the squirrelgurl

2012-02-04T21:30:00.000-08:00

Here's the last two pages from my hourlies.

2012-02-04T17:32:00.001-08:00

HOURLY COMIC DAY!!!! more pages to come

2012-01-30T17:00:00.000-08:00

Here's another page from the next issue of THE FINGER!

2011-12-26T22:06:00.000-08:00

Here's page 37 of The Finger for your reading and viewing pleasure. If you're wondering, I am numbering all the pages in order from page 1, throughout the books. In book two, it starts on page 23, and so on. This helps me keep the drawings organized and then hopefully one day I will have the whole epic in one nice professionally bound volume. *drools*

2011-12-26T21:59:00.000-08:00

Despite my long absence I have indeed been working. I am going to be showing my work at the VanCAF comic and art festival at the Roundhouse Community center downtown in may, and that's going to be the debut of book 3 of the Finger! I am hoping to have a full length comic, 22 pages. Here's page 35 hot off the scanner!

2011-09-24T10:19:00.000-07:00

This is the next page that comes after the last page in my new comic, so it's not in the book, but I love it so I'm sharing.

2011-09-24T10:10:00.000-07:00

Here's the cover for my latest endevor in comics!! This is not going to be a limited edition of 25 books (because one page is missing) and I am going to do a new edition of the Finger part 2 once I get enough pages together for it to stand alone.
What this book consists of is about 9 pages more of The Finger, and a 7 page long short comic about how colin and I found Jimmy the baby Seagull this summer! That's him on the cover! lil' cutie!
So come down to Word On The Street, at the main library downtown, this sunday from 10 to 6, and buy some comics from me and all my dorkus malorcus comic friends!

2011-07-28T18:08:00.000-07:00

Here's page 3 of the Jimmy the Seagull comic, (that's a working title).

If you're wondering what happened to page 1, it hasn't been drawn yet.

2011-07-20T12:28:00.000-07:00

This is kinda unusual! A comic post!
I just got confirmation that I will be showing my stuff at Word On The Street book and magazine festival at the downtown library again this fall. I have about five pages of part 2 of The Finger done, so I am kinda under the wire now if I want to have new work to show.
anyway this drawing is not for the Finger, this is a little short story I was working on in tandem with Colin, about finding a baby seagull on the mean streets of East Vancouver. This drawing is not photoshopped yet so you can see all the stains and stuff on the paper. ooo, realism.

2011-07-19T13:55:00.000-07:00

Okay, fine I'll show you what the shirt looks like: This has got to be one of the coolest designs we've had so far, and we still have lots of shirts that we need to sell! If you want one, drop me an email, yournamehere19@hotmail.com and I can hook you up! they are 20 bucks a peice, and they're american apparel brand shirts. ooooo nice!

2011-07-09T20:09:00.000-07:00

This is fun, here's an article that David Morrison, a fan of GMMF since day one, wrote about our little festival. It's super nice except that they've got an old version of the poster with the article, and I am pretty sure that we send them a new one. Now there's no Sun Wizard and a tonne more sponsors, too. show is in one week today!!!!! I am super pumped. I can't wait to wear a walkie talkie again. kinda makes you want to go into law enforcement or security, them things do! In other news, the design for this years T-shirt has been completed by myself and Mike from Top Drawer, and he made it look so incredibly hot that it absolutely puts me to shame, and I almost don't want to show you.

2011-06-30T14:25:00.000-07:00

Hello folks, I thought I would update you all on this years Big Greenie. We've got a deluge of new sponsors since I "finished" the poster, and some bands have come and gone, as usual. This is what the newest version of the poster looks like:

We've got some great new people on board, like a new recording studio that opened up in Nanaimo, The Noise Floor.

2011-06-22T20:16:00.000-07:00

here's the final version of this year's Green Mountain Music Festival poster!

2011-06-03T21:47:00.000-07:00

Helloo digital fanbase!!

Guess what time of year it is ???

This upcoming thursday there will be a fundraiser for the epic Green Mountain Music Festival 4!! one for every year I've been a teacher. It's going down at the Library Square Pub (which is in the library building, duh) in downtown Vancouver. This is also the first ever public show of MEGABEAR! The new band of Green Mountain founder, former Hotel Lobbyists frontman, and my friend, James Wood. I am so excited to see him play again and I want big bucks for this festival to go down! Get your hineys out peoples.

2011-04-22T15:46:00.000-07:00

Guess what time of year it is again??????

2011-03-30T10:47:00.000-07:00

Ahh, Bison. Such fine metal we produce here in the Pacific NOrthwest.

Green Mountain is on again this year! The list of crazy awesome bands is getting longer and longer...I hope I can fit them on the poster. We have Bison on board for the headliners again, if any of you were there for Green Mountain 2, you will recall the absolute nuts it was.

Date is going to be July 17th, at Rogers arena...I mean, Tara's farm in Nanaimo again.

2011-02-08T22:05:00.000-08:00

February the 1st is hourly comic day!! here's my day.

