birds and zapatistas and artwork! oh my!

I spent Sunday drawing and watching the Broncos suck it yet again. The pictures below are the result. I'm still figuring out what exactly I was trying to convey with these - I've been thumbing through this old issue of Proceso that we brought back from Mexico on the Zapatistas, wanting to use the pictures in a project. So I cut up some cardboard, cut up some pictures, "highlighted" them with white-out, and then coated them in really diluted acrylic to tint them. And then I drew birds on them. Don't ask me what it means yet. It's just what needed to be done. The birds are, respectively, a cassowary, a purple swamphen, a marabou, and a grey heron.

inactive!

Haven't been around much the last month.

It's been kind of a long couple weeks. School has started again - which means I'm teaching regularly again, which eats up a lot more time than I had remembered - and I had a short period of complete and absolute hatred of children concurrent with the start of school, which is never a good confluence of events. This was followed by a extended bout of crippling self-doubt, and then my brother was shortly committed to an institution. All in all, a fantastic couple weeks.

Anyway. Here's some new stuff.

This is a picture I drew for my wife, who is currently in nursing school. I printed it out on sticker paper for her to decorate her copiously-filled notebooks with:

Also exciting is the possibility of doing regular (published!) cartooning again - I may be working on a series which documents various species of barfly - below is the first finished example, the Lonely Brow. Upcoming: The Midwestern Tufted Touchscreen Addict, The Ruffled Businessman, The Wild Secretary, and The Red-Cheeked False Bukowski. You will probably have to click on the drawing to read the monstrously small text if, in fact, you have any inclination to do so.

back to school.

I drew this in the blackbook of a kid who comes to our afterschool program - I thought "Grade" would be a hilarious tag name for a teacher.

things keep happening.

Things are a'brewing. Photo from a trip I took to Chicago with my lovely new Holga camera.

actual work?

My friend Brian is in the final weeks of editing his first novel, and he was kind enough to ask me to design the cover for it. These are a couple of drafts.

I totally screwed up the title, though. It's actually "Turning Failure Into Ideology". No "an".

we're about ready for vacation.

Somehow I doubt it's a coincidence that the closer I get to vacation, the more monsters and devils I draw - seeing escape just a day makes everything I hate about work that much worse. At least they're still cute monsters.

whatever. let's stop the pretense of numbering these, shall we?

Holy crap. You can't imagine how shitty the last couple weeks have been. Here are some drawing I should have been posting instead of bemoaning the state of my life.

In good news, I'm working on developing a regular comic for a local website. And I get a week of vacation soon.

drawing #44: discovery.

drawing #43: um. um. um.

I've just spent the last week fretting over the state of my mental health and generally getting my ass kicked by life. So I stopped drawing. That was a dumb decision. More soon.

drawing #42: nervous bird.

Holy crap! I thought I had published this. Guess I should learn how to use the interweb.

drawings #40 & #41: what i did over the weekend.

Hey. I spent the weekend experimenting with new styles/techniques. So here you go. In general, I try not to say things like this, for fear of sounding too snooty, but you should click on the image to see the full size versions. I'm pretty proud of them.

In case you can't tell, I've been a bit depressed lately.

drawing #39: backfill.

I'm in the midst of another drawing, so here's a sticker I made. The scan is kinda crappy - but it was the last one I had (the rest have been stuck on things or given to friends).

drawing #38: something from the bus ride to work.

drawing #37: something on my mind.

drawing #36: lion in the waiting room.

drawing #35: the mysterious powers of mary.

Just a doodle today. Is it too obvious that I was raised Catholic?

drawing #34: trip to the zoo.

I'm spending all my time drawing, leaving no time for writing. I think that's okay.

drawing #33: costume day.

WHEN: At the end of a stupid day. I had been grumpy (even churlish) all day, tired and baggy-eyed and sick of being asked to feign interest in things I didn't care about and kids I found unpleasant.

There, I said it.

Sometimes I hate kids.

WHAT IT MEANS: I'm really hoping this isn't some sublimated humiliation fantasy - making kids wear ridiculous costumes in retaliation for being a pain in the ass. It looks too cute for that. Maybe it's the non-depressive side of my brain attempting to lighten my day through a dose of adorable levity. Or maybe I was secretly hoping the costume would eat the kid.

drawing #32: field trip.

Holy crap! My friend was in town for the weekend and I got absolutely nothing done but eating a lot and catching up. This was drawn yesterday. I had a particularly grumpy day yesterday.

drawing #31: we've always been good friends.