blog: drawings

Original art auction: CASUAL GAXIAN

When my friend and yours Carly Monardo said “Hey folks who wants to donate some original art to be auctioned off for charity to benefit the Colbert Nation Gulf of America Fund,” I said “Well shucks I’d love to, except that my work doesn’t involve the creation of any original art!” To her credit, Carly was going to take that as an acceptable answer (and I was gonna make an exclusive print or something instead), but then I said “Dang-blast it, I wanna draw something.” So I did! And the result (that you see above) is up for auction right now as part of Carly’s Webcomics Auction For the Gulf series, which also includes many other pieces by many of my favorite people!

ANYWAY ENOUGH ABOUT THOSE PEOPLE HERE IS MY DRAWING which could very easily become your drawing (wink wink)! Edit: it’s sold! Thanks!

Works-in-progress survey

At any given time, I’m working on a half-dozen different projects: making comics, of course; designing books; hashing out ideas for prints or posters or shirts or what-have-you; and often, creating logos and layouts for stuff that may not see the light of day for months, if ever. Sometimes I get a little antsy and post previews or sneak-peeks on my Twitter, but that’s very limited in its scope, and I’d like to share more, and in different ways.

However, I am also very sensitive to the fact that you come here to read comics (with the occasional other nonsense), and you may not want half-complete junk-in-progress, or long chunks of prose, or stuff wholly unrelated to Wondermark in your feed reader or email inbox. Personally, I’m in favor of littering this site with everything I do, but this site doesn’t just belong to me anymore; it belongs to you too. So I’d like to ask your opinion — where should I put miscellaneous stuff? We’re talking half-finished comics. We’re talking chapters from novels, potentially. We’re talking sketches and designs and journal-type entries and probably stuff related to Tweet Me Harder and other projects. I figure there are three options:

Keep it at Wondermark. I’m a big believer in not fragmenting one’s online presence more than necessary, and Wondermark is potentially a broad enough umbrella to encompass everything I do. Besides, you could just ignore the stuff you don’t want to read.

Move it offsite. I’d probably start a Tumblr and start posting over there. That has an advantage in that I wouldn’t feel self-conscious about posting non-comics-related stuff there, but I’d hate for that to be so separate from Wondermark that nobody bothered to visit.

Move it offsite, but post a weekly digest on Wondermark. I’d put all the nonsense on the other site, but on Wondermark there’d be one post a week (if that) listing the highlights. So you’d still stay abreast of any cool stuff over there, but if you were only subscribed to Wondermark it wouldn’t be tons of posts in your feed reader or email.

Here’s a poll!

Or, if you have other ideas, leave me a comment. Thanks for your feedback!

Sketches from the Road

Thank you for supporting the Kickstarter effort for The Devastator! Amanda, Geoffrey and I are very excited to see this book come together. I should make clear that you can still get in on the pre-order for the book for the next day or so, and I’ll also be sure to mention it once the physical book is available!

On my travels, I like to sketch — either on paper in my notebook, or on my laptop with a drawing tablet. This particular collection is the result of an animated evening in New York a few weeks back, and I thought I’d share!

This weekend I’m in Toronto for TCAF! What a fun show, what a great city, what a tremendous collection of artists under one roof. Plus, it’s free! Just walk in the ol’ door! What do you have to lose.

Another thing I love about TCAF is how varied the panels and programming always are. Just check out the schedule — if you have even a passing interest in comics I’m sure you’ll find something interesting going on. TCAF is one of the rare breed of comics shows put on by people who love comics and comics creators foremost (which cannot be said of all shows, sadly), and boy, it shows!

On Saturday I’ll be on a panel called “Tracers, Photoshoppers, Cut & Pasters: Cheaters or Revolutionaries?” with my good friends Ryan and Emily as well as two other folks I haven’t had the pleasure of meeting yet. We’ll be talking about making comics without actually, you know, drawing comics in the traditional fashion. I think it will be a gas! OR, it could be miserable, but I think that is fairly unlikely.

On the plane to Toronto I impressed myself mightily by saying to the person beside me (after a few minor conversations about the drink cart and so on proved to be perfectly pleasant), “Can we be friends? I am tired of sitting in these seats staring straight ahead not talking to people. I’m David.” I’m not usually comfortable initiating conversations like that, but I did this time, and it was nice! We talked for an hour or so, and then went back to our reading or whatever. It was perfectly fine.

I might even try it again on the next flight — but only if the preliminary drink-cart tester-conversations go smoothly first.

I drew some fish

I am in Easthampton, MA at the moment, having just drawn sketches in about a hundred books! All of my books (and shirts, and prints, and pretty much everything) are shipped from the TopatoCo Command Bunker here, so once the Artist Edition orders that I’ve been crowing about were received and compiled, I swung on into The Office Of The CEO and drew strange little vignettes into everyone’s books while The Executive and I listened to folks recount their visits to Saturn on Coast to Coast AM. I shared a handful of the sketches on my Twitter as I went: the one above is among my favorites, and here are several more examples as well. We may be seeing more freakish dinosaur/tank/airplane/fish drawings in the future! These were pretty fun to do, and thanks very much to all the kind folks who ordered Artist Editions. The next opportunity to get sketched books will be in November.

If you would like to know the sorts of things that go on at TopatoHQ on a daily basis, I guest-star in a totally factual documentary account by John Allison, a well-respected subject of the Queen. In fact, I believe this tale bears the Royal Warrant. (Part 1 is at the bottom of the linked page.)

Now then! In just a few short hours I’ll be leaving the cozy confines of the Pioneer Valley for big ol’ Chicago! The Windy City! Chi-burg! Town of The Double Friendlies! The Urban Chicagopolis! Ol’ Jimmybean! I’ll be at the new C2E2 convention all weekend (with TopatoCo, booth 965), including a Friday-night panel discussion about webcomics that’s sure to be a thrill. I’ve never ever been to Chicago before, and I’m super-triple-excited to check it out and meet all the fun people who I’m sure populate its warrens! You guys have warrens, right? (I have been reading up.)

Finally — thanks to everyone who said hello at the MoCCA Festival last weekend in New York, and especial kind double-thanks to Chris and Carly, my gracious and collegial hosts. Chris if you find my jacket can you please bring it to Chicago.