2011-01-29T14:50:00.000-08:00

Here's another page of THE FINGER PART 2 .......still thinking of a catchy name. any suggestions, digital fan base?

on a related note, I bought one of those Kindle e-readers, and I was using it's "experimental web browser"... I could use it to log into this blog, and even type stuff in this little text window, but not upload. I suppose it's because blogger uses pop-up windows. hmmm.

I've been teaching full time art at a really nice school for the past two months. I haven't had much time to draw during class since I actually have responsibilities besides supervision. Also, I no longer have a studio space and have been trying to work out of my apartment, but it's taking a while for me to work out the kinks in that arrangement. All the things I was worried about are all true: distracted by chores, boyfriend, other responsibilities and other activities. Pro's however...no more spending money on burritos, no more radical changes in temperature, and no more extra expense. wee. I promptly spent the extra expence money on upgrading the Wacom tablet and a really distracting, really unnecessary Kindle.

2011-01-01T20:57:00.000-08:00

wondering what I've been up to? page 23 of The Finger.

2010-12-30T23:14:00.000-08:00

Hello digital fanbase!

for the festive season my parents bought me a Wacom digital drawing tablet! I am really enjoying it, especially those moments where I've been messing around with the mouse, going "this would be SO much easier if I could just do it with a pencil!!"

so to practice I drew this little comic:

2010-12-20T13:35:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I participated in the Waldorf Hotel Comic and Zine Fair, in scenic east Van! I had a great time. It was a tiny little affair, with pretty much everyone from the local scene and a few people that I don't know yet. The fair was held in the tiki room basement of the hotel, which was pretty cute. I'd never been to the renovated hotel, yet. I had only seen it when it was a nasty alchaholics dive bar. Anyway, for being such a small affair, I sold a LOT of comics! I think it was because I was moving them for so cheap. I sold them basically at cost, and everyone was able to afford them.

2010-10-26T19:04:00.000-07:00

APE CON CON-TINUED!

thought I should say some more about Snan Fransisco.....

after the book launch at floating world in Portland, we got to spend the night with the generous and hospitable Joe Keatinge ( who won an eisner award and a harvey award for his compilation!) he had an awful lot of books in his apartment. The next day we picked up young Farel Dalrymple author of Pop Gun War http://www.popgunwar.com/ to help us drive to San Fransisco. The I5 is always good for fun times like road kill spotting, and punchbuggy religious-propaganda billboard.

Here's Farel driving Friday. I always want to spell his name "Faryl" probably because of the awesome way his last name is spelled.....DALRYMPLE ....also fun to say out loud: "fair-rell dall-rim-pell". The drive down was pretty smooth and uneventful except for the cruel manipulations of a Mazda full of teenage-ish girls up to no goods with my men on the highway. There were three girls in their car plus some large cage containing some kind of animal, which was convenient. Three loose-moraled girls for the lads, and whatever mammal was in the cage for me.
Farel got us into downtown San Fran around 8PM and we went straight to the Last Gasp warehouse party, which was pretty cool....a bunch of cartoonists milling about stacks of books with spilly alchaholic drinks like red wine!! It was really hot and crowded but I felt somehow like I had hit the big time, without even publishing one comic. Did I mention my box of comics never made it? I don't recall. Well, my box of comics never made it so I had nothing to sell/trade for the weekend. Farel Stayed the night at his sisters house, and I felt awesome driving around downtown SF in my own car...I felt like I had gotten some serious XP points on my driving proficiency. If you don't understand that last sentence you shouldn't attend a comic convention.
The city was beutiful but our hotel was ghetto...as was the neighborhood. I got that feeling when I checked it out on google maps street view. My reasoning was that no neighborhood could be worse than our own Downtown East Side, a notorious crack-fueled ground zero of mental illness and poverty for the entire country of Canada...nevertheless, Vancouver crackies don't seem to have the same air of anger and hostility that the american homeless did. Most of the homeless...at home...seem to just want to crack around in their own cracky dance, staring at the ground and such. Our first morning in SF, a fine fellow on the sidewalk outside out hotel greeted us with what we thought was "...THIS IS JOHNSON TOWN!! IF YOU DON'T LIKE IT, GET OUT!!" or something like that. Then he told me to "shut up, bitch!" or something like that.
Well after that, the convention was super fun. Despite not having my books I was well entertained with Dan Clowes, and Julia Wertz, and Vannessa Davis, and Erica Moen and Lynda Barry and Hellen Jo and all sorts.

2010-10-25T21:21:00.000-07:00

Here's another little ditty I am putting together for a poster....try to guess the theme.

2010-10-22T10:19:00.000-07:00

Hello Friends!

I am back from an epic weekend trip to San Fransisco Alternative Press Expo! I drove down with Robin McConnell of Inkstuds Radio http://www.inkstuds.com/, who happens to be an old roomate of my man Colin, from back in the days before me. Robin is a fantastic hillarious fellow, but he doesn't drive. Colin is a fantastic, hillarious fellow, but guess what he doesn't do? We tried to solicit another driver but nothing worked out so I was psycologically prepared to spend about 40 hours behind the wheel of my car.

