making wood cut-outs for Christmas

I used my scroll saw and went crazy with some wood cut-out character Christmas present action. The Moore's (one of my favorite families ever) were kind enough to invite me to their place for Christmas since I couldn't make it to Montana this year. This one was for Trista. It's Wolf Boy Wearing his second favorite sweater.

This one was for Tiphoni. My Cat Mortimer really wanted to keep this one. It has 14 legs and 42 toes.This one is a tiny time traveler (actual size) that I made for Tracy. He put my cat to sleep using his special powers.This is The Temple Carrying Turtle I made for Teesha. I used one of my giant doodles as a back drop for this one.Special angled view shot.

This is the Big Head With Pants. He's a character I made up a long time ago and has become an ongoing joke between my Brother and I. He even used him in one of his animation assignments in school. I was not strong enough to resist making him this.This is a magic good luck dog I made for my Sister. All the colors in his fur don't really come across in this photo.This one was for my Mom. I snapped this shot and the other two for my siblings right as I was packing them into a box to ship home to Montana.

This one was for my Dad. It hung on my wall for about 5 minutes after being finished, then was packed away and sent to the Bay Area.

Now back to making comics! Happy last day of the year everyone!!

print making is fun!

Judy Wise was curious to see the screen I used to make the Enchilada Sauce labels, so here it is. The screen material is stretched over a wood frame, then coated with photo emulsion, then dried. A transparency of the image is placed on the screen and put under a photo lamp. The photo emulsion hardens wherever it's exposed to light. Under the black areas of the transparency, the emulsion remains soft and can be washed away with a hose. The yellow in the photo is where the image washed away and ink can be pressed through. The green is the non-porous, hardened emulsion. The red is actually an ink stain from a previous print I had made using the same screen. I used an old car window washing squeegee to print the image onto sticker paper. The screen is attached to hinges for accuracy.

Do you like Enchilada Sauce?

The Story of the Enchilada Sauce: Heather's mom taught us how to can food a little while ago, so I made a big batch of my top secret Enchilada Sauce. I screen printed a label that represents how I feel about Enchilada Sauce. then I gave away jars of it to family for Christmas. I hope they will all eat it and love it. The End.

Merry Christmas Everyone

I'll be back after the holiday. I finally got a good camera so I'm planning on turning my blog into more of an ongoing studio diary, where I'll be documenting the daily happenings on and around my drawing table. I might even make some short films. I'm planning on making 2010 the most kick ass, productive year yet! Have fun everyone, and look out for elves.

Creative Creatures Bazaar

I'll be over at Cosmic Monkey for the Creative Creatures Bazaar later today. I'll be selling a few small originals, some of last copies of my out of print zines, my new Christmas card, as well as a few other things. It's going to be a small Bazaar that's made up of friends of mine, and they all make wonderful stuff! If you're in the area today, come by and say Hi. Cosmic Monkey is an incredible store and always worth a visit. I might be back for the second day of the Bazaar as well, but I might end up having to hide out at home getting my Christmas packages ready to ship instead.

New Website!

Here I am wearing my mystical house helmet and standing in front of my new website. I decided that I wanted to have a website that actually existed in physical reality, so I built it on my wall. My good friend Sam Kulla came to town and helped me put it all together , and now it exists on the web too! It's up and ready to see: www.thoughtcloudfactory.com Sam Kulla does great work and is super fun to work with if anyone out there needs unique web work done www.samkulla.com The shop is still in the works, but someday soon I'll have a webstore too!

Heather's Acupuncture clinic!

My Fiancee, Heather, graduated and got her Acupuncture license a couple of months ago! She worked non-stop for the last few years to get there, and I couldn't be more proud! This is the card I made for her in celebration of the occasion.

She just started her own private practice here in Portland, as well as opening a group acupuncture clinic with a couple of school friends. You can check out what she's up to at http://www.heatherhulbert.wordpress.com/ . Heather's Acupuncture skills, along with Shiatsu (a Japanese form of massage), and her knowledge of Chinese and western herbal medicine has helped me a lot. If you're in the Portland area, come and get a treatment!

snow story

I finally finished my 10 page piece for the upcoming Snow Stories anthology that Mike Getsiv is editing. I'm probably the very last contributor to complete their work for this. Sorry Mike!! It looks like a great line up of cartoonists, so it's without a doubt going to be a great book! http://www.getsivizion.com/snowstories.htm

cat on drawing table

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.

half finished neighborhood

Today I drew some dirt, grass, and some tiny abandoned cars.

It's a picture that I started a few weeks back and have been adding details here and there at random.

Sketch book drawings

It's good to have a nice small sketchbook on hand at all times. It makes moments of waiting suddenly fun! I hand bound this tiny book at JournalFest. During the one day that I wasn't teaching I got to take a bookbinding class from Daniel Essig. He was a great instructor! I want to hand bind all my sketchbooks from now on. Check out his beautiful hand made books at www.danielessig.com

collaborative art show

I'm part of a collaborative art show that's opening tonight At Floating World Comics in downtown Portland. When Luke Ramsey From Island's Fold was in town a few months back, we got together with awesome artists Sean christensen, Blaise Larmee, and Kinoko and had an amazing afternoon of collaborative drawing in a coffee shop. Luke put it all together and documented the occasion in a new Island's Fold publication. All the pieces we made that day will be on display at Floating World for the rest of the month! www.islandsfold.com

A piece of a puzzle

For those who have read Capacity, this is the top most, left piece of the Imaginary Man Puzzle.

Ghost Goggles

The Quiet Family

I'm now working on what is going to be an ongoing comic book series called The Quiet Family.

Back from JournalFest!

