Hello Friends!

I am back from an epic weekend trip to San Fransisco Alternative Press Expo! I drove down with Robin McConnell of Inkstuds Radio http://www.inkstuds.com/, who happens to be an old roomate of my man Colin, from back in the days before me. Robin is a fantastic hillarious fellow, but he doesn't drive. Colin is a fantastic, hillarious fellow, but guess what he doesn't do? We tried to solicit another driver but nothing worked out so I was psycologically prepared to spend about 40 hours behind the wheel of my car.

Now, in order to streamline the journey, Robin and I shipped our books to Portland to be picked up at his first book launch at Floating world Comics. His books were there, but mine were not. My trip changed from buisness to pleasure. I was dissapointed, but there wasn't much I could do about it. The book launch went fine, and Colin and I got a chance to meet up with our old roomie Jen Whechsler, who lives in Portland now. Portland is a great place, it has light rail!!!

Here's Robin at Floating World, selling the very first copy of Inkstuds to his friend and noted comic book guy, Joe Keatinge.

Well, I participated in my first comic-con today...which wasn't really a comic-con it was the comic room at the Word On The Street book and magazine festival. It was nice, because it was small and there were a lot of people that don't really read comics, coming around to check out everything. When you're at a big, popular con, there's so much density of material, it's nearly impossible to look at everything. I kept my hopes pretty low for today, I expected to sell about ten comics, (five of them being to people I know) and the FIRST PERSON that came to my table bought something! I tried to keep a tally of how much of everything I sold, but I often forgot to write it down. I sold at least 20 comics, and gave away a pile of free cards with prints of our rock posters on them. it's definatly a start. I know now, bring a table cloth, and lots of free stuff to give away, and everyone likes cute animals. Dear Diaryahh 2 with Sweatpants on the cover definatly got the most "traffic", and funnily enough, there is not a single drawing of a guinea pig in that comic. Today was also the debut of my new comic, "THE FINGER- part one, My Right Hand" I was going to call the whole comic My Right Hand, but Colin and I decided that The Finger was more catchy, and funny. Here's what the cover looks like:

here's another page of my comic...not the photoshopped version. Of course, in the actual hard copy it will be all shiny and perfect. I've decided to change the name of the comic to "THE FINGER" because I think it's catchier and funny. Any imput on the matter would be appreciated. On september the 26th, I am going to be hawking my stuff at The Word on the Street festival at the library in downtown vancouver! It'll be my comicker coming-out...my comic cotillion. my first festival. come by and buy some stuff. you can check out the fest at www.thewordonthestreet.ca/vancouver
there isn't any mention of my name, I'm listed as candcdrawingfactory, which is what colin and I call ourselves together. Im going to be showing our poster art as well. we are planning on going to APE convention in san franscisco in october as well. BIG TIME!! but not as me, as companions to our friend Robin McConnell, who hosts Inkstuds radio on CITR. I really hope it works out because it would be a nerd festival to bandage the salve of my Stumptown fiasco, whom still haven't given me my money back!

here's another little poster I've drawn...it didn't get posted up anywhere but It did get used on the internets...and I think it turned out cute.

more pages of art....I've been working very well ever since I downloaded an app for This American Life, which is a great chicago radio show on NPR. Every episode has a theme, like "bad friends" or "Moving" and a series of stories and interviews and radio documentry. Nice girly human drama stuff that I like. For some reason when I'm captivated by the radio stories I am less likely to roll my rolly chair over to Ed's bookshelf and start flipping through the comics, or go, "hmmm, I'm kind of a tiny bit peckish" and go buy a Budgies Burrito. Snacking also seems to help me concentrate,...I try and keep a kings ransom of rice cakes and apple sauce on hand.

this page isn't photoshopped yet.

and this post you can actually click to embiggen!! for my blind aunties.

So in this 2 month absence from posting about comics, I have actually been working on My Right Hand. I've got about 8 pages completed, and I just finished photoshopping 4 of them...except for page 4 itself...that one's not done yet....I still have one panel to draw that's daunting. That page is basically a seguay from the 5th inning were I broke my finger, to the seventh inning on page 5.

Last night was the CD release partaayy for Shiloh Lindsey's new CD, "Western Violence and Brief Sensuality", featuring cover art by yours truly! I was so excited and proud, and sad, since I had to leave early in order to work the next day...BOO-URNS. I missed Shiloh's performance, unfortunately, but I listened to the CD when I got home, and like everyone was saying, it is quite awesome...and so were the performances I saw, El Dorado and a bit of Swank. For an urban yoga pants city that used to be a hippy enclave, we certainly have some great old-fashioned alt-country music here in Vancouver.