Now, in order to streamline the journey, Robin and I shipped our books to Portland to be picked up at his first book launch at Floating world Comics. His books were there, but mine were not. My trip changed from buisness to pleasure. I was dissapointed, but there wasn't much I could do about it. The book launch went fine, and Colin and I got a chance to meet up with our old roomie Jen Whechsler, who lives in Portland now. Portland is a great place, it has light rail!!!

Here's Robin at Floating World, selling the very first copy of Inkstuds to his friend and noted comic book guy, Joe Keatinge.

2010-09-26T20:50:00.000-07:00

Well, I participated in my first comic-con today...which wasn't really a comic-con it was the comic room at the Word On The Street book and magazine festival. It was nice, because it was small and there were a lot of people that don't really read comics, coming around to check out everything. When you're at a big, popular con, there's so much density of material, it's nearly impossible to look at everything. I kept my hopes pretty low for today, I expected to sell about ten comics, (five of them being to people I know) and the FIRST PERSON that came to my table bought something! I tried to keep a tally of how much of everything I sold, but I often forgot to write it down. I sold at least 20 comics, and gave away a pile of free cards with prints of our rock posters on them. it's definatly a start. I know now, bring a table cloth, and lots of free stuff to give away, and everyone likes cute animals. Dear Diaryahh 2 with Sweatpants on the cover definatly got the most "traffic", and funnily enough, there is not a single drawing of a guinea pig in that comic. Today was also the debut of my new comic, "THE FINGER- part one, My Right Hand" I was going to call the whole comic My Right Hand, but Colin and I decided that The Finger was more catchy, and funny. Here's what the cover looks like:

2010-09-02T22:02:00.000-07:00

here's another page of my comic...not the photoshopped version. Of course, in the actual hard copy it will be all shiny and perfect. I've decided to change the name of the comic to "THE FINGER" because I think it's catchier and funny. Any imput on the matter would be appreciated. On september the 26th, I am going to be hawking my stuff at The Word on the Street festival at the library in downtown vancouver! It'll be my comicker coming-out...my comic cotillion. my first festival. come by and buy some stuff. you can check out the fest at www.thewordonthestreet.ca/vancouver
there isn't any mention of my name, I'm listed as candcdrawingfactory, which is what colin and I call ourselves together. Im going to be showing our poster art as well. we are planning on going to APE convention in san franscisco in october as well. BIG TIME!! but not as me, as companions to our friend Robin McConnell, who hosts Inkstuds radio on CITR. I really hope it works out because it would be a nerd festival to bandage the salve of my Stumptown fiasco, whom still haven't given me my money back!

2010-09-02T21:52:00.000-07:00

here's another little poster I've drawn...it didn't get posted up anywhere but It did get used on the internets...and I think it turned out cute.

2010-07-23T12:05:00.000-07:00

more pages of art....I've been working very well ever since I downloaded an app for This American Life, which is a great chicago radio show on NPR. Every episode has a theme, like "bad friends" or "Moving" and a series of stories and interviews and radio documentry. Nice girly human drama stuff that I like. For some reason when I'm captivated by the radio stories I am less likely to roll my rolly chair over to Ed's bookshelf and start flipping through the comics, or go, "hmmm, I'm kind of a tiny bit peckish" and go buy a Budgies Burrito. Snacking also seems to help me concentrate,...I try and keep a kings ransom of rice cakes and apple sauce on hand.

this page isn't photoshopped yet.

2010-07-05T12:27:00.000-07:00

and this post you can actually click to embiggen!! for my blind aunties.

2010-07-05T12:19:00.000-07:00

So in this 2 month absence from posting about comics, I have actually been working on My Right Hand. I've got about 8 pages completed, and I just finished photoshopping 4 of them...except for page 4 itself...that one's not done yet....I still have one panel to draw that's daunting. That page is basically a seguay from the 5th inning were I broke my finger, to the seventh inning on page 5.

2010-06-11T19:15:00.000-07:00

Last night was the CD release partaayy for Shiloh Lindsey's new CD, "Western Violence and Brief Sensuality", featuring cover art by yours truly! I was so excited and proud, and sad, since I had to leave early in order to work the next day...BOO-URNS. I missed Shiloh's performance, unfortunately, but I listened to the CD when I got home, and like everyone was saying, it is quite awesome...and so were the performances I saw, El Dorado and a bit of Swank. For an urban yoga pants city that used to be a hippy enclave, we certainly have some great old-fashioned alt-country music here in Vancouver.

Here is a picture of me with my first real CD cover!

