what a fool i've been

i do foolish things.
sorry.
fortunately, i think i will be spending much more time at the drawing board again.

lo-fi

okay, i know nobody sees or hears from me anymore (unless you are in this town), but rest assured, somewhere in the mix...clare 2 is in the works

autumnal bits

hey, my beautiful buddy annie is editing a book, and here is where you can help!
this book is gonna be rad!

also, some of you who know me personally: i no longer have your phone number and you do not have my new #. email me? and know that i don't look at that often either.

okay, goodbye again, cyber-world.

scraps

hey folks!
it's been a long time!
i forgot to mention last time that clare will be at this thing in nola:
Just to recap on the details, the exhibit will run September 11 - November 30 at Trouser House. The installation is a two-room environment comprising a zine library and reading area. On September 18, Trouser House will host a zine-making workshop for teens at the New Orleans Public Library Alvar Branch.
Trouser House | contemporary art + urban farming
4105 St. Claude Ave
New Orleans, LA 70117
http://trouserhouse.org

other than that i am back in austin, thanks to everyone's support when i had a bit of trouble a couple weeks ago.

i'm working on a zine right now(in lieu of going to the ida work party), so i'm going to try to finish that before week's end.
until next time.
k

nesting

hello everybody! it's been so long since i have posted and while many things have changed, some things did not so much, like my usage of technology.
so, one of the changes is that a dear friend and i decided to do something relatively easy: play house! this may possibly be the first time i've signed on a lease, unless i did once over a decade ago. anyway, we have beautiful girls:



and the creature in the background is my friend tally-ho:



she poked out one of her eyes two weeks ago, but she doesn't seem to mind. i don't have a picture of that cuz i haven't used/seen my camera in two months, when i took all of these pictures.

what does any of this have to do with comics, you ask? well, not a whole lot except for distraction and inspiration. it really has been a crazy couple of months and that's just the lovely tip of the iceberg. and i will only include the lovely things here and now. back in april we of the house held a fund-raising car wash for the work hard stay hard work party happening this fall, where i think am registered to be captain of chainsaws and hopefully will be able to get my butt in gear to make a basic safety and maintenance booklet. here is a flyer i made for the carwash:



well, this is old news:



last march i printed another mini-comic, called clare, to take with me to staple!, that was held here in austin. staple!, by the way, seemed rather dudely to me, kinda more mainstream than i was expecting. but an odd aside, last night i visited some friends who're house-sitting for someone i do not know and i noticed some of auntie lynda barry's books on the shelf that didn't seem to contain many comics, and then i found a copy of my beauty patrol there as well, with a staple! program. kinda some small and unknown circles going here? anyway, clare--very limited print run on this one.
here's some of what it looks like:





also, another friend is putting together an anthology, and i just about buried my pages in the forgotten dust long ago, but finally finished them and sent them on--old fashioned style snail mail, since i am still lacking scanner access. i did a short 7-page piece and then i also did a one-pager. usps, please do not lose these!
here is a preview of the seven page story:



okay, that's all i have for now. have a good solstice, everyone. take a bow, twinkie ding-dong!

dry drizzle

hey out there, my apologies for no updates since last year!

speaking of which, here is a perfect something a friend sent me a couple weeks ago, which put me into the perspective of anyone who has ever tried to contact me; i am so sorry everyone:



speaking of missings, some of you know i have this favorite ball-point pen. and some of you know i've 'lost' it, and it has returned to me time and time again. it's like i am supposed to learn some lesson. well, recently, i thought she was gone for good. weeks had passed and i was sad, but i got over the gamut of loss. and then the pen returned. i immediatedly documented this(with said pen):




i guess i am following the phone/contact apology with this cuz it's related. i'll write a love letter to my pen, when i know you should get one. in a way, i guess that is the lesson to be learned. it's that time when folks turn over their new leaves, where-ever a new leaf comes from in the winter, and maybe it's time i start acting like a human.

speaking of humans, here is some stuff some humans have made, some recent aquisitions:



every so often i like to stop by domy and if i've sold any books, i like to pick up a little something for my library. a collection of doris--which i expect will take me a while to read through. cindy's writings are right on, which is hard to read sometimes. it's taken me a while to read a singular doris zine in the past. also, this kind of billy--it came with a cd (which seems to be the thing everyone's doing) which i have not listened to yet but look forward to the moment of experiencing it. this book plays with identity, which was the hook for me. and lastly, sad animals by adam meuse. i had to. i mean, sad animals!:



what else? want some sketchbook images? fine.





the funny shadows are from my window screen (these are photos), but i think it makes a nice effect.

and finally,
here is a comic i am working on. working on it is like a test of my psyche, which is why i don't feel like i can show even a whole page here. and yes, i seem to be hand-coloring it...also using a brush pen, which is unusual for me.



oh yeah!! one more thing! barekublishing/American Stonghold will be representin' at Staple! march 6, here in austin. come say hi at table 73b!

thanks for stopping by!

this week

we here at the offices of barekublishing are celebrating the pony's birthday. to start, here is a comic featuring the pony:








the fishing trip was drawn this past june or july, and is printed in the funny aminals anthology. at the time i had just breezed through "a drifting life" by yoshihiro tatsumi, which influenced me to play with the vertical four-panels for each page.

also, credits for the story idea are due to Neighbor Lee, who employs this tactic while sometimes enjoying the out-of-doors.

if you wish to celebrate a birthday too, whether for the pony or someone else, please do so. if you are in austin and wish to commence in the onesies extravaganza cruise friday night, meet us up north at the bout time (or go to one of the various shows) and then set sail to my house for the afterparty featuring dj wonder! you can send me an email with questions about the venue if you are not a creep.

if you can't find it, grind it

i have been having bouts of misconcentration around projects. i have magically alleviated some of this bother by deciding to pull together the first installment of the clare story into a mini. now i get to be all dreamy about production. today after my job i spent a long time (for me) on the avenue of obtaining a scanner and tomorrow i will look at a free one from craigslist.

i kinda like this part of the process, where ridiculous gets serious.

anyway, since i don't have anything new scanned, here is something old.

it's from an unfinished comic that folks seem to refer to probably more often than other things i've worked on, although i don't think too many anybodies have seen it.
barekublishing is pleased to present a glimpse into a bygone era of secret wonder:

i love my mom

sometimes i think about what her life must have been like in her younger days.



she didn't have it easy
my mom is amazing and beautiful.

it's friday

nobody came for johhnycakes?

what IS clare all about? part IV

what IS clare all about, part III

what IS clare all about? part II

what IS clare all about? part I

those who know what clare is all about

the challenge:

today is

also: crumb, spiegelman, and mouly to be in austin on the 13th.

be not faint of heart!

still working on clare. this comic makes me think i'm nuts--that is, i never thought i'd be drawing something like this. but i will try not to falter!
happy spooks everyone!

excitement of the hunt

i forgot to mention!!

after looking in one big art store and not finding the nibs i wanted, a friend passed this along to me, an antique box (which once belonged to someone's grandfather or great-grandfather) of nibs--hunt 67 round point:



"a pen is only as good as its point" sez the box and well, i would like to believe these were probably crafted from a far superior grade of metal than ones i could find new today.
i'm pretty happy about these nibs and they are what i've been drawing clare with. they've seemed pretty durable, not that i have to worry about burning through these in a week or even a month. these come from when getting your nibs in bulk was more than 3 or 12--i'm not gonna count or figure how many would come in this box.

oh! and further exciting news--yesterday was a drawing day and i arrived to discover silky had burned me a wooden name plate for my drawing table!! yes, austin has been pretty decent to me thus far.

CLARE

hey all
i started a new comic two weeks ago that i am tentatively calling "clare"
i've been having fun with it. last week i averaged a page a day, which with job and social obligations, i was pretty happy about. but now it's averaged a page every two days cuz i only did two this week. here's one of them, page six:



so other fun news, i have a drawing buddy here in atx: silky! i went over other day to draw and just the night before she found a drawing table on the street that she brought home for me to use over there! so, i worked on the above page then. and we also talked about gathering together screenprinting materials. yes!!
we'll see how clare goes--
i apologize for the picture quality. thanks for tuning in in these sporadic times.