the ever changing pictures on my drawing table

This is part of an unfinished drawing that will be the first chapter heading page of my new comic book.

This is smaller, unfinished drawing I've been working on along side of the chapter heading drawing. It'll probably end up being one of the earlier illustration pages that leads into the book.

This is a scribbly diagram I made in order to get clear about a certain aspect of the plot progression in the story.

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.

Right now I'm just focusing on the lead-in art, and making crazy charts and notes, but I've set a date to start working on my story full time (as much as finances will allow).

Heather (my girlfriend) is just about to graduate from the Oregon College of Oriental Medicine. It's been a huge and intensive program! After she graduates, we'll immediately be escaping to Montana to camp for a week. When we get back, she'll be starting a part time job as an assistant in an acupuncture clinic, and I plan to launch into my comics series! It feels like an amazing new step for us both!

Also, Tomorrow night, I'm doing a reading at Powells City of Books, along with my awesome Cartoonist friend Aron Steinke (See the earlier post below). I'll be reading first at 7:30 pm. Unfortunately, Heather has school that night, so she won't get to see me talk in funny voices.

Maybe you can come though?

Ramona Falls

I did the art for Ramona Fall's debut album, Intuit, put out by Barsuk Records www.barsuk.com Ramona Falls is the solo work of Brent Knopf from the band Menomena in collaboration with a couple dozen great musicians. He's off on a tour pretty soon and I definitely recommend catching him if he comes through your town. The album is awesome and I'm proud have supplied the visuals. I rarely have time to do commission work like this, but he magically contacted me at just the right time, and it ended up being a really fun process turning our conversations into pictures for the album. www.ramonafalls.com

San Francisco Zine Fest!

Due to some car issues, I wasn't sure If I was going to be able to make it to the San Francisco Zine Fest this coming weekend, but I scored some last minute plane tickets and I'm heading down! It's suppose to be a great show. I'll be there all weekend signing copies of my new comic, Sleeper Car and copies of Capacity. I'll also have a bunch of my art zines, prints and other objects of interest for sale! Come say Hi! It's located in Golden Gate Park, which is one of my favorite places to explore in San Francisco! www.sfzinefest.com

It's also coming down to the final week of my Solo Show at Giant Robot! There's still some pieces available, and the whole show is still up online to check out: www.gr-sf.com . It'll be fun to be down there again so i can stop in and say hi to all the awesome folks at the gallery.

Reading at Powells City of Books!

I'm going to be doing a reading at Powells Books with fellow cartoonist, Aron Nels Steinke at the end of August, up in the Pearl room where all the awesome art books are! I'll be reading a story from my new comic, Sleeper Car, and Aron will be reading from his awesome new book, Neptune! The art from our stories will be proected on the walls. It'll be a fun night!

Sleeper Car arrives!

A big box of my new comic, Sleeper Car, showed up at my door a couple of days ago! It makes me want to buckle down and finish my current illustrations jobs so I can get back tomaking comics as much as possible. Sleeper Car will be making it's way into comic shops now . It's also already available at the Secret Acres website and on Amazon.

Sleeper Car!

Pre-copies of my new comic, Sleeper Car are now available on my publisher's website! :

http://www.secretacres.com/store/index.php?act=viewProd&productId=65

It's hot off the press, and my own copies haven't even reached me yet! I'm very excited to see it in print!

In late August, I'll be Reading from Sleeper Car at Powells City of Books here in Portland with my friend Aron Nels Steinke, who has an amazing new book out called Neptune. I'll have more info about that soon.