Here is a picture of me with my first real CD cover!

Here's an interesting tidbit for you: I am a member of the Vancouver Desert Plant Society, which is as it sounds, a garden club for people (old people) who like cacti, succulents and other desert- climate plants like Mesquite, which I quite like. I know I posted some comics earlier about when my friend Andria, (who is the Vice President of the DPS) and I took a road trip to Joshua Tree National Park to see the plants there. What's interesting is that I kind of joined the club on a lark. Andria wanted to join but didn't want to do it by herself, and I was thinking, "okay, whatever!" Now, five years later, I have windows and windows full of cacti. I have made lots of friends in the club that I would NEVER have made friends with on a normal basis, like Charles and his wife Nettie, who have a great property on Saturna Island that Andria and I have visited twice now. We've seen so many beautiful houses and gardens, which is really inspirational to me to become an eccentric old retired person with a really extensive, anal retentive hobby. The reason I am saying all this is because in July we have our annual DPS show and sale, where you can come and see all our most prized, rare and valuable plants under careful supervision, and you can also purchase rare and valuable desert plants for truly reasonable prices! Also, I made the poster for the sale, and here it is....all of the photos were taken by either Andria or myself. I think one of those plants is mine, but most of them belong to Andria. the main photo is from our trip to Joshua Tree...it's the field of Opuntia Bigelovii....yeah!

so come to the show and sale. see some plants...buy some plants.

I've been working on a new book about the crazy summer I had last year, because of one tiny bone in my right middle finger. I only have about 7 pages laid out so far but I am invisioning a grandiose graphic novel. we'll see how interesting it actually is. Here are the first two pages.

So I just got the news that there isn't going to be a Green Mountain this year. James, the organizer, won't have the time to devote to it this summer since his rehab has been ramped up. If you didn't know, James was in a terrible car accident last fall, while on tour with his band, The Hotel Lobbyists. He had a brain injury from a crushed skull, and spent 6 months in the hospital. Although James has been out of the hospital for about a year now, he is still working on getting a normal life together. We were all shocked and delighted when James decided to do Green Mountain last year, but he had a lot of help from his family and this year he'll be doing more job skill training and stuff like that.
I'm pretty dissapointed, but I hope that we can do it again next year. I think I might continue to work on the poster anyway and save it for later.
I probably should be focusing on my comic books anyway, even though I still haven't heared anything from Stumptown!!! you have my money, you jerks!

Here is day two of the New York sketch diary.....I sent a couple copies to family members as thank yous for Christmas and birthday gifts and I didn't want to spoil the surprise. I'm pretty sure they've got them now, so here's what's inside!

I just finished putting together a little booklet of the sketches from our last Christmas trip to NYC, and here is the cover I made up; It's from a photo I took of Colin just outside of his sister's apartment building.

I got a reply today from Narduar the Human Serviette! I'm pleased because I wasn't sure what to expect...it was just an email (possibly from an intern?) but it means someone got my letter, opened it, read the comic and then went online and typed my address in their email account. I was concerned because I sent an actual letter, that means a little bit more work on his part if he wanted to reply.

He said "Have a Nice Breakfast!"

Colin and I also sent in our application to the Stumptown Comic Fest!!! April 24-25 in Portland, Oregon. I've only got 3 lousy mini-comics ready, but we'll see what I can get done during spring break. I'm working on a little comic about breaking my finger this summer....excitement!

here's another page from the narduar comic, to jog your memory!

I've been working on finishing up the comic diary I did of my trip to NYC with Colin this past Christmas, in the tradition of travel diary comics.

Here's my latest rock poster!! Again, for my favorite customers, the Hotel Lobbyists! This poster was pulled out of my arse in a matter of days. It features Bette, the French bulldog belonging to James, the lead singer of the Lobbyists. Bette is really a girl, but graphically it worked better with her in the traditionally male role in this stereotypical scene....unless Bette maybe swings that way....(or the poodle is maybe a hustler if you know what I mean)....
all the colours besides that on the dogs was done with Photoshop....not as pretty but FAST. Note the date on the poster, I had to get er done.

Check it out.....the finished cover for Shiloh Lindsey's album, "Western Violence and Breif Sensuality"

I am Also working on an album cover for David Chenery and the Lonesome Valley Singers...it will also be terrifying sepia with lots of gore.

