Commercial Break

Congrats to cartoonist pal Neil Swaab on finishing his THIRD Rehabilitating Mr. Wiggles comic strip collection! With this volume, he's returning to self-publishing and doing it all on his own so check it out. It'll be available through Amazon and stores July 1st, but order a copy direct from Neil now and help free up some space in his studio. As you can see, the claustrophobia is driving him iiinnnsssaaannneee!!!

The best $8 I spend on a weekly basis.

More sketchbook pages from SVA's figure drawing.

How I spent my April 2009.

I've kept the pedal to the metal/ax to the grind/brush to the bristol this past month:




It's awesome that the work I'm doing now finally feels closer to the book's completion than its beginning.

So I remember how I did this when I'm old and feeble minded:

1. Thumbnails: story outline that only I can make any sense of, half existing as scribbles in boxes and half as scenes and actions in my mind. These sketches are on 11" x 8.5" paper.



2. Roughs: more detailed drawings with dialog so my editor can read/review from beginning to end. Drawn at print size, these double page spreads measure 14" x 9.25".



3. After editor's approval, blue pencils at original art size. (For VIETNAMERICA, that's about 13" x 17" pages) These are drawn by lightboxing the enlarged roughs but are even less legible as visuals get a little messy.



The next step is inking, the final buff and polish before scanning and coloring--coming soon to a blog near you! To minimize rewriting and redrawing, I complete each step for the entire book before moving on to the next.

"Taking a break from all your worries..."

"... sure would help a lot." More pages from SVA's figure drawing sessions--i.e. sanity breaks from the snowballing neurosis of working on VIETNAMERICA.

Mornin' Illos Part 3: Revenge of the Craptacular

Another round of morning email gag illustrations--don't say I didn't warn you:

The Odd Couple:

While filling out my 2008 taxes, I had a couple of "firsts":



It was a spectacular year.

Let the carnage commence:

Holy. Crap. After 11 weeks, VIETNAMERICA is penciled and ready for the next stage. I was actually shooting to finish the blues a couple weeks ago but forgot that I had saved the most labor intensive pages for last (i.e. all the double page spreads). This blog began last March so its one year anniversary is auspiciously marked--figuratively and literally--with inks!

Get your nudity on.

Pages from the last few public life-drawing sessions held weekly at SVA. It's the only time each week I can completely detach my mind from VIETNAMERICA and just enjoy drawing for drawing's sake. 10"x8" sketchbook with Pentel pocket brush pen:




Also, thanks to Dallas Middaugh for inviting me to speak with his NYU Publishing Graphic Novels class last week. I think my diabolical plan was successful: filling the diverse and enthusiastic audience with enough horrible advice as to sabotage them as future competition.

My much more talented, responsible, and successful doppelganger:

No surprise that I find myself more attuned to the work of fellow Vietnamese artists these days, especially if they're cartoonists. My family's war refugee story isn't unique, and Dustin's Nguyen's beautiful one-pager proves it:



You may recognize him as comics mainstay currently rockin' BATMAN.