blog: drawings

A while ago I reviewed Richard Thompson’s wonderful comic “Cul de Sac.” It’s a charming, hilarious strip I think everyone should be reading. (Read it online here, or follow Richard’s blog here.)

The image up there is the cover to a book called Team Cul de Sac: Cartoonists Draw the Line at Parkinson’s. In what has to be one of the supremest ironies ever visited upon the arts, Richard Thompson was recently diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease.

So his friend Chris Sparks organized a project called Team Cul de Sac, in which artists created original “Cul de Sac” fan art to be auctioned off to benefit The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research.

The series of auctions is going on now — only through Sunday evening, in fact! — and features original art from literally hundreds of amazing cartoonists. As well as from me! I snuck in there somehow too, with this piece:

(Click through to the auction site for a closer look.)

Many of the pieces (including mine) are also collected in the Team Cul de Sac book above, the proceeds of which also benefit the cause. Signed editions are available here, or you can buy it on Amazon or Indiebound right now.

Finally, if you’re in the Arlington, VA area, this Sunday night there will be a group signing featuring many of the contributors!

And DOUBLE-FINALLY, if you are creepily interested in Richard Thompson himself and the background behind the strip, here is an extensive feature about him in the Washington Post:

A 2007 offering is the prototypical “Cul de Sac.” Alice — “who’s not afraid of anything” — is momentarily cowed by winged cicadas. Petey, typically squeamish out of doors, advises: “Do what I do. Construct a distancing fantasy as a coping mechanism.” Next thing we know, Alice is costuming the cicadas in napkin dresses and naming them. By the last panel, with precise elliptical wit, the Otterloop parents are reading headlines about intelligent “superbugs” wearing paper clothes. “Don’t tell the kids,” Mom says. “It’ll just scare them.”

Read the whole article here.

GO TEAM

Heritage Auctions: “Petey and Alice in Wonderland” Original Art by David Malki !

Here are a couple of my favorite sketches from recent conventions! (Click for bigger versions.)

This was for a “Monsters and/or Robots” themed sketchbook:

I think this was my own idea, I can’t remember if there was a suggestion that prompted it:

“Gax hugging Mr Meanscary”:

“Polar bear with a nosebleed” (for a polar-bear-with-a-nosebleed themed sketchbook, I think):

BONUS LINK: At TCAF last weekend I met Tamara, who made a bunch of webcomics-themed cookies! Adorable!

We’ve got two people printing calendars in shifts right now, working as fast as the law allows.* We’re about 80% done with everything, and I still expect to be shipping these out on Saturday.

*By which I mean, of course, the physical law that governs the drying time of ink. Perhaps it’s Squid’s Law? I hereby postulate Squid’s Law as: “Things take twice as long as you expect, three times as long as you have, and four times as long as you want.”

We mixed up a custom color of ink for part of it, because apparently I hate doing anything simply?

It is very messy.

Monday the 19th will be the last day to place any orders through my in-house store before I leave town for Christmas. I cannot guarantee that anything purchased now will arrive at any given time, because I cannot control the post office, but we are doing pretty well at shipping all orders within 24 hours.

Here is a sketch I did at the Renegade Craft Fair last weekend!

It is a profound metaphor for AMERICA

In a winter scene!