carefully collected trinkets

Laura Aguilar is a Los Angeles-based photographer whose work mines the intersection between feminism, body image, queer politics, and latinx identity. Her earliest works depicted latina lesbians in intimate portraits, calling to mind the frankness of Catherine Opie, while her best known series features self-portraits of Aguilar posed nude in the California desert landscape. These photographs are instantly striking, finding in the artist’s body formal elements that echo the landscape itself, as in its doubling here with the giant rock that eludes the frame. Aguilar also forces our gaze onto a body that does not conform to stereotypical images of latinx or feminine identity—a body type that is not so much othered as invisible, despite its ubiquity. The artist originally began to produce these photos as a means of grappling with her own issues with weight and self-acceptance, but quickly came to see them as something more. They offer a profound, ambivalent vision of woman and nature. We see Aguilar dissolve into the landscape in search of anonymity, at the same time that she reclaims the pride and beauty in her body far removed from the society that rejects it.

You need to look at actual people. Influencers and actors and models are not what actual people look like irl. Those people don't even look like that irl! Real people have wrinkles and scars and pockmarks, flabby arms and saggy breasts and bellies that fold and hang over their belts, double chins and crooked noses and acne, yellow and missing teeth, receding hairlines and bald spots and frizz. Real people wear old clothes that don't fit perfectly and aren't particularly stylish or fashionable. Real people wear makeup that cakes and smears and settles into creases. Real people are fat and old and tired.

Please call your representatives: VOTE NO on the FEDERAL BOOK BANNING BILLS HR 2616, HR 8705, and HR 7661!

Transcript below the cut.

If you don't know who your Senators or Representatives are, you can use Ballotpedia's Who Represents Me tool! (Note: there's a field for you to input your email address on their page, but it's not necessary to get your results. They just need a mailing address to confirm who your reps are.)

Once you've got names, you can look up and save your Reps' phone numbers in your phone. I find this makes it easier when I'm wavering about feeling brave enough to place a call. Just pressing a button instead of going and looking up the phone number all over again makes it just a liiiiittle easier, and sometimes that makes the difference between calling and not calling!

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