2010-04-18T17:32:00.000-07:00

Here's an interesting tidbit for you: I am a member of the Vancouver Desert Plant Society, which is as it sounds, a garden club for people (old people) who like cacti, succulents and other desert- climate plants like Mesquite, which I quite like. I know I posted some comics earlier about when my friend Andria, (who is the Vice President of the DPS) and I took a road trip to Joshua Tree National Park to see the plants there. What's interesting is that I kind of joined the club on a lark. Andria wanted to join but didn't want to do it by herself, and I was thinking, "okay, whatever!" Now, five years later, I have windows and windows full of cacti. I have made lots of friends in the club that I would NEVER have made friends with on a normal basis, like Charles and his wife Nettie, who have a great property on Saturna Island that Andria and I have visited twice now. We've seen so many beautiful houses and gardens, which is really inspirational to me to become an eccentric old retired person with a really extensive, anal retentive hobby. The reason I am saying all this is because in July we have our annual DPS show and sale, where you can come and see all our most prized, rare and valuable plants under careful supervision, and you can also purchase rare and valuable desert plants for truly reasonable prices! Also, I made the poster for the sale, and here it is....all of the photos were taken by either Andria or myself. I think one of those plants is mine, but most of them belong to Andria. the main photo is from our trip to Joshua Tree...it's the field of Opuntia Bigelovii....yeah!

so come to the show and sale. see some plants...buy some plants.

2010-04-05T15:49:00.000-07:00

I've been working on a new book about the crazy summer I had last year, because of one tiny bone in my right middle finger. I only have about 7 pages laid out so far but I am invisioning a grandiose graphic novel. we'll see how interesting it actually is. Here are the first two pages.

2010-04-01T14:29:00.000-07:00

So I just got the news that there isn't going to be a Green Mountain this year. James, the organizer, won't have the time to devote to it this summer since his rehab has been ramped up. If you didn't know, James was in a terrible car accident last fall, while on tour with his band, The Hotel Lobbyists. He had a brain injury from a crushed skull, and spent 6 months in the hospital. Although James has been out of the hospital for about a year now, he is still working on getting a normal life together. We were all shocked and delighted when James decided to do Green Mountain last year, but he had a lot of help from his family and this year he'll be doing more job skill training and stuff like that.
I'm pretty dissapointed, but I hope that we can do it again next year. I think I might continue to work on the poster anyway and save it for later.
I probably should be focusing on my comic books anyway, even though I still haven't heared anything from Stumptown!!! you have my money, you jerks!

2010-04-01T14:20:00.000-07:00

Here is day two of the New York sketch diary.....I sent a couple copies to family members as thank yous for Christmas and birthday gifts and I didn't want to spoil the surprise. I'm pretty sure they've got them now, so here's what's inside!

2010-03-15T15:39:00.000-07:00

I just finished putting together a little booklet of the sketches from our last Christmas trip to NYC, and here is the cover I made up; It's from a photo I took of Colin just outside of his sister's apartment building.

2010-02-18T20:32:00.000-08:00

I got a reply today from Narduar the Human Serviette! I'm pleased because I wasn't sure what to expect...it was just an email (possibly from an intern?) but it means someone got my letter, opened it, read the comic and then went online and typed my address in their email account. I was concerned because I sent an actual letter, that means a little bit more work on his part if he wanted to reply.

He said "Have a Nice Breakfast!"

Colin and I also sent in our application to the Stumptown Comic Fest!!! April 24-25 in Portland, Oregon. I've only got 3 lousy mini-comics ready, but we'll see what I can get done during spring break. I'm working on a little comic about breaking my finger this summer....excitement!

here's another page from the narduar comic, to jog your memory!

2010-02-10T13:39:00.000-08:00

I've been working on finishing up the comic diary I did of my trip to NYC with Colin this past Christmas, in the tradition of travel diary comics.

2010-01-19T20:42:00.000-08:00

Here's my latest rock poster!! Again, for my favorite customers, the Hotel Lobbyists! This poster was pulled out of my arse in a matter of days. It features Bette, the French bulldog belonging to James, the lead singer of the Lobbyists. Bette is really a girl, but graphically it worked better with her in the traditionally male role in this stereotypical scene....unless Bette maybe swings that way....(or the poodle is maybe a hustler if you know what I mean)....
all the colours besides that on the dogs was done with Photoshop....not as pretty but FAST. Note the date on the poster, I had to get er done.

2010-01-10T21:15:00.000-08:00

Check it out.....the finished cover for Shiloh Lindsey's album, "Western Violence and Breif Sensuality"

I am Also working on an album cover for David Chenery and the Lonesome Valley Singers...it will also be terrifying sepia with lots of gore.

2009-11-29T20:23:00.001-08:00

So, I've finally managed to assemble the last couple of comic pages that I've been posting into a mini-comic collection called Dear Diaryahh 3. If you are one of my loyal follower(s), you might remember my first mini comic, which I assembled pretty much this same time last year. That mini comic was called Dear Diaryahh. What happened to Dear Diaryahh 2? you may ask. Well, I began editing the comic strips that follow Dear Diaryahh, but got side tracked with how awesome I though some of these longer comics I've been drawing have been, and one thing lead to another. so anyway, this contains a few strips that would have been in Dear Diaryahh 2, so they will be cronological....except for a few things....anyway, whatever. I will reissue them all in a new, remastered unabridged graphic novel format when I am famous. Here is the title page of Dear Diaryahh 3, AND 2, for your viewing pleasure.

If you find yourself admiring the beutiful perspective, they are all traced off photos...all three title pages...oh, and colin drew the first two. So there.

2009-11-09T11:41:00.000-08:00

here are page 4 and 5

2009-11-09T11:31:00.001-08:00

page seven!

2009-11-04T15:42:00.000-08:00

Hello, gentle reader(s)

The month of October has been kind of wacky, art-wise. My trusty laptop, which is three years old (about 90 in computer years) got some kind of computer swine flu and wouldn't even boot up. At this time my Dad, who is my computer guru, had just gone to Montreal for a week or so. I was still working on the CD art for Shiloh Lindsey, so I prepared to start scanning it onto Colin's PC. While over on his computer I decided to update his versions of Adobe, and then plugged in the scanner, which knocked out the internet. This happened before, all I had to do was restart the computer... which then revealed some other kind of computer swine flu.

Great.

So there I was with two defunct expensive paper weights. I need to use the internet to check on stuff for work, and Colin and I need to keep in touch with "clients", so this was kind of bad. Miraculously, a mysterious free wireless signal had been creeping into our place, which would only work if the apartment door was open. I could still access the internet with my iTouch, which was kind of novel.

I decided to change gears and focus on Halloween, my personal Christmas. I spent the week sewing and paper mache-ing. After Halloween my returned Dad managed with great focus to recover all my data and lo, there she was, the finished, unpublished page 6 of my epic Rock Show comic, mistakenly labeled as page 7...

2009-09-28T14:19:00.000-07:00

Page 3 of the rock show comic

2009-09-24T12:59:00.000-07:00

page two of the new comic.

2009-09-22T14:11:00.000-07:00

This summer I've been doing a metric tonne of work, although I haven't been posting here very much. This is partially because of commission jobs for Shiloh and Green Mountain, and partially because of my broken knuckle, and partially because of this here comic I started at the very beginning of summer. Just days before I broke my knuckle, I attended a really spectacular rock show of Andrew W.K. and The Evaporators at the Biltmore Cabaret (where the green mountain fundraisers were later held). I was really inspired to do a full mini-comic about the whole thing, and I have been working on it since then. I wanted to wait until I had a couple of completed pages before I post them up here, so I will slowly be putting them.

2009-08-20T13:58:00.001-07:00

more shiloh drawings! check out http://www.shilohlindsey.com/

2009-08-20T13:45:00.000-07:00

I've been drawing some T-shirt designs for Vancouver country sweetheart, Shiloh Lindsey. look for her new Album "Western Violence and breif sensuality" out in october. I don't want to type too much because I broke a knuckle on my right hand in july, playing softball, it makes typing hard. Thank god I am left handed!

2009-07-08T12:05:00.000-07:00

First of two Pre party posters!

2009-07-08T11:52:00.000-07:00

Believe it or not, I have been drawing like crazy lately. Here are two more posters I drew for the Green Mountain Music Festival. We are having two pre-show/fundraisers at the Biltmore Cabaret on Kingsway and 12th. (this is in the basement of the Howard Johnson...it used to be the biltmore hotel, and the Beatles would have stayed there, seriously, but they skipped town that night). I've been inside the hotel...it needs a reno job. I am really proud of myself for drawing these in a timely manner and responsibly, but maybe it's because the show is in August this year instead of mid july, and thusly I have WAY more time to organize. Speaking of Responsibly, there are a half a dozen things wrong with the version of the poster I posted up here. I did a re-do (which I fully expected to be doing) and it is up around town in Nanaimo and also on the website of the show http://www.greenmountainmusicfestival.com/ and you can also read a great article about green mountain in the July issue of the CITR magazine, The Discorder www.discorder.ca/discorder-magazine/index.php/2009/06/30/the-green-mountain-music-festival/

The article in the magazine is illustrated by my poster! but the one on the website is not...you can view the real magazines with my poster online too, you just have to look for the link to the PDF version, and open it,...super easy.

any way here are my latest posters.

2009-06-11T21:29:00.000-07:00

this one's for Colin's Mummy. I always liked this story about her.... however, the facts are dubious. This is how I hear it from Colin.

2009-05-31T18:32:00.001-07:00

Well here it is...I have been working pretty steady on the poster since the last posting.

2009-04-27T12:26:00.000-07:00

I just got word that The Green Mountain Music Festival will be happening again this year! I was assuming that James wouldn't be able to organize the show this year since he has only been back on his feet for about a month now. I talked to James on the phone this morning, and he said that the team made such incredible strides last year, all the logistical details seem to just be falling into place by themselves. It's James'es nature to want to do everything himself, but obviously he can't since he's still recovering from his brain injury. I learned a LOT last year about taking initiatives and being responsible, and just plain learning how to use photoshop. I am much much better at photoshop now, and I think my logistics are going to fall into place as well.
as far as artistically, I think I might use a bear for this years theme....that or something like a baby bird, or some other kind of bird, to use a heavy handed metaphor for Mike Gurr. James says that this years show will be the final show for The Hotel Lobbyists, then they will retire the name and reform as a new band. I'd like to use some kind of metaphors for that in this years poster, without using something obvious like a stupid Phoenix.
Green Mountain Music Festival!
August 8th, 2009
Nanaimo, BC

2009-04-19T17:17:00.001-07:00

Tonight is the night I spend my hundred-dollar ticket to see Leonard Cohen! apparently he is still a great performer, even in his seventies. The other big-ticket item I mention in this comic, the David Byrne concert, was excellent, so hopefully this show will also be good. I can understand why these guys are so famous, because they are spectacularly carismatic performers. About 5 years ago, I got to see David Bowie at GM place, and I swear it was like he was singing directly to me, way up in the nosebleeds. That show was also worth the price of admission.

2009-04-08T21:03:00.000-07:00

This comic is from back in January, I was backlogged a bit because of my 10 pages of useless hourly comics...which I will NOT be doing (to such an extent) again. As far as this comic goes, this winter was especially harsh. We had several huge dumps of snow that reeked havok on the town. My strategy for dealing with my 40 km commute was to drive to my parents house the night before work so I would only have to drive through one city as opposed to three. This particular night, I started driving in the middle of a huge snow storm, I probably would have been better off driving that morning.

in other news, April 5th I went down to Seattle to the Emerald city comicon. I was only a spectator but it was a spectacle. I got to meet my favorite comic artist, Jaime (Xaime) Hernandez of Love and Rockets fame. I showed him my comics. He was very nice. nothing spectacular happened at this spectacle, but it was just really nice. like home.

2009-02-23T20:06:00.000-08:00

This is an old comic I put on hold in order to do my hourly comics. It's really old.

2009-02-19T14:08:00.000-08:00

I think that only one image at a time can be blown up, here. Thats annoying.

2009-02-19T13:57:00.000-08:00

I am re-posting the images from the hourly comics that wouldn't blow up, so my poor blind aunties can read them.

2009-02-15T19:30:00.000-08:00

Well, Feb 1st is Hourly Comics Day, where cartoonists go nutty drawing what happens to them every hour for every waking hour of Feb 1st.

So, I decided to participate in this, which took me until yesterday to finish. I hope you can enlarge the image, I know my last comics had some glitch, I will try to reload them.

2009-01-08T19:01:00.000-08:00

Poor little Hedwig the Guinea Pig died suddenly at the end of November. That night I had a crazy Dream? vision? sleepy hallucination? I really SAW this strange thingy on the bedroom wall, be it a ghost or something in my head.

2008-12-30T12:59:00.000-08:00

I thought you might want to see the photo we traced to make the cover drawing. This is honestly what the top of my desk looks like most of the time, with various incarnations. Right before I got the idea for the cover, I had ironically cleaned off the top of my desk to help with the thinking process. I therefore had to cosmetically "mess up" my desk to it's regular state. The task was fairly simple: pull some sewing out of the pile, toss some overdue bills, sprinkle with bits of paper and pins and thread, and then decorate with empty beer cans and moldy tea mugs with festering tea bags dried to the bottoms. It's no wonder one of my idols is Francis Bacon. If I was computer smart I would make that into a link so you could click on it and see a picture of his uber messy art studio. I had a similar crush on this guy in art school who had the messiest studio space in the painting department. he literally kept a shovel that he would use to shovel the crap away from his painting area. I don't particularly LIKE having a really messy desk, but I like having all my stuff there where I can see it. Colin likes that as well, he wants all his stuff hanging on the wall out in the open, no cupboards on the doors or anything. Sometimes I get a little freaked out with all our stuff towering over us, threatening to topple and crush us.

2008-12-29T19:05:00.000-08:00

Here it is ! the cover of my very first mini-comic collection of these strips, from dec 2006 to july 2007. I had been dragging my feet on layouts for a few months now, but I decided to give them away as christmas stocking-stuffers. I did not actually draw this cover, Colin did- but he didn't actually DRAW it, he traced a photograph of my desk. In the process he smashed a freshly healed cut and gushed blood all over the drawing, which I edited out with photoshop after the drawing was done.
Today I took some of them down to the local comic shop but I was too shy to offer them up. Maybe tommorow then.

2008-12-19T20:38:00.000-08:00

This is a really old comic, part one of one of the many adventures Colin and I had with Christine and Travis when we went up to the Queen Charlotte Islands this past August.

2008-11-12T19:52:00.000-08:00

Why would I get stuck up a tree with a bunch of giant turtles?

2008-10-30T08:38:00.000-07:00

Well to everyones' delight, James Wood, singer/geetaurist of The Hotel Lobbyists, has been back home in Vancouver for almost a week, but still has a ways to go to being the dynamic fellow we know and love. I have been thinking a lot lately about back when we were in UBC education together. My little brother is now doing his first short practicum with UBC education, and the tension and stress and smelly BO problems are all fresh in my mind. The whole situation seemed so over my head back then (and still is) but James always seemed to have a pep talk or some empathy, without seeming holier than thou. He always seemed to be way more stressed out than me, but still inspirational and more in control? I always felt better after talking to him.

