My wife, Katie turned 40 this year. We rented some cabins in the woods with friends and family and had a great celebration. A few months before her birthday I began a project that documented the last 10 years with her. Decades are really important signifiers of relationships. If anyone can stand you for more than a decade you should consider yourself very lucky.
So to show Katie how important these last 10 years meant to me I decided to make her this 36” by 12” drawing. It’s a collection of photos that I used as reference. The structure is a braided design, with each triangle representing a year.Â
I thought it would take me 40 hours, but instead it took me 160. I missed my deadline by 6 months but I am glad I did. If I had finished by her birthday, it would never be the thing it ended up being.Â
I am really proud of it (even with all of its dumpy faces) and most importantly, she loves it too.
Love you Katie
A great inspirational chat with @slowis_fast last night. Some great advice none of which was more important than reminding me to remind you all that I am here, I exist and I am always working.
I’ve heard artist and illustrator @jakeparker say on his podcast 3 Point Perspective that being a lucrative artist is like being Batman, the art making is the fun, fighting crime and wearing the cool costume part, but even Batman needs to put on a suit once and a while to pay for those all those “wonderful toys”. So I'll be sharing more of my process with you all.
Talk to you soon!
To celebrate my birthday last week, here is my first Honored Citizen, I wrote it on my 40th birthday. It was the result of one of many declarations I am known for making. My wife and I call them my, “From now ons.”“From now on I’m only going to eat colorful foos, or “today’s the day I start doing riding my bike to work.”
On my 40th birthday I declared “I’m ONLY going focus on Honored Citizen and not do anything else. Ridiculous. I’ve never been able to give myself an appropriate title. I would love to be known as the guy who draws comics or the tee shirt guy. But I can be focused on a project for only so long before I move to something else. My studio is a collection of half finished projects and notebooks with ideas that will never get started.
Better to have the ideas exisit in some fasion than none at all.
Oh well.
Love Ya!
Here it is! as promised, a whopping 12 panel Honored Citizen! This will probably be my last Honored Citizen for the year as I get ready for the holiday and prepare to get back to work on my role-playing game Guardrail. Those of you that follow me know that I get about two hours every day in my studio, so the output is a trickle, but I like to think that it’s quality. Let me know what you think and thanks for reading!
TL;DR: You have a right to food, shelter and happiness.
You have this right simply because you exist. In the past you could have gone out into the world and lived off the land using skills acquired through community or trial and error, but since your ancestors decided they were going to own every goddamn last inch of earth for themselves this right has been stolen from you. You have been forced to operate in a world you did not ask for in a system designed by people you have never met. Since it is impossible for you to live off the land that should be available to you by right a stipend must be provided to all who cannot or do not wish to engage in the system. Providing housing, food and healthcare for the unhoused is the only solution to homelessness and poverty. Freedom does not exist in a country where you are denied these fundamentals rights because cannot work or choose not to.
Panel 6 of an upcomming whopping 12 Panel Honored Citizen! This one is about driving the bus. I don’t write alot of bus driving comics for a few reasons.
One, drawing bus interiors are a pain in the ass, and two, I spend enough time in Bus Land, the last thing I want is to spend more time there. But c’est la vie. I’ll write what I know.
This is an image of the infamous Vista Bridge in SW Portland, OR
See you soon!
Soot works at Plaid Pantry at night, but in the day she dreams of being a world famous cartoonist who writes insufferable comics about her imaginary relationship.
