Group Show @ Giant Robot New York

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 MoCCA that's happening the first weekend in June. Some of my favorite comic artists are in the art show, so it's pretty exciting to be a part of it. The contributing artists were each asked to do a 1x1 inch portrait for the show card (mine is in the lower right corner). Folks attending the opening get first dibs on pieces, but the show will be up for sale on-line soon after at http://www.grny.net/ .

In other news, my publisher, Secret Acres will be debuting their 4th book at MoCCA (my book was their 3rd) it's a collection of comics called PS Comics, by the awesome cartoonist Minty Lewis. I've been enjoying her self-published work for awhile now, so I'm very excited to get my copy! You'll be able to find it at http://www.secretacres.com/

art show

My friend Sean Christensen is curating the new show at Guapo Comics and Coffee. It gave me an excuse to play around with my new scroll saw and make a Foo Dog out of cut wood. It was a lot of fun! If you can make it to the show opening, it should be a fun time. A bunch of my favorite local artists/friends are in the show, and Guapo is one of my favorite haunts.

work in progress

I've been working on the album art for Ramona Falls (the solo project of Brent Knopf of the band Menomena) The album will come out sometime in August and it's great! The above images are a small section of the art that will be in the pull-out booklet. I'll show you more as the release date gets closer

interviewed by The Hippogriff's Paintbox

I just did an interview with The Hippogriff's Paint Box. It's a blog that interviews artists making a living at their craft, started by one of my favorite artists, Daria Tessler. You can check out all of the interviews at: http://hippogriffspaintbox.blogspot.com/ and you can check out Daria's amazing work at http://www.animalsleepstories.com/

diary comic guest spot

For some reason I can't get the above comic to post any larger than this here, but you can view a legible version at the link below.

My friend Jesse Reklaw started keeping a diary comic. He's doing one page a day for a year as a personal experiment. Recently though, he decided he needed help keeping up with it all, so he asked 7 different friends to each fill in for a day as part of his Diary Guest Week Extravaganza! He has a guest appearance in everyone's pages so far. It was fun! I guess Jesse has been getting some slack for the thing I quoted him saying though. Sorry Jesse! The thing that Heather's uncle says is really an exact quote. Yes, I was scared.

Check out more of Jesse's diary comic at:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jessereklaw/

more weekends!

I'm usually down at the Portland Saturday Market on the weekends selling my work, but this weekend I just couldn't get myself to go. It was amazing to have a real weekend! Heather and I went to a coffee shop and I worked on some small drawings for my upcoming show at the Giant Robot Gallery while she studied.

We met Batgirl at the coffee shop. She was really nice.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.

interviewed by Broken Frontier

I got interviewed by Bart Croonenborghs at the Broken Frontier website awhile back and it's now online. Bart asked some great questions:
http://www.brokenfrontier.com/lowdown/p/detail/talking-dreams-with-theo-ellsworth

Bird Hurdler

Bird Hurdler is out now! It's a free comic put out by my friends at Sparkplug Comics, Tugboat Press, and Teenage Dinosaur. Check out the beautiful cover by Andrice Arp! It features 6 Portland cartoonists, including me. 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 shops all over by now, being given away for free, but you can also order one for a penny plus postage from http://www.sparkplugcomics.com/ , but while you're at it, check out all the other fine books available there too! Sparkplug is one of my favorite comics publishers. Dylan Williams (the man behind Sparkplug) always manages to find interesting, unusual cartoonists to publish. A couple of my most recent favorites are, Department of Art by Dunja Jankovic, and The Airy Tales by Olga Volozova.

The Astronomer's Wonderful Instrument

I've got a bunch of stuff coming up, all revolving around the Stumptown Comics Fest, which will be on April 18th and 19th from 10am-6pm at the Lloyd Center Doubletree, here in Portland, Oregon. I'll be selling my work at Table #70 all weekend. I'm also going to talking on a panel from 2:00-@:245 on Saturday the 18th. It's called Art and the Small business, and I'll be talking along side Dylan Williams, publisher of Sparkplug Comics and Jason Leivian, owner of Floating World Comics.
The night before all that (Friday 17th 7-11pm) there will be a comics party at Guapo Comics and Coffee on 6350 SE Foster Road! I've contributed a couple of pieces to the Space themed art show hanging there now (see above picture) The Party will be a book release for 6 or 7 new publications including Bird Hurdler, a free comic that I contributed a 6 page story too. There's also going to be readings from some great cartoonists and beer from Mactarnahan's brewing. It's going to be a fun night!

