Art for sale!

My art show at Giant Robot-San Francisco is now available online! http://www.gr-sf.com/artshows.php

Portland Zine Symposium

I'll be at the Portland Zine Symposium all weekend: www.pdxzines.com selling my work. I'll probably be wearing my magic house-helmet during parts of it.

The above photo was taken by my brother Matt, who I just had an amazing time visiting in San Francisco. He's working on a stop-motion animated film right now! I'm trying to get him to move to Portland so we can collaborate on his next one!

Back from San Francisco

It was a successful show opening and I had an amazing time! Here's a picture of me with Luke, the awesome manager at Giant Robot, San Francisco. The whole staff at GR-SF was great to work with and I met so many wonderful people! Thanks everyone! The show should be up for sale on the gallery website within a week. In the mean time you can check out a slide show of the opening night on their website: www.gr-sf.com

Imaginary Friends!

I'm heading to San Francisco with a car-load of art! I'm leaving early Wednesday the 15th to hang my solo show, "Imaginary Friends" at Giant Robot. I can't wait! Above is one or the wood cuts I made for the show. Below are a few more sneak peeks at some of the other pieces.

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. www.gr-sf.com

Tea party!

I've completely finished everything for my 32 page comic, Sleeper Car, and I'm sending off the scans to Secret Acres! It will be coming out Late August! Now I'm finishing up tons of pieces for my upcoming Giant Robot show. The picture above is one of the many tiny pieces that will be hanging on their walls starting July 18th! On another note, I've officially started drawing the first page of my next big book. Though it'll probably be a little while before I can get back to it, it felt pretty amazing to finally be sitting down and laying out a scene that's been inside of my head for years! It's turning out to be a great summer!

Solo Show at Giant Robot, San Francisco!

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!

Benefit show!

I have work in a benefit show for the Independent Publishing Resource Center. www.iprc.org . They're a really amazing place that we are very lucky to have here in Portland. I also contributed some drawings to the zine they'll be putting out along with the show. Here's all the info:

Zine River: A Benefit Art Show for the Independent Publishing Resource Center@Grass Hut Gallery811 East Burnside Portland, OR 97214 June 26-July 1 Opening Reception: Friday June 26, 2009 at 7pm

Featuring artwork and zines by Chris Johanson, Thomas Campbell, Lori D, Nicole J. Georges, Gabriel Liston, Theo Ellsworth, Dan Gilsdorf, Travis Millard, Mel Kadel, Megan Whitmarsh, Leif Goldberg, Keegan Wenkman, Scrappers, Sammy Harkham, Chris Duncan, Thom Lessner, Elizabeth Haidle and E*Rock.


For more info call 503.827.0249 or visit www.grasshutcorp.com

Keeping busy

I've been at my drawing table a lot! I just finished all the art for the upcoming Ramona Falls album that's coming out sometime in August. Now I'm working to finish and frame all the pieces for my solo art show called "Imaginary Friends" that's opening on July 18th at the Giant Robot Gallery in San Francisco. The above image is from the Ramona Falls album art and the original will be hanging in the show. I'm also getting ready to scan the 32 page comic that Secret Acres will be putting out pretty soon called "Sleeper car". It's been a fun spring!

Eye Level Gallery

I'll have some of my pen and ink drawings on display at Eye Level Gallery in Brooklyn, NY. The show opens Friday, June 5th, 8:30-11pm. It includes work by a number of great cartoonists as well as some book releases that I'm REALLY excited about from Secret Acres, Bodega, and Sparkplug. This is another show that is being put on as part of the MoCCA comics festival. You can go to another art show I'm involved in the very next night at Giant Robot too! (See info about that show a couple of posts down.) I really feel like I'm missing out by not making it to all these great events! You can find out more about this show at www.eyelevelgallery.com

re-found art

I've been trying to be better about documenting my art before I send it off to galleries, but sometimes it completely slips my mind until after it's already off in the mail. This is a piece that I thought I'd never see again, but then realized that a photo of it was in the Giant Robot show archives. It's a Shaman wearing a hat with ghost grabbing capabilities.

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.