Mini-comic finished + summer illustration project

So, I did choose to continue the comic I started last time, after all (hence the really subtle title). As to an official title for the comic… um… yeah I don’t know. I’m terrible with titles. It can’t be as blunt as THE BREAKUP HOMG or as stupidly shoujo and melodramatic as HEALING THE HEART.

the working title right now is “Paper Trail”.

I’ve posted the first few pages last time, but I’ll post the entirety of it here. Hope y’all enjoy reading it! I’m going to make more mini-comics.

Last summer, I did the 30 day drawing challenge, which, while I did not finish, I got through a majority of. This summer my project will be to illustrate His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman. I don’t know whether I’m going to go chapter by chapter, or two illustrations per chapter, or a conglomeration of it. I love those books beyond anything else; they’ve helped me more than any other books I’ve ever read, and this summer is a great time to make an homage to them.

Here’s the comic:

In other news:

• today is beautiful
• I am not stressing about finals… yet
• I am excited for the summer like WHOA
• I am working on a new crochet project
• A good chocolate croissant can bring a world of joy
• Kyoto cherry rose tea is heavenly
• SUMMER SUMMER SUMMER SUMMER
• Neyrelle and I entered the Paula Deen website giveaway sweepstakes.
• The NYC buses flash their destinations in all-caps, so I read them in Billy Mays’ voice. I realized this morning crossing the street that I kind of miss Billy Mays.

Oh, also, this lovely new tea shop just opened up on St. Mark’s Place, between 1st Av and Av A. It’s called Graffitea, and if you’re in the area, it is so worth checking out. Alice and Ilana are wonderful and their tea selection is amazing and delicious. SO YOU SHOULD ALL GO. THEY ARE NEW. GIVE THEM BUSINESS.

See you next week!

Drawing Challenge Day 11: A Turning Point In Life

oh dear.

I think I’m getting lazier and lazier. Textured backgrounds and super fine lines? This is the second night in a row! Gray and red and black? Yes!

What can I say about the theme? How can I say it WELL, is the question. I suppose there’s no way to say it well, so I’ll just say it poorly. Before there were any reservations, before adultlike cynicism and doubt set in, before I analyzed what every word meant from a text message or a phone call, there was a time when I was fifteen that I let all of it go, unabashedly. I didn’t even know it existed. All I knew were the talks that lasted for hours, colored by moonlight and crickets. All I knew was the unexpected laughter at discovering that you were so so similar on one tiny, infinitesimally small microscopic level that you never realized. I knew bagels eaten eagerly so that fingers burned in the process, ramen made at three in the morning, endless cups of bubble tea devoured while meandering around hidden stone fountains.

Phone calls. Angry phone calls that ended in laughter, then a three hour storm of tears. Loneliness loneliness loneliness. Staring out windows, slogging through class. An unexpected smile, steaming cups of coffee, friendships deepened, mentors found, angry poems written, more angry poems written, twenty minute tirades by a good friend’s locker. Laughing, fighting, laughing. Driver’s license acquired, midnight snack runs enabled, invisible cat seen, college applied for, accepted. Home left, city found, new glasses, new clothes, new writing, more unexpected encounters.

girl-self found, pops of color, cherry red, hot pink, cerulean (not all at once!). Job acquired, language learned. Pens and watercolors. Same smile.

Drawing Challenge Day 2: Your Favorite Animal

Let me tell you a little about my dog. She is tiny, even for a shitzu, and has wild eyes (we really should have named her Mad-Eye Moody–one brown eye and one blue eye) and INSANE. She will run circles around the house and all of a sudden flop in a heap on the kitchen floor. She doesn’t know the difference between “paw” and “roll over”–only that doing both will get her a nice little soup bone or bit of scrambled egg.  She is only vocal at mealtimes. I think in her head she fancies herself a poet, for she is always sighing as she lays on the rug or as she stares morosely out the glass door into the distance. She likes rawhide bones three quarters the size of her and digging through the pillows on her dog bed. Once she swallowed a lamb bone whole and puked it up later; it’s still a mystery how something that long got down such an itty-bitty esophagus (that is NOT what she said).

She is picky about her food, refusing to eat dog chow because it’s not as good as what comes off the table (my mother spoils her rotten). If you leave without her she’ll tear up any magazines she can find in retaliation (including my mother’s unread Chinese Readers’ Digest) and then sit there innocently as you yell at her and pick up the scraps.

Chessie is absolutely ridiculous and although my mother got her after I left for college, I fell in love with her right away when I met her for the first time last summer, and she remains my favorite animal in the entire world.