So, I've finally managed to assemble the last couple of comic pages that I've been posting into a mini-comic collection called Dear Diaryahh 3. If you are one of my loyal follower(s), you might remember my first mini comic, which I assembled pretty much this same time last year. That mini comic was called Dear Diaryahh. What happened to Dear Diaryahh 2? you may ask. Well, I began editing the comic strips that follow Dear Diaryahh, but got side tracked with how awesome I though some of these longer comics I've been drawing have been, and one thing lead to another. so anyway, this contains a few strips that would have been in Dear Diaryahh 2, so they will be cronological....except for a few things....anyway, whatever. I will reissue them all in a new, remastered unabridged graphic novel format when I am famous. Here is the title page of Dear Diaryahh 3, AND 2, for your viewing pleasure.

If you find yourself admiring the beutiful perspective, they are all traced off photos...all three title pages...oh, and colin drew the first two. So there.

here are page 4 and 5

page seven!

Hello, gentle reader(s)



The month of October has been kind of wacky, art-wise. My trusty laptop, which is three years old (about 90 in computer years) got some kind of computer swine flu and wouldn't even boot up. At this time my Dad, who is my computer guru, had just gone to Montreal for a week or so. I was still working on the CD art for Shiloh Lindsey, so I prepared to start scanning it onto Colin's PC. While over on his computer I decided to update his versions of Adobe, and then plugged in the scanner, which knocked out the internet. This happened before, all I had to do was restart the computer... which then revealed some other kind of computer swine flu.

Great.

So there I was with two defunct expensive paper weights. I need to use the internet to check on stuff for work, and Colin and I need to keep in touch with "clients", so this was kind of bad. Miraculously, a mysterious free wireless signal had been creeping into our place, which would only work if the apartment door was open. I could still access the internet with my iTouch, which was kind of novel.

I decided to change gears and focus on Halloween, my personal Christmas. I spent the week sewing and paper mache-ing. After Halloween my returned Dad managed with great focus to recover all my data and lo, there she was, the finished, unpublished page 6 of my epic Rock Show comic, mistakenly labeled as page 7...

Page 3 of the rock show comic

page two of the new comic.

This summer I've been doing a metric tonne of work, although I haven't been posting here very much. This is partially because of commission jobs for Shiloh and Green Mountain, and partially because of my broken knuckle, and partially because of this here comic I started at the very beginning of summer. Just days before I broke my knuckle, I attended a really spectacular rock show of Andrew W.K. and The Evaporators at the Biltmore Cabaret (where the green mountain fundraisers were later held). I was really inspired to do a full mini-comic about the whole thing, and I have been working on it since then. I wanted to wait until I had a couple of completed pages before I post them up here, so I will slowly be putting them.

more shiloh drawings! check out http://www.shilohlindsey.com/

I've been drawing some T-shirt designs for Vancouver country sweetheart, Shiloh Lindsey. look for her new Album "Western Violence and breif sensuality" out in october. I don't want to type too much because I broke a knuckle on my right hand in july, playing softball, it makes typing hard. Thank god I am left handed!

First of two Pre party posters!

Believe it or not, I have been drawing like crazy lately. Here are two more posters I drew for the Green Mountain Music Festival. We are having two pre-show/fundraisers at the Biltmore Cabaret on Kingsway and 12th. (this is in the basement of the Howard Johnson...it used to be the biltmore hotel, and the Beatles would have stayed there, seriously, but they skipped town that night). I've been inside the hotel...it needs a reno job. I am really proud of myself for drawing these in a timely manner and responsibly, but maybe it's because the show is in August this year instead of mid july, and thusly I have WAY more time to organize. Speaking of Responsibly, there are a half a dozen things wrong with the version of the poster I posted up here. I did a re-do (which I fully expected to be doing) and it is up around town in Nanaimo and also on the website of the show http://www.greenmountainmusicfestival.com/ and you can also read a great article about green mountain in the July issue of the CITR magazine, The Discorder www.discorder.ca/discorder-magazine/index.php/2009/06/30/the-green-mountain-music-festival/

The article in the magazine is illustrated by my poster! but the one on the website is not...you can view the real magazines with my poster online too, you just have to look for the link to the PDF version, and open it,...super easy.

any way here are my latest posters.

this one's for Colin's Mummy. I always liked this story about her.... however, the facts are dubious. This is how I hear it from Colin.

Well here it is...I have been working pretty steady on the poster since the last posting.

