Wednesday, May 26, 2010

Together Gallery

I have five pieces hanging in a show that opens this Thursday at one of my very favorite Portland Galleries. The pieces will be for sale online pretty soon as well. www.togethergallery.com .I haven't been wanting to do many art shows lately, but I couldn't resist being part of this one. Together Gallery is awesome!

Saturday, May 22, 2010

PSU talk

Yesterday I was a guest speaker in Katya Amato's Comics Literature class at Portland State University. I had no idea what to expect, but the students asked me thoughtful questions for the whole hour, so I had quite a fun time. I'm thrilled that there's a college English class devoted to reading and discussing comics.

At one point, I was telling the students about all the piles of toys and different wallpapers I've been drawing lately, so I thought I'd post one of the panels, just in case someone from the class checks my blog.

Monday, May 17, 2010

a sketchbook being held open by the feet of a sleeping cat.

coming soon

This is a sneak peek at the new limited edition poster that Secret Acres is putting out. It should be heading to the printers soon. Then I just need to sign and number them all! The image itself has a lot to do with the new comics I've been working on. I've been really into drawing hundreds of tiny flying ghosts lately.

Saturday, May 15, 2010

collaborative comics

Last night I hung out with my friends, Sean Christensen and Amy Kuttab and worked on a collaborative comics project we're doing. We started by each drawing a character and naming them. We each started a story with our character, then passed it to someone else to continue. We found a way to connect the three original pages into one story, and now it's been growing. We have 14 pages or so now. We're going work on it a bit every time we hang out and see how far it goes. Below is a single page featuring NarNar and a character that doesn't have a name yet. Everything is in pencil so far. When we're done, we'll probably divide them up and ink them. I love it when hanging out with good friends becomes an awesome project!

Monday, May 10, 2010

Trojan Moosicorn

My friend Aron Nels Steinke is a student teacher in a 5th grade class at Buckman Elementary School here in Portland. Last Tuesday was a guest speaker. I read my comic, "Norman Eight's Left Arm" to the class, answered tons of questions, then drew a big picture on the dry erase board, which they decided was a "Trojan Moosicorn".

It's been a long time since I've been around elementary aged kids and it was wonderful. The kids were interested, fun, and full of creative energy. I got to look through a big stack of comics pages they've been working on class. It was inspiring to see how they intuitively solved different cartooning problems in interesting ways. I've been thinking about their comics all week and wishing I could look at them again. A good sign for the future of comics!