Blog Archive Posts 2013-2018

Three years ago, just before my daughter Suzanne was born, I built a new illustration portfolio website because I wasn't sure when I would have a chance to update things again for a few years.  Initially, I shuttered this illustration blog, because I knew I wouldn't have time to write new posts, but last year I brought it back so that I can talk about projects I have been working on that might not necessarily make it into my portfolio.

I thought an appropriate series of illustrations to kick off this process of looking through old work would be the backlog of blog archive images from my personal website because these also show what has been going on in my life.  I do one of these a year, and it looks like the last one I posted in here was from 2012.  So now let's roll back through the sands of time to see what happened from 2013-2018.

In 2013 my girlfriend Claire was diagnosed with papillary thyroid cancer.  This was (obviously) a really big deal, so it seemed like the right choice for this image.  The good news is that Claire's treatment went very well, and it gave us an excuse to finally get married!

To pay for Claire's medical bills, I took on my biggest illustration project ever, Middle School: Ultimate Showdown by James Patterson. This meant putting all my personal comics projects on hold, however, including Basewood which I had just finished.  When Claire's treatment was done and all the bills were paid, I finally set up a Kickstarter which helped me self-publish my book. In the small press world, you only have one year while your book is "new" so I spent most of 2014 on the road, exhibiting at 14 comic shows all around the country and abroad, which was exhausting.

I was so burned out by the end of 2014, I decided to take a year off from exhibiting at any comic conventions.  We also found out in 2015 that Claire was pregnant, so it was a year of really buckling down and trying to work ahead on projects. One of my main goals was to build up a buffer of pages for my webcomic Isle of Elsi, which launched at the end of that year.  We also moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico, so that is subtly reflected in the stucco walls and tile floors shown here.

My daughter Suzanne was born in January of 2016.  The rest of the year was sort of a blur, so I just drew us on the night we brought her home and everything changed.

I remember having a lot of difficulty coming up with an image for 2017.  Suzanne grew so much that year, it was hard to decide on just one image that communicated that whole experience.  In the end, I decided to build the image around the chickens we got that year (which had been a dream of mine for many years). Suzanne and I spent a lot of time that year sitting on buckets and looking at them and talking about them, so it seemed like a fitting image.

And then in 2018 my second daughter, Wendy, was born.  I decided to draw an image similar to the one from the year Suzanne was born.  Here we are as a whole family -- Suzanne a little wary, and Claire and I both very, very tired -- which is how 2018 felt.

It is worth noting that in the blog archives you can see that I was writing fewer and fewer blog posts as all these big life changes were happening.  These were often drawn on December 30th or 31st, right at the buzzer for each year, when it's possible to look back over everything that happened.  Maybe this year "the moment" will be clearer and I'll get this done before the very end of the year!

Self-Promotional Mailer

My last semester at Pratt we had a Professional Practices class which was supposed to prepare us for working out in the real world.  One of our assignments was to make a self-promotional mailer to send out to clients.  I decided to turn mine into a little picture book that explored a lot of different cool locations.

This was a lot of fun to draw, but ironically it was super expensive to print (full color!) so I never mailed it out to anyone.  Here it is in it's entirety; click on any image to see it bigger.

I am posting this old work to get it back online after I stopped using Flickr to display my illustration work.

2012 Blog Archive Image

Every year I try to sum up my plans and goals in one illustration for the archive page of my personal blog.  It is a fun challenge, and when seen in order, these illustrations kind of tell the story of my life these past few years:

• 2004 - Moving to New York.
• 2005 - Working 40 hours a week as an office temp.
• 2006 - Going back to school at Pratt Institute.
• 2007 - Graduating from Pratt, mentally preparing to begin freelancing.
• 2008 - Working 100 hours a week as a freelancer in Brooklyn.  
• 2009 - Moving to Vermont, to focus on my comics.
• 2010 - Getting really into pinball, taking a chance on love.
• 2011 - The gamble pays off!  Claire moves to Vermont (drawn with Claire!)

Which brings us to 2012, in which Claire and I moved to California together.  I forced myself to quickly draw this in my sketchbook last weekend, even though I am super busy these days, because the year is almost over and I still didn't have an image for the archive!

I wonder what I'll draw next year...

Screen Printing: Part 2

Okay, FINALLY, here are the results from my very first screen printing project! Each year The Center for Cartoon Studies makes a "Facebook" for the new batch of first year students. Each student (and Fellows, like me!) creates a self-portrait which they screen print with two colors on cardstock. Then all of the portraits are assembled into a book!

I have resisted learning screen printing for years now, because I thought it might tempt me into making screen printed covers for my minicomics (which would only take LONGER to make). Well, I can now safely say that such a thing will never happen. Because it is SOOOO much work to create a screen printed image! I'm glad I learned how, but I'll be surprised if I use this technology again while I am at CCS... I will say that I now have a much greater appreciation for screen printed comics!

Anyway, as you can probably tell here, I printed the red layer first and then the brown layer on top. There were only so many paper colors to choose from, so I chose yellow, to keep things warm. The image represents a sort of "before" and "after" comparison for how I will look this year! I made 60 copies, which was enough to bruise and blister my hands. I've got a few more images to make for the book, and then I'm probably going to hang up my screen for a good long while!

Screen Printing: Part 1

This week at CCS I will be learning how to screen print. This will be my first time ever, so I am pretty excited! Our first project is to create a "Facebook" for the new class. Each new student (and the Fellows) will have a photocopied bio on one page, and on the other we get to have a two-color screen-printed self portrait. My design is above, which shows how I started the school year, and how I will most likely end it, with my Basewood Beard.

Next week I'll post the finished image. Wish me luck!

Two New Alecs

If you have ever checked the homepage of my other website, you might have noticed that I have a few different variations on the drawing of myself, so that I can adjust it accordingly, depending on what's going on in my life at the moment. This week I drew two new variations of myself!

One has much shorter hair (and shorts as well!) I recently cut off all of my hair, and my plan is to never cut it again, until my graphic novel Basewood is complete! I guess I'll have to draw some new variations of myself every few months, to keep up with my hair growth.

The other one is a new rain drawing. The old one showed me in my red and blue raincoat, but now I am the proud owner of a DRAGON Rain Coat! This one is a lot more fun. :)

Well, I will be back in Vermont for next week's post, so I suspect I will dive back in on the 100 Watercolors challenge. Until then!