Welcoming Spring

Here's an album package I recently finished. What's shown is the front and back sides of the disc sleeve unfolded as a single image. I also supplied interior art, and will post those after it hits store shelves.

I'm a sucker for playing with floral patterns. It's extremely meditative and spontaneous compared to my more refined, process-driven approach to other illustrations and comics.

Travel notes

This Saturday evening, I'll be hanging out and signing books at Philadelphia's Locust Moon Comics from 6-9. The co-owner Chris Stevens and I collaborated on a short comic many moons ago, so I'm looking forward to our mini reunion. All you locals c'mon out for some comics and booze!



Over the past several weeks, I've been traveling and exhibiting at a lot of comic festivals trying to get the word out on VIETNAMERICA. It's been an amazing time, but poorly documented because I basically didn't have a camera when anything interesting happened (yet another case to be made for coming out of my technology cave and upgrading to a smart phone?). Thankfully, other people had cameras so here're some random pics...

Portland, when not raining, is absolutely beautiful... even to a jaded, callous city boy like myself.

During Stumptown, I finally got to meet in person Thi Bui, a fellow Vietnamese cartoonist also chronicling her family's refugee experience with comics. No feelings of competition and intense rivalry there; not... one... bit. An interview we did a while back just posted at HYPHEN, and check out the current issue for our little collaborative comic! (True comic nerds might recognize the Ignatz Awards which serve as great bludgeoning weapons. Unfortunately, neither of us can claim any of the prestigious comic trophies in this pic—they all belong to Craig Thompson)

Some sketchbook pages from the road...

My awesome hosts for TCAF were my cousin John, a musician and producer, and his wife Lillian, an animator. Workaholics, both of them!

Cintiq envy:

For pics of all the TCAF exhibitors, check out Jamie Coville's archive. He also recorded a few panels, including the one I participated on—Telling True Stories—which you can listen to here.

With freelance apparel graphics, you never know if your anonymous commercial work ever actually makes it into stores so it's always fun to see one of your designs in the wild on a stranger:

My final dinner in Toronto (animator cousin included free with meal):

And on one of the few days I actually spent at home, Spring finally arrived in the form of the Brooklyn Botanical Garden's Cherry Blossom Festival:

ABC and TCAF!!!

Enormous thanks and gratitude to ABC producer Tina Trinh for filming and assembling a great piece on VIETNAMERICA that just aired on World News Now! You can watch the segment at their news site here.

After a brief layover at home to wash my clothes and pack up some more books, I'm back on the road for this weekend's amazing Toronto Comic Arts Festival!

I haven't exhibited since '07, so super thrilled to return this year—definitely the show I've been looking forward to the most! Chris Butcher has supported me since my earliest self-published days, so it's an honor and privilege for VIETNAMERICA to be part of his baby: a phenomenal international celebration of comics that's FREE to the public! Find me at table 110:

On Saturday from 1:30-2:15, I'll be on the panel Telling True Stories with David Collier, Jim Ottaviani, Zach Worton, and Tory Woollcott (moderated by Greg Means). Should be a hoot.

You know what else is a hoot? Drawing naked people. Not making it to figure drawing as much as usual in light of all the recent travel, but here're a few pages: