If you don't already know,
ArtFest is an amazing festival that goes on in Port Townsend, Washington every year. It's organized by my dear friends
Teesha and Tracy Moore, and has become a huge highlight in my year. I'm teaching 2 full day drawing workshops. I never thought I'd want to teach, but
Teesha and Tracy encouraged me, and now I'm back for my 3rd year. The first two years I felt like I was fooling everyone. I was sure that at any moment, everyone would realize that I was only pretending to be a teacher and kick me out. It was thrilling and fun. Rethinking my class each year has been one of my hugest learning experiences. This year, I think I've managed to trim off the fat, and hone it into a pretty tight workshop. We'll see. The students are always great. It's probably the most supportive crowd of people I've ever met.
Each year I've taught at
ArtFest, I've created a class zine to give to everyone. This year it kind of took on a life of it's own. It's called "The Mark Maker's Manifesto and The Thought Thinker's Theorem" (or
TMMMTTTT for short). It's basically an extra credit report to accompany my book "Capacity" ( if you've read the second to the last page, you already know that "Capacity" was my final thesis for the imaginary school I'd been secretly attending). The zine also doubles as a job application, because once you graduate from school (even an
imaginary one) there is still the problem of making a living (
refer the first two paragraphs of this blog post).
The other thing I've done this week is write a short story. I usually don't write in prose. All my writing usually filters into my comics. But I was eating dinner last night, and suddenly a story happened inside of my head, and I found myself reaching for a pen and paper. It's called " The Guy Who Invented Elbows (A Ghost Story)" It's going to actually be part of "The Thought Cloud Family" (book one) but will remain as prose with accompanying illustrations.
And that concludes "a brief account of my current projects". Thank you for listening.
I use to try to keep my drawing table off limits to my cat, Mortimer. But I finally gave in when I realized how much he likes to hang out as close to my drawings as possible and simply watch what I'm doing. He's great company. Mortimer has probably hung out on top of nearly every one of my drawings at some point or another.
This is one of the first panels to my new comic. This mouse is very brave. 
Here's the panel that comes directly after that first one. It's all mostly top secret right now, but I'll be showing more bits and pieces as I go.
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I designed a bookmark for 
The book's available on Amazon if you want to check it out: 
Sorry about how crappy these photos look. I need to get a new camera really bad. It's on my list of things to do.
My good friend Sam 
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This is a 
These are some more fragments of unfinished drawings; all part of my comic. My plan is to make it an ongoing series, though I haven't quite figured out how many pages I should publish at a time. I think I'm just going to keep working on it until it feels like the right amount to have in a single issue, then get right on to working on the next one.
The comic is called The Thought Cloud Family. I don't think I'll be changing the name at this point. It's going to be in color. I tried to have it be black and white, but the color is ending up being an important part of the story, so I'm just going for it.
Folks that come to the show opening on Saturday the 18th get first dibs on pieces, but the show will be on display and up for sale on their website soon after. 
I'm having a big solo art show at the Giant Robot Gallery in San Francisco! I'll be loading up a car full of art and heading down to hang it all, and I'll be at the gallery opening night on July 18th. If you happen to be in the Bay Area, come say Hi! Afterwards, I'll be having a long overdue visit with my Brother, Dad, and a number of old friends who live in the area. I really can't wait!
I have 3 pieces in the big group show coming up at the Giant Robot Gallery in New York, NY! It's an all cartoonists show to go along with the independent comics festival called 
Afterwards, we went walking through the graveyard around the corner. we found some beautiful, sad stuffed animals that had been left there to keep departed people company. Look at the moss covered Winnie the Poo! 
It's a good time of year to look at the ground a lot while walking.
It's also a good time of year to ride bikes along the river after dark.
I got interviewed by Bart 
Here's a page spread from the story I did for it, though it's a little hard to tell what's going on from this photo. The book should be in comic 
I told my students that they could all keep the masks if they promised to wear them in public within the next 10 days. I expect to be emailed photo documentation from each and every one of them any day now.
The last evening of 
These ones are by Josephine Chan from my Friday class. I wish you could see all the interwoven words and characters in this photo. She told me she didn't draw at all before this, but has now started to keep a sketch book! I hope I'll get to see more of her drawings sometime! She was an inspiring person to talk to.
These pieces are by Karen 
This one's by Peggy 
Here's a photo of my good friend and fellow 
Before I had to catch my train home to Portland, I got to spend half a day with a group of Tracy's excellent friends who were visiting from New York and California to help at 
I'm probably going to have to draw a 3-eyed character with a gaping mouth, based off of the above piece of machinery. 
Some friends an I have been hanging out once a week or so and making collaborative comics and art. It's been great! This picture was started by Sean Christensen, then passed to Amy 
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Here's four more pages from my little spontaneous drawing journal I've been carrying around with me and drawing in during spare moments. Most of these drawings were worked on for no more than a couple of minutes at a time over a number of days. It feels nice to have those moments build up and suddenly have a picture to show for it. You can see the cover and the first four pages of the journal in an earlier post.
This is a collaborative drawing that Tracy and I did together a couple of weeks back. We gave it to a 14 year old kid named Sam because we liked his art.
I love staying in the beautiful/creepy old houses when I'm at Fort Worden. There's rumored to be certain rooms that are haunted. The first night I was there, I dreamed that a WWII ghost-solder was showing me around the fort. I woke up to my bed being violently shaken. I lay awake for a long time after that. It didn't occur to me until morning that it had been an earthquake.
I've been suddenly drawing these "scaled yeti" people a lot. They're a mutation from the earlier ones made of leaves.
At the PLAY retreat, I was asked to participate in a talk/demo on doodling and drawing. I ended up mentioning how much I enjoy drawing on trains and moving cars, because you end up with an unexpected line quality caused by the bumpy ride. I drew this page on the train home, and it got pretty out of control. I had to add a lot of lines to this guy to get him to look okay. His head was originally going to be some kind of architectural structure.
The PLAY retreat was a lot of fun! 40 or so awesome individuals, all hanging out and making art together all weekend! It took place at Fort Worden, which was a military base during WWII but has since been turned into an events center. 