I just got word that The Green Mountain Music Festival will be happening again this year! I was assuming that James wouldn't be able to organize the show this year since he has only been back on his feet for about a month now. I talked to James on the phone this morning, and he said that the team made such incredible strides last year, all the logistical details seem to just be falling into place by themselves. It's James'es nature to want to do everything himself, but obviously he can't since he's still recovering from his brain injury. I learned a LOT last year about taking initiatives and being responsible, and just plain learning how to use photoshop. I am much much better at photoshop now, and I think my logistics are going to fall into place as well.
as far as artistically, I think I might use a bear for this years theme....that or something like a baby bird, or some other kind of bird, to use a heavy handed metaphor for Mike Gurr. James says that this years show will be the final show for The Hotel Lobbyists, then they will retire the name and reform as a new band. I'd like to use some kind of metaphors for that in this years poster, without using something obvious like a stupid Phoenix.
Green Mountain Music Festival!
August 8th, 2009
Nanaimo, BC

Tonight is the night I spend my hundred-dollar ticket to see Leonard Cohen! apparently he is still a great performer, even in his seventies. The other big-ticket item I mention in this comic, the David Byrne concert, was excellent, so hopefully this show will also be good. I can understand why these guys are so famous, because they are spectacularly carismatic performers. About 5 years ago, I got to see David Bowie at GM place, and I swear it was like he was singing directly to me, way up in the nosebleeds. That show was also worth the price of admission.

This comic is from back in January, I was backlogged a bit because of my 10 pages of useless hourly comics...which I will NOT be doing (to such an extent) again. As far as this comic goes, this winter was especially harsh. We had several huge dumps of snow that reeked havok on the town. My strategy for dealing with my 40 km commute was to drive to my parents house the night before work so I would only have to drive through one city as opposed to three. This particular night, I started driving in the middle of a huge snow storm, I probably would have been better off driving that morning.

in other news, April 5th I went down to Seattle to the Emerald city comicon. I was only a spectator but it was a spectacle. I got to meet my favorite comic artist, Jaime (Xaime) Hernandez of Love and Rockets fame. I showed him my comics. He was very nice. nothing spectacular happened at this spectacle, but it was just really nice. like home.

This is an old comic I put on hold in order to do my hourly comics. It's really old.

I think that only one image at a time can be blown up, here. Thats annoying.

I am re-posting the images from the hourly comics that wouldn't blow up, so my poor blind aunties can read them.

Well, Feb 1st is Hourly Comics Day, where cartoonists go nutty drawing what happens to them every hour for every waking hour of Feb 1st.

So, I decided to participate in this, which took me until yesterday to finish. I hope you can enlarge the image, I know my last comics had some glitch, I will try to reload them.

Poor little Hedwig the Guinea Pig died suddenly at the end of November. That night I had a crazy Dream? vision? sleepy hallucination? I really SAW this strange thingy on the bedroom wall, be it a ghost or something in my head.

I thought you might want to see the photo we traced to make the cover drawing. This is honestly what the top of my desk looks like most of the time, with various incarnations. Right before I got the idea for the cover, I had ironically cleaned off the top of my desk to help with the thinking process. I therefore had to cosmetically "mess up" my desk to it's regular state. The task was fairly simple: pull some sewing out of the pile, toss some overdue bills, sprinkle with bits of paper and pins and thread, and then decorate with empty beer cans and moldy tea mugs with festering tea bags dried to the bottoms. It's no wonder one of my idols is Francis Bacon. If I was computer smart I would make that into a link so you could click on it and see a picture of his uber messy art studio. I had a similar crush on this guy in art school who had the messiest studio space in the painting department. he literally kept a shovel that he would use to shovel the crap away from his painting area. I don't particularly LIKE having a really messy desk, but I like having all my stuff there where I can see it. Colin likes that as well, he wants all his stuff hanging on the wall out in the open, no cupboards on the doors or anything. Sometimes I get a little freaked out with all our stuff towering over us, threatening to topple and crush us.

Here it is ! the cover of my very first mini-comic collection of these strips, from dec 2006 to july 2007. I had been dragging my feet on layouts for a few months now, but I decided to give them away as christmas stocking-stuffers. I did not actually draw this cover, Colin did- but he didn't actually DRAW it, he traced a photograph of my desk. In the process he smashed a freshly healed cut and gushed blood all over the drawing, which I edited out with photoshop after the drawing was done.
Today I took some of them down to the local comic shop but I was too shy to offer them up. Maybe tommorow then.

This is a really old comic, part one of one of the many adventures Colin and I had with Christine and Travis when we went up to the Queen Charlotte Islands this past August.