I thought it might be nice to re-publish this strip from right after UBC Edu, before I got hired with the Surrey school district. I was very, very nervous and stressed out about having to be a substitute teacher, and not having a job yet. I then had this crazy dream which was comically metaphorical, about having no choice but to kill TEENAGE zombies. I was totally out of my element, being the pacifist I am, and there was James, encouraging me along to kill some zombies. Next thing I knew, I was hired as a sub, and feeling a wee bit more confidant.

For some reason there isn't much sub work right now and I have had a lot of spare time to work on comics in my new studio space. I've begun a process of editing my juvenile quality control with magical Photoshop, so this is the new, improved cleaned up version.

2008-10-12T14:33:00.000-07:00

part two of the great Mojave Desert moth attack.

2008-09-28T15:32:00.000-07:00

Thursday, september 25 at 3am, the Hotel Lobbyists were driving on the trans canada highway outside of Brandon, Manitoba. The driver of their van fell asleep at the wheel, veered off the road, tried to right the course and the van rolled. James, the singer/guitarist, and my good friend from UBC teacher ed, was critically injured. The drummer, Mike Gurr, was killed. I don't know what happened to Jordie and Jordan, but I hope they are okay athough they must be hurting pretty badly even if they're physically okay.

I've done a lot of drawings for the band in the last couple years, and consiquently gotten to know them all fairly well but not nearly as well as I could or would like to. I do know that Mike was an extremely hard working, driven guy with an electric personality. he always greeted everyone with a smile, and had fantastic energy and big plans. I can't stop thinking about him. All the same can be said for James, who spent all summer killing himself.....wrong word......working himself to the bone organizing the Green Mountain Music festival to raise funds for CF. After the concert he had his own wedding to organize and attend, and then what seems like two weeks later, was off on this tour with his band. all their dreams. I went to the kick off around the last week of august and I asked mike if he had all his changes of underwear packed. He said that was all he had left to do, that night as they were leaving the following day.

tommorow night there is going to be a funraiser to help the families with costs of getting the boys home and everything.

I have already posted this image but lets see it again....it's the drawing I did for the Hotel Lobbyists t-shirt. from left to right, James, Jordie, Jordan and Mike. I hope he gets to finally know all the secrets of the universe.

2008-09-20T19:06:00.000-07:00

part one!

2008-09-15T14:45:00.000-07:00

This dream was awesome. I honestly have always fantasized about living in a "shack"...especially one with a secret passageway.

2008-08-11T22:05:00.000-07:00

This comic has been sitting around for months now. I finished it weeks ago but I went on vacation to the Queen Charlotte Islands and forgot to post it beforehand.

I've been noticing that my comics look really....amature sometimes, because of the lettering and the way that you can see every booger smear on them when they get blown up. Since I've been using photoshop to work on rock posters I am aware that I should be polishing them up with that before posting, but I can hardly pull out a pen lately.

anyway, I got a new sketch book the other day and that always promises goodness.

I also got a real art studio too, at the beginning of the summer, and the office across the hall is that of one of my idols, Pia Guirerra....google her. woot!

2008-07-03T23:56:00.000-07:00

yes, more revisions!

2008-06-28T01:18:00.000-07:00

the poster for the green mountain music fest....a fair bit better than last years poster! I leanred how to use photoshop off the seat of my pants for this one. yay!

2008-06-04T20:47:00.001-07:00

The fundraiser preparty for the green mountain music fest!

woot

2008-06-03T21:30:00.000-07:00

This comic is a bit back dated....I was meaning to do something about our document dilema for a while now. Basically we needed replacements for colin's canadian citizen papers for christmas so I sent the paperwork out last summer. The replacement arrived this spring! 4 months after the fact. If you don't already know, new laws require all landed immigrants to carry a special ID card, or you need proof that you are a canadian (re: Passport). If you don't have proof that you a re a landed immigrant or a canadian citizen, or some kind of Visa, then you MAY be deported. Colin has a british passport and a british birth certificate, but he became a canadian citizen in the mid 90's, then promptly lost the papers hopelessly. So, we stood the risk of that. In the end, we ended up going to NYC anyway, after endless stressfull conversations and talking in circles. the customs officer hardly even looked at us twice!

2008-04-28T21:00:00.000-07:00

first prototype art for this years fantabulous Green Mountain Music Festival... mark your calendars, July 19th!!

2008-04-12T23:43:00.000-07:00

2008-03-22T12:23:00.000-07:00

money money money

2008-03-04T21:26:00.000-08:00

2008-02-26T21:14:00.000-08:00

This is one of the unfortunatly few comics I made while in NYC. It took me exactly two months to get this one finished, because I back-burnered it for various lame reasons. Now, It's one of my favorites. the last panel and the restaurant scene were almost entirely drawn by Colin.

2008-02-20T21:18:00.001-08:00

Here's hoping this works.

2008-01-23T09:34:00.000-08:00

For some reason one can't enlarge the comics in my last posting....curious, because I did nothing different. I will re-post them and see what happens.

here's two more comics. In the one with the giant colourful balloon heads, I was playing with some watercolour pencils that were in an art room I was subbing. I don't think I like them, they didn't blend very well. I suppose you're supposed to see the pencil marks for the "artsy effect". Anyway, I doodled on the page to wrest it from the flames, I guess. it's inspired by this little house on Grovesner road that colin and I did a drive by of...( drive by seems the wrong word) well we new it was for rent, and checked it out. even though the neighborhood is really....quaint.....it seems ideal to have a half acre lot with a cracky garage and a cracky empty lot next door. good ole cracky shack. some day you will be mine.

2008-01-07T17:27:00.000-08:00

So, dear readers, I've been away on Christmas vacation, exploring the big city of New York. I came back feeling inspired and cowed by the craziness. I was also intimidated by the fact that any drawing I do would have to have tonnes of Katsuhiro Otomo style buildings in it....every vista looked like a panel out of pre-disaster Akira comics. Here is the comic from just before we left....I know it says NOV in the corner with no date, and part of the events happenend in mid november, but the real date for this should be DEC 6th!

And here is the first comic I finished about our Christmas in NYC. Mostly we did anecdotal little doodles and such. This comic started with me drawing colin , (bottom left) wearing this hairband I bought in union sqare. it was olive green and matched his sweater, but it had pink bunnies on it. he wore it all day long, out in public, for a couple of days. I said it was his new york baddass look. After I drew him, he drew me wearing these fake Tom cruise ray ban sunglasses I bought. I don't smoke, by the way, it's just for looks, so stop freaking out. We finished it off with Colin's sister Eleanor, just loooking baddass, since she's always a NYC baddass. Eleanor suggested we add their mom looking really nervous, so Colin drew Evelyn in the background and the city scape behind us. she wore this red outfit every day so we could find her in a crowd. There you go, two comics, you slathering Jackals!!

2007-12-04T19:16:00.001-08:00

again I am one month behind. well, if it's any consolation, I worked extry hard on this one.

2007-11-21T19:41:00.000-08:00

this comic is a good couple of weeks late but, meh.

2007-11-14T18:33:00.000-08:00

my latest "for money" drawing....a t-shirt design for my best customers, the handsome and talented Hotel Lobbyists. they're playing a show tommorow night at the railway if you're in the neighborhood!

2007-11-14T18:26:00.000-08:00

I just got back from a whirlwind trip to montreal for my Nonno and Nonna's 60th anniversary. On our first night there I went to the bar with my lovely sibs and got a boozy idea for them to draw my strip for me, so, this comic was guest drawn by my brothers Brian and Paul, and Brian's Wife, Cara.

2007-10-29T10:25:00.000-07:00

2007-10-22T20:18:00.000-07:00

Yah, money for my talents.

2007-10-14T12:23:00.000-07:00

I had two comics done at the same time because I'm back in the classroom again. you'd think I would have LESS time, but no.
I've met my share of "celebrities" working the counter at Bennys, but never an A list one. especially not one that I would actually be exited to meet. to see Scarlett's ethereal glow better, remember you can click on the image to blow it up "Larger than Life"....

2007-10-10T19:54:00.000-07:00

2007-09-30T20:18:00.000-07:00

Ah...montreal....

2007-09-17T21:20:00.000-07:00

I dyed my hair blond with pink roots at the beginning of the summer, so that's why my hair is different in these last two comics....it doesn't translate very well in black and white. Now that school is starting up again I unfortunately had to change my hair back, but I also, the monotony of sitting in a classroom should bring forth more cartooons.....

2007-09-09T20:27:00.000-07:00

2007-08-27T23:25:00.000-07:00

This is the latest.,,,..er, the fourth peice to come out of The new C+C Drawing Factory! C being Carina and Colin....this was was basically just colin, however. he started drawing it and enjoyed doing it so much that he basically did the whole thing in a couple hours and I facilitated it. and I drew some of the stuff but nothing special. still, nifty eh? ooh yeah, come to the show.

2007-08-08T22:17:00.000-07:00

Here is the Ad I've been working on, for the Cafe I work in. This is one of the reasons I haven't been updating this site...

2007-08-08T21:58:00.000-07:00

yay!! It's July 1st post! I do have a couple of comics in a holding pattern, don't worry. I have been busy working on a poster and an ad.

2007-07-23T22:32:00.000-07:00

Bonus comic from july 7th.....drawn entirely entoxicated at a party in 1000 Parker art studios...it discusses the bike ride Andria, Brenda and I took from my house in kits to the party, and Brenda added a bike or two.....

2007-07-08T22:19:00.000-07:00

Yeah...unm.... the date for this comic should be June 15th. yep. over two weeks ago. I think it was becasue I wasn't bored out of my skull in a classroom all day. except for this day, this day was mega fun. yep. thanks to colin for doing the greys, thats how anxious I was to finish this.

2007-06-18T22:44:00.000-07:00