Back from ArtFest

I just got back from an amazing time teaching two all-day Drawing workshops at ArtFest in Port Townsend, Washington. My students were everything I hoped they would be: adventurous, good humored, and incredible company! They were sporting enough to wear the funny blindfolds I made for them while they drew without looking for the first ten minutes of class:

It was wonderfully surreal to have a room full of people wearing masks with giant unblinking eyes, all sitting in a room together. I couldn't help but want to snap a few pictures...
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 ArtFest ends with a gallery show of all the work that was made by the 500 plus students over the long weekend. It's mind blowing! I tried to take pictures of all of the awesome work my students did, but the lighting didn't allow for the best pictures. The image above is by Jim Sorensen from my Saturday class. You can't really see the beautiful fine lines and textures he made from this photograph but you can get an idea.
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 Scudder, from my Saturday Class. I love those people and animal characters that emerged from the lines in that piece on the left. Very cool.
This one's by Peggy Duffner from my Friday class. It's beautiful! I wish I could show everything that my students did. They were unstoppable! ArtFest is one of the most amazing and inspiring events that I've very gotten to be a part of, and I feel pretty lucky that a goofball like me can end up in front of a classroom full of people willing to do silly things to explore their own minds.

Here's a photo of my good friend and fellow ArtFest teacher, Keith LoBue carrying a very strange painting. There's a story behind it: A few years ago, Keith and I, along with our other excellent friend, Tracy Moore, looked at this painting in an antique shop in Port Gamble, Washington. The painting is very haunting and creepy, yet strangely intriguing and funny. Definitely the work of some unknown outsider artist. The three of us rashly vowed that if the painting was still there the next time we were in that town, then we would each pay 1/3 of the price and co-own it together. I had thought that we were joking, but this year Keith called upon us to make good on our vows, and I now proudly own 1/3 of the painting. We've been taking pictures of the painting in various locations in order to document the adventures of these mutant children. Once every year the painting must change hands, and be hung somewhere in our house as part of our co-owner's duty. Keith gets it first. He lives in Australia, so I'm safe for a little while. 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 ArtFest. We went wandering around at Gassworks Park in Seattle, which is filled with the most amazing antique machinery. This place gets me thinking about all kinds of ideas.
I'm probably going to have to draw a 3-eyed character with a gaping mouth, based off of the above piece of machinery.

Well, time to unpack my bags and get back to work on my other projects now!

off to ArtFest

I've been so busy lately that most of my friends are beginning to think that I'm actually imaginary. Tomorrow I'll be heading north by train, then by car, then ferry, then car again up to Port Townsend, Washington to teach 2 full days of drawing workshops. It's been a crazy time getting prepared. I got inspired to create a whole zine of Imaginary Homework for my students to take home (I tried to stop myself, but it happened anyways). I screen printed the covers, like a madman, in my basement this morning. When I get home, I'll probably make more copies, so more people can read it. Now I just need to pack my bags so that I'm actually ready to leave tomorrow!!

A drawing in progress

I've been busy preparing (both physically and mentally) for the ArtFest workshops I'm teaching at the beginning of April. It always feels like a big deal to me that people actually want to pay to take a class from me, so I try to put extra care into the details to make if worth it (for them AND me). Anyways, the above picture, if I can finish it in time, will be the illustration for the funny diploma that I'll be giving the students for finishing my workshop. When I get home from ArtFest, my number one project will be my next book, "The Thought Cloud Family (book 1)", though I'll also be preparing for the Stumptown Comics Fest, vending weekends at the Portland Saturday Market, coloring a 10 page comic for an upcoming anthology being published by Darkhorse, and all the other strange activities I always seem to find myself involved in. Wish me luck!

my dream last night

I had to take a quick break from my other work today and draw this dream at the bottom of y To Do list, because I kept thinking about it. I obviously have no idea how to draw Darth Vader, but it looked just like him in the dream.

a brief account of my current projects

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.

more collaborative art

I'm just about to ride my bike downtown to help hang the Vortex! Collaborative art show the opens at Floating World tomorrow night. A couple of days ago, Sean Christensen and I got together and decided to make a couple more pieces for the show. The above picture was worked on by both of us ,then inked by me.

