One: Cut a hole in the box

I had some extra time tonight, so I made my Halloween costume (I'm going to be the Bad Robot mascot). Observe:

So, seriously, step 1 is cut a hole in the box:



Iz just mai size!



Modifying the form: the bad robot has a little wedge nose, and as hard as I looked, I couldn't find anything this shape. I cut and bent cardboard into a wedge and duct taped it in place, then paper mached over it to make a solid shape.



Paper mache!! Strips of newspaper dipped into the mush (2 parts Elmer's glue, 1 part hot water) and laid to dry on the form.



Other details: cutting ping pong balls in half for the eyes and duct taping magnetic 'bolts' to my shirt.





Then painting:



Finally, assembly! Super glue for the magnet 'bolts', duct tape for the pipe cleaner spring.



And a little sharpie for edge effects.



Eh? Ehh? I have silver pipecleaner in bands around my neck as well, and then a solid skirt and heels. Use your imagination, and...


BAD WOBOT! 8D

Mother tell your children not to do what I have done

I am taking an art seminar over the next 2 weeks on illustrating children's books. For my book, I wrote a 32-page picture book about Sydney, a little girl who starts a riot at the zoo. I am unbelievably excited to make it. (Because I need another project now, right? Well, it's okay if it's for school, I figure...) Depending on the format and how much I like the finished product, I may print minis of it for next year's shows.

There may come a day when we have nothing left to say

I knew of Kate Beaton, and had read a couple of Hark! A Vagrant strips before, but this weekend I read the entire archive, and I am in love. So funny and wonderful. <3

I don't wanna bend like the bad girls bend

Here's a final preview for the Monsters and Dames piece. I may tweak things later, but I need to call it done for now.

Also, Metric's Gold Gun Girls is amaaaaaziiiing~

So make a move cause I ain't got all night

There's a nice article up on Neighborhood Notes today by Jamie Rich. He interviews Wonder Woman Day founder and organizer Andy Mangels, current Wonder Woman artist Aaron Lopresti, Emi Lenox, and myself about Wonder Woman, the charity, and the art that we contributed.

I am trying to draw as much as humanly possible today. Recruitment is over, but school continues to kill my drawing time day after day, and my very good friend Molly will be visiting and having super fun times with me this weekend. Art must happen today!!!

So far today, I've inked a few pages from the project I am doing with Jake Ingman. Next is Between Gears, then some more coloring on the Monsters & Dames piece. Lately, I feel like I'm getting nowhere, no matter how many hours I find for art, but I am going to change that! Just keep swimming, just keep swimming, lalalalalala~

Cause when the seaweed sinks and the sun gets low, when the waves retire to the darkness below, I know Ruby sees all

I posted a preview of my Emerald City Comicon 'Monsters and Dames' piece earlier on Twitter, but I thought I would post some proper previews here:


Lineart


Flatted digital image

I like it so far! I'm a little nervous to finish the color, since I've lost confidence in my digital art skills lately, but...I THINK I CAN!!!!!

Pictures came and broke your heart

Previews from a current project:


I am finally ready to ink this story after an embarrassingly long pencil stage. The author is as yet unpublished in comics, and I think that he will really blow people away with this story.

Sail on, silver girl

Excellent artist/friend Emi just posted art by Angie Wang and me on her blog Emitown! (Scroll to Tuesday's entry) Emi and Angie invited me into their sketch group this summer, and these pieces are all from a day when we were in a bit of a creative slump. We decided to shake things up by drawing each other's characters, and it turned out to be our best sketch group yet!

Emi and Angie both made me Delilah fan art on that same day!

We are widening the corridors and adding more lanes

Recruitment is FINALLY OVER!!!!! We have 45 lovely new members, including 2 of my rush crushes. :) Let the real world resume.



I am eating Marshmallow Magic lately, which is something between Pokemon and Lucky Charms. (I love definitely-not-Ash's wizard hat. wtf)


And I am working on Between Gears pages now. Don'cha fret.

He saves what others throw away, he says that he'll be rich someday

*Whimper*
You guhuhuyyyyyyyys...I am one bad night's sleep away from going batshit cray-cray! :( Going to put in ear plugs, crawl under the covers, and pray for the sake of all the brains in Eugene that I don't wake up until 11 tomorrow.

Yodelehiii!

What? WHAT? What is this?!! Why did I not know about this until randomly browsing Hulu's family section?!



Feminism? Amy Poehler?? I want in on this party!!

She only listens to the radio to see who's alive

DAR is so funny. I keep going back to this strip--hilarious!! I love the throwing of hands in the last 2 panels.

Follow me down into the valley below

New Between Gears pages coming soon~...

On the night you left I came over

Applications for the 2010 JET fleet went up today. So weird...there's a good chance I could be in Japan this time next year. Pivotal decision, this. I had a strange vision: being at Comic-Con next summer from July 22nd - 25th, and moving to Japan on the 31st. How would all of my art projects work over there...? It would probably be hard to do anything commercial from out of the country, even with the available technology...it might just be an inspiration, learning, and journal-keeping year. :-/

I took a 'visual journaling' class this weekend, which turned out to be a bookmaking class with some medium experimentation in the last 2 hours. It was interesting, but bookmaking just is not my forte...I mean, I fully enjoy it, but I am aware of my strengths, and precision and nit-picking are not among them. My books always turn out loose and uneven, with glue spots. Heinous! I'm better-suited for gestural, messy art. I just can't make myself care enough to measure the loose ends of thread or re-tear a page because it dipped half an inch into my live area.

She's thinking 'how did I get here?'

I wasn't able to be in Portland for the Amazing Amazon First Thursday event this week, which showcased Wonder Woman Day contributions, but Matt Grigsby was nice enough to e-mail me some photos from that night!



Art always looks better framed by two handsome men! :P (Matt's site, Terry's site)



Matt and his ink wash painting.



Terry and his mixed media painting.



They hung my piece next to Alex Ross's!! I'm not sure whether or not you can see it in these photos, but the gallery had the glass for each piece uniquely engraved! Mine has butterflies on it.

A lot of people who I mention on this blog, and whose work I really admire, are in this gallery. I hope I can make it to Portland sometime during October to see, and I hope that you can as well!

It all happened so much faster than you could say disaster, wanna take a time lapse and look at it backwards

The first reading assignment in History of Superheroes was volume one of The Superman Chronicles, a collection of the first Superman comics from 1938-9, when he first ran in Action Comics, New York World's Fair Comics, and Superman. It's really interesting to read! My only exposure to Superman has really been the modern, mainstream stuff, and I've never liked him, because he seems to have no personality and no real problems. Ignore the irony of this sentence, but he really doesn't seem human, and therefore I don't care about him.



Reading these old comics, though? He's so entertaining! I like seeing him go so far creating the illusion of a despicable, cowardly Clark Kent. I like how his alter ego is an amusing joke to him, and the more that Lois ignores him, or people call him a weakling, the more ironically funny it is to him. He can even be cruel, laughing as he creatively punishes people as Superman, something that the modern, over-polished version of him would never do. This old Superman is cool. I would have been all about this series if I was a kid in 1938.