carefully collected trinkets

Hi Oliver! Between the two of us YOU are the one with a debut graphic novel published so I'm going to go ahead and link to that lol. It's Space Story!

Okay, here's the post with the Lynda Barry exercises. I can't recommend Making Comics enough for idea generation & general comics motivation. Barry is a master at getting you to loosen up and then tighten back up. I've also gotten a lot of mileage out of this Before/After worksheet from Tom Hart. The random image can be anything (movie screencaps, memes you've saved, other people's comic panels, etc).

Lately I've been working on Junk World #2 which is really long. I don't worry about sticking to a daily routine because my day job is physically taxing. But I do at this point have a set "formula" for finishing pages that feels very natural & doesn't stress me out.

First (image 1) I doodle a scene with ZERO regard for panel layout or page composition. This kind of drawing is just little guys talking to each other. Like literally floating heads. Everyone can do this kind of thing, I did it in the margins of my school notebooks. Then (image 2) I go back & start chopping up the story beats into panels, pages, etc. I only do this 1-2 pages at a time. Any more and I get bored!!!

Then I lay out the panels on 11x14 bristol and pencil/letter/ink. This is a "draw the rest of the owl" ass thing to say and it takes the most time, but because I've worked out most of the problems in sketch form it doesn't feel stressful or like I'm just staring at a blank page.

I think this is different from the standard "thumbnail" advice because the first part, the part where I'm just doodling/playing around, is fundamental to the actual flow & feel of the story. I can't skip it. And it's an extension of all my favorite exercises where the focus is generating silly images/characters just for fun and not worrying about the finished Thing.

But I don't know if that answers your question really... TL;DR:

In order to get in the groove, I pretend there's no causal relationship between "doodling a little cartoon animal" and "crafting something purposeful that people will see." And the core of that is getting to a place where I can just make stuff up without worrying about it :D

via @swatercolour here on Tumblr and also on [insta]

EDIT: I do not interpret "just managing" as "just suffering, just enduring, curling into a fetal position and waiting for it to be over." Managing is an active process.

So I'm using this post as a platform to make the reminder that "the power of the people is greater than the people in power," and we all are cordially invited to:

Take good care of ourselves. Mental, physical, emotional health. Hydrate. Move if we can, get outside if we can.

Keep up a routine. Remember quarantine and we all had to find a routine? This is the same.

Be intentional in our news consumption. Let's not stick our heads in the sand but let's not doomscroll either. Get an RSS aggregator. Subscribe to WTF Just Happened Today, Yoour Local Epidemiologist, Fix The News (for some inspiring hopeful news!). We'll check our feeds a few times a week, but no more than once a day.

Connect with friends and loved ones. Remind ourselves that while SOME people are horrible, for the most part people are awesome... if complicated. Share our fears but also our hopes. Eat together.

Now that we're keeping healthy, safe, sane, and hopeful... now we also fight. Quietly if we prefer, loudly if we prefer. But sustainably. I hate that I had to live through three rounds of this nonsense where a few people use half of us as tools to fuck over ALL of us, but here we are again. So let us take just one moment every week or so to...

Use 5calls to keep blowing up our reps phones. Tell them to either break ranks with the Orange Administration, or to stand up louder than just matching outfits and signs. Or to THANK them for standing up.

Use Vote411 to find elections before the midterms. A lot of villages, cities, townships etc have local elections that will affect where we live... and more importantly, the people in office there will affect things upwards too.

Use Ballotpedia to know exactly what's on our ballots ahead of time.

Protest, because it actually works.

Use Vote.org to make a plan to vote in the midterms. Make a plan that is immune to voter suppression tactics. Get our documents in order. Reach out to our friends to go to the polls as a group. Plan to livestream our visit, up until the point we have to turn our cameras off.

Make and share memes that promote hope, organizing, solidarity, and/or resistance.

Get involved with an action network like Indivisible, MoveOn, or Working Families Party.

Go to a local town hall meeting. Speak up.

Heck, start our own local activism networks, letter campaigns, call campaigns, or fundraisers with Action Network.

And we will remember our self-care. We will remind ourselves and each other that they want us scattered, focus is how we resist.

It IS coming back. Things ARE going to get worse. The world has become a place where a very few people are pulling levers and pushing buttons that are actively destroying much of what is good about living in a society where people care for each other.

Many others are in shock, sputtering "but can they do that?" MANY many others are waiting for someone to come save us.

But there are those who are actively, loudly, opposing.

And there are more people speaking up, acting up, every day. More people saying it's time to get scrappy. It's time to get into some good trouble. The shock is wearing off.

Yes, it's gonna get worse before it gets better (the long-term damage of the acts of the past momentum of all the damage that has been done will take that long to be felt -- but it WILL get better.

i went over and was about to put in “single” or “it’s complicated” and, well..

As a heartless killing machine, I was a terrible failure.

Little cover design doodle from like a week ago that I never posted :') more to come. Maybe. Eventually. We'll see.