Jamaica D

SF Zine Fest this weekend

I’ve been super busy getting ready for the San Francisco Zine Fest, and I’m happy to tell you that there will be TWO brand new photocopied books
(Dee’s Siren Song and a sketchbook) along with copies of the Weird Fishes GN, and I just got my packages of postcards and pins in the mail, plus I’m making some prints and bringing some original art. Come find me! Also: reading tomorrow night (Friday) at the Cartoon Art Museum with a bunch of other great artists. Ever been to a comic book reading before? Me neither. All the information you could want is at http://www.sfzinefest.com

Passport

On 10/10/10 I’ll be participating in the Passport art walk extravaganza over at Isotope Comics! James is gracious enough to host me as one of the artists you can visit in Hayes Valley to get your passport books stamped with art. Lots of great artists are involved, and while I’ve been involved in Passport before, it looks like it’ll be a good time! More information at the SFAC Gallery.

The second awesome part of my collaboration with James Sime is that he’ll be hosting a gallery of my new work at Isotope! That will take place in September/October.

Currently I’m getting ready for ‘Zine Fest in less than two weeks!

Supergirl and Dee

Here’s a new commission I’m working on… Supergirl! This is a first for me! I was asked to do it just like the “Wanna Spoon?” panel in Weird Fishes. I should have known that the hot dreamy goth girl would be one of my more popular images. Only now with a cape and blonde hair!

I wanted to show a little of my process, I’ve been thumbnailing and sketching a lot more lately, and I’ve been working on a cover image/poster for the SF Zine Fest:

I like the idea of the ancient hand print on Dee’s face, and I worked through that a bit and came up with this image:

Following that idea, I decided I wanted to work with graphics and text while making Dee into more of an iconic poster girl, and started off with these:

I really like the idea of Dee in a sailor dress searching for her prey:

Then I went for a headshot, and it got some high score points:

Here’s the inks for it. This drawing has a completely different feeling, the sketch was more of a badass but this one captures Dee’s attitude a bit better:

I’m still working out the reflection in her glasses, and in the next few days it’ll get painted and I’ll post that along to you guys. Feel free to comment on your favorite sketches, and whether you’d like this as a postcard or not!

Events: SF Zine Fest & Reading

Hey! I’ll be doing a special reading as a part of the SF Zine Fest pre-party at the Cartoon Art Museum! I’m currently plotting out how to “read” my comic in public with projections of the art, it will be a new first. Excited about this, it’s a great lineup!

Info:

Friday, September 3rd, 7 p.m. to 9 p.m – Cartoon Art Museum
655 Mission St between 3rd and New Montgomery
$5 suggested donation (no one turned away for lack of funds)
All proceeds benefit SFZF and CAM!
RSVP via Facebook

And of course, I can’t do a SF Zine Fest reading without being at the SF Zine Fest that weekend! I’ll have art, t-shirts, some new accessories, and a very limited hand-printed copy of the first chapter of Dee’s Siren Song!

Saturday & Sunday, September 4-5 from 11 – 6pm
(Labor Day Weekend)

SF County Fair Building, 9th Ave. at Lincoln Way
(formerly Hall of Flowers)

Please stop by, San Franciscians, the Zine Fest is the new old-school Comic-con!

Update : You can read a Q&A with me over at the SF Zine Fest Blog.

Highly Illogical

I stumbled upon this sketch of Spock that I did at SLG’s convention last year. I was randomly doing a bunch of little drawings to get people’s attention, including Poison Ivy, Wolverine, and Spock, who was bought up by Kevin before the ink even dried. Fun stuff!

Also, just posted a new comic page over at Weird Fishes:

Octopus Tattoo

I’m excited to say I finished a new commission and I like how it turned out! Doublehappy joy asked for either Bunny Boy’s coffee shop tattoo girl, or an octopus holding lollipops. I of course took this as a challenge to combine the two. Here’s the inks before I painted her:

I’ve been doing a bunch of sketches lately, first we have Bolan/Bowie love:

Ramona Flowers fanart:

I’ve been moving forward with new comic pages, be sure to check them out at weirdfishescomic.com:

Lots of pots on the fire, lots more on the way!

Projector

I bought an opaque projector off Craigslist this week.

It’s so much fun it’s crazy. So now I’m going through my sketchbooks and projecting my favorite little sketches huge!It’s amazingly freeing to draw so large and to know I’m not losing the looseness of my sketches in the process.

There’ll be a lot more of these as I paint them, but you’ll settle for this at the moment:

ps: worked on the “drawings” and “commissions” sections today. I’m accepting commissions now!

Awesome Comics Class

I spent 2 weeks down in Santa Cruz teaching kids about comic book art. We studied storytelling techniques and comic styles and anatomy, developing characters, and we drew A LOT. These kids ranged from 10 years old to about 13, and they blazed through my exercises, shared their stories with the class and were quickly drawing fully scripted comic pages that amazed me with their sincerity and outlandish creativeness.

During our second week, the kids took their comics to completion, voted on a title, and with my help they collaborated on a cover. The night before the last day, I took their finished art and printed a ‘zine of all their work, and remembered how much I love the DIY element of printing your own book.

Here are a few examples of the comics that came out of the class:

Jesslyn

Saray

Rena
Moshe

Here are my students drawing!

Writing notes.

On the last day (notice the Scott McCloud book on the table)

It was a pretty great experience, I finished feeling inspired to draw comics and impressed by a new generation of artists.

Fragments and Small Press Spotlight

I’ve been experimenting with design and using new methods of layout in my comic. This dream sequence was particularly fun, taking my giant painting of moths and turtles (I posted a snapshot not too long ago) and slicing it up in photoshop to create fragments. Since I usually do very minimal digital edits to my drawings this was a fun departure!

Speaking of original work, if you haven’t seen my Small Press Spotlight at the Cartoon Art Museum, there’s still time! The SF Public Press conducted a video interview with me and wrote an article about the exhibit that you can watch and read online.

Comic Classes for Kids, and moths

I’m teaching a comic book drawing class for kids this summer! It takes place in Santa Cruz at Cabrillo College, for 6th through 9th graders, during the last two months of June. If you know any kids who might be interested, please take a look at the Cabrillo website. Cheers!