This one was worked on by both of us, then inked by Sean. We were joking that these two drawings depict what it would have been like if we had known each other when we were kids. I'm the one on the right in both drawings.

This is yet another one that we both worked on, then Sean colored. It always blows me away to see how Sean colors these collaborative pieces. He always uses color combinations that I'd never even think of using. It's beautiful. I'm starting a collection of collabortaive art I've taken part in over on my flickr site. There's only a few pieces there so far, but it's growing!

Vortex: Collaborative Art Show!

I have work in a collaborative art show at Floating World Comics on 20 NW 5th ave #101 here in Portland, OR. The opening reception is on March 5th from 6-10 pm. It's also a release party for a publication of collaborative comics! The show features work by: Sean Christensen, Julia Gfrorer, Amy Kuttab, Brodie Kelly, Stephan Saito, and myself. Vortex! www.floatingworldcomics.com 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 Kuttab to work on, then passed to me. I ended up inking this one, and it was a lot of fun to ink other people's pencil lines. It's not something I've done too often and I feel like it taught me a lot. Usually even more people will add things to a given picture, but there were just 3 of us that day.

This is another one from the same day. A collaboration between Sean, Amy, and I. Inked by me.

This one got me really excited! Amy started this one, then passed it to me, then Sean, then our friend Julia Gfrorer added things, Then Sean brought it all together with his amazing, crazy coloring job! Collaborating has really opened me up to all kinds of new things, and it always leads to unexpected places. The collaborative comics are even crazier: One persone draws a panel, then passes it to the next person. It's pretty amazing to try to match other people's styles, and try to continue a story thread, one panel at a time. I've learned a lot about making comics this way.

Bird Hurdler

I just finished a new 6 page comic just in time for its deadline. It's going to be out mid-April in a publication called Bird Hurdler, and will include a number of great cartoonists that I'm really excited about. The publication is free and will be a collaborative publishing project between 3 Portland small presses: Sparkplug Comics, Tugboat press, and Teenage Dinosaur. I'll have more info when it comes out, but for now, the above panel is a sneak peek.

Illustration for Nickelodeon Magazine

The March issue of Nick Mag has an illustration by me! Every issue has a comics section called "The Comic Book" and I was asked to do the cover (which is technically on page 25 of the magazine). If you pick up an issue, you can also take the SpongeBob puzzle challenge, learn about some unusual friendships in the animal world, and find out who won the Dumb Frozen Treats contest.

drawing table doodle

Here's another section of the ever expanding doodle that's on the big piece of paper covering my drawing table. It's almost time for a new piece of paper.

Thought Cloud Shrines

I just spent a couple of my mornings silk screening a new batch of covers for my art zine, Thought Cloud Shrines. It's always a pretty labor intensive process, which is, I suppose what makes it satisfying. I think this will be the final printing of this one though. I'm gearing up to make some new self published works, and there's only so many I can keep in print at a time.

Here's an inside spread from Thought Cloud Shrines. It's a 28 page book of detailed pen and ink drawings and can be found online at www.secretacres.com and www.hobocomics.com

found art

I was walking down the street the other day and this awesome drawing came blowing down the sidewalk towards me. At the exact same moment I found this drawing, two dogs came running at me, barking, while I simultaneously attempted to leave a message on a friend's answering machine. It was an epic moment. I used to draw trees almost just like this, except I always made the trunks impossibly fat compared to the tree tops.

more sketchbook pages

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.

Hannah's drawing

I received a really great email yesterday from an 11 year old girl in the UK named Hannah. She told me that she got inspired to start drawing after she read my book. I was completely blown away by her drawing. I wish I could have drawn this well when I was 11. If I had, I can't even imagine what kind of art I'd be making now. She just told me that she's working on a comic now too, which makes me extra excited. I hope I'll get to read them!