I just got back from teaching two full days of workshops at JournalFest in Port Townsend, Washington. JournalFest is the smaller sister festival to ArtFest, and focuses on the journaling arts. This was it's first year! My students were all amazing and it was a huge pleasure to get to spend time with two open and willing groups of great people. The above photo is something silly I did with my students to demonstrate that art is both a conjuring trick and a disappearing act. Thanks for being willing to get a little weird everyone! I hope you all had as much fun as me!

The class was entitled Words and Pictures. It focused on spontaneous drawing as a way to uncover your own inner-dialogue, then using that dialogue to inspire more drawings, which then opens up a new level of dialogue. More and more I see making art as a form of listening. The art speaks, I listen. The picture above is a section of the huge, detailed doodle I did as part of my preparation for the class. Working on this doodle actually lead to a huge breakthrough for me and I was fially able to clearly write the first chapter to the story I've been struggling with. Now that I'm home, I'm going to be drawing pages as full time as possible. The big doodle will most likely end up being part of the title page art.

a Book Mark for Quimby's Books

I designed a bookmark for Quimby's bookstore in Chicago awhile ago. They were actually the first comic shop outside of my home town to carry my self published work years ago, so it's extra cool to have done some art for them. In exchange for the art, they gave me store credit, so I got to indulge my Jack Kirby addiction with some Fourth World Omnibus! Yes! www.quimbys.com

Secret Acres Signs

These are two signs I designed for my publisher when they have tables at comics conventions. I drew them at 1/5 of the actual print size.

Here they are blown up to over 5 feet high and standing up! It'll be cool to actually see them in person at some point. It's by far the largest I've ever had one of my drawing blown up.

Journal Fest

I'm heading up to Port Townsend, Washington very very soon to teach a couple of drawing/writing workshops. This above image is the new postcard sized business card I'll be giving to everyone. These events are always an amazing time!

Creative Time and Space

About a year ago, Rice Freeman-Zachery asked me to be part of her upcoming book about artist's creative work habits. She sent me a bunch of great questions, which I answered and sent back to her along with some art. It was really cool to suddenly have the book show up at my doorstep after all this time! It'll be interesting to see what I said! I feel like my work habits have already changed so much, so reading this will give me a nice window into my own evolution over the last year.

There are 13 other artists interviewed, with their art nicely showcased, including my good friend Teesha Moore! It's a pretty versatile and interesting group of artists assembled here, so it'll be fun to hear what they all have to say.The book's available on Amazon if you want to check it out: http://www.amazon.com/Creative-Time-Space-Making-Room/dp/1600613225/ref=pd_sim_b_24
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.

Giant Robot Biennial!

This is a drawing that's being turned into a 3 color t-shirt for the Giant Robot Biennial celebration show that's coming up. I also have a large art piece in the show and donated some doodled-in copies of my books to the auction. Opening night should be quite a time. There's going to be live art performances, collaborations, independent video games, and who knows what else. It's at the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles, and is definitely something to check out if you're in the area.

in the works

This is a page of a hand colored comic I'm working on. It's going to be in an anthology called Snow Stories that cartoonist Mike Getsiv is editing. He's got a great line-up of artists involved in the project, so I'm really excited to be a part of it: http://www.getsivizion.com/snowstories.htm My piece is also a part of the big comics story I'm working on, so it'll eventually be reworked and added to for my upcoming series.

This is a whale that showed up on the big piece of paper on my drawing table that I'm always doodling on. at some point I'll try to get a good photo of the whole thing.

collaborating with kids!

I had a great time this past Saturday hanging out at Guapo Comics and Coffee http://www.guapocomicsandbooks.com/ during the Fun on Foster St. Festival. My good friend Sean Christensen organized a table of art supplies, and the two of us, along with a number of awesome artist friends, hung out doing collaborative art with all the kids that came in. Drawing with kids is probably one of the best things ever. a bunch of the drawings from that day are on display at Guapo and the proceeds from the art sales go towards P:EAR, an amazing arts center for homeless youth http://www.pearmentor.org/

Sleeper Car Review

There's a nice review of Sleeper Car followed by a review of Capacity over at Optical Sloth: http://www.opticalsloth.com/?p=3506

High Contrast Review!

My good friend Sam Kulla's in town for a visit. He's passing through town after some crazy travels through China, Korea, and all over Europe. Whenever we hang out, we end up doing all kinds of fun collaborative work. He's started up a really great art and literature site called the High Contrast Review that's soon to have a yearly print edition. While we were hanging out yesterday, I drew over one of Sam's photo's and turned it into an ad of sorts for The High Contrast Review. Agents from around the globe! Check it out at www.highcontrastreview.com

Sam's also kind enough to be helping me revamp my website, so keep an eye out for some exciting things over there.

necessary camping

I just got back from spending an amazing week out at Heather's Family's land in Montana. It's been way too long since I've been able to step away from the world of humans, buildings, and communication devices. We hiked around picking huckleberries, wild raspberries, black currents, and rose hips. I made a tiny boat out of bark, twigs and leaves, and sent it down the creek with a pebble for a passenger, and I drew pictures and daydreamed about the new comics I'm working on.

I also made a shrine out of some deer skulls we found out in the woods. I've got to make sure I get to do this kind of thing at least a few times a year. Living at this kind of pace makes a lot of sense to me. Now that I'm back, it feels kind of strange to be in a city, but I'm rearranging my studio now, so I can launch into working my new comics with as clear a focus as possible.

pinhole photo

I've always been fascinated by old photographs, so I thought It was pretty cool when an awesome lady named Donna Stewart walked up to my booth at the Portland Saturday Market with a home-made pinhole camera and asked to take my picture. I like the way everything in the foreground ended up stretching. You can check out more of Donna's photos at her Flickr site: http://www.flickr.com/photos/36940648@N02/