A few recent art of the day entries from September/October. It was a very busy month with lots of conferences, public appearances, family visits, and travel, so I was grateful to sneak in what doodles I could!
Most of my spare drawing time was devoted to Your Distant Homeland, my short story companion for Dave Kellett’s extraordinary space opera comic Drive. I kicked off a series of guest works that will be syndicated alongside the main story over the coming year. The final page goes live on the website later this week!
Here’s the first of the story’s 14 pages. Click to visit the Drive website to read it at full size!
This week I collaborated with Chelsea Lately writer/comedian Ian Karmel on a four-panel gag comic for The Nib. The Nib is the official cartoon collection on Medium, edited by my esteemed peer and friend Matt Bors.
I haven’t seen the show Gotham yet, but that doesn’t stop me from making fun of it. I’ve seen the previews.
(Warning: mild, satirical adult content on the final panel.)
This year I had the honor of being included in the wee funny pages booklet that was part of Cards Against Humanity‘s Advent calendar package. A dozen cartoonists were asked to submit a standalone, one-page comic, possibly Christmas-themed. My editor was the lovely Rich Stevens.
Rich suggested I do something with the little skeletons from Danse Macabre 2.0! I liked the idea of combining wee rotting corpses with a warm holiday message. Here’s my contribution. (Click it to see it full-size.)
Every so often you get the proverbial offer-you-can’t-refuse. For me, sometimes that’s work with a creator or for a project that I love. Sometimes it’s when somebody you respect needs help. Sometimes it’s a fun artistic challenge, and sometimes it’s a really cool opportunity to make contact with a new audience.
And sometimes it’s all of those things, because maestro Scott Kurtz needs somebody to write and draw a guest story for his wonderful flagship strip PvP while he heals up a sore back and gets ready to launch a big new project. So! For the next little stretch here I’m happily dropping (almost) everything to do just that.
I’ve been sweet on Scott’s work, and on PvP in particular, for years now – and especially since the story moved to Seattle, my old hometown. That means that I also get to depict some of my favorite landmarks from around the city. Tough gig!
So I’m having an absolute ball taking Scott’s lovely, silly, brash, sincere characters out for a spin. If you’re already a fan of PvP, I think you’ll probably enjoy this little story; if you’re new to the strip, well, you have some very fun archive-diving ahead of you! Either way, head over to site, check out the first strip from my run, and (hopefully) enjoy.
I’m taking the week away from Family Man to compensate for producing a weekday strip; I hope to be back next week! It’s a small price to pay for having such a ball.
In the meantime, if you peruse my store, you might notice that I have soft-launched two new books! I’ll make a big deal about it later, but if you missed your chance to get in on my Kickstarter project from 2012, you can now purchase your very own copies of Outfoxed and Danse Macabre. I still have a lot of orders to fulfill from backers, so expect a slightly longer turnaround than usual, but…they’re HERE!
Another page with the Roma family, although we’re almost done with this scene. Too bad; I love drawing mustaches, and the 18th century was otherwise a very clean-shaven era.
Now that election fever had passed (and thank heavens for that), it’s on to cheerier parts of the year. Coming up early on the world schedule of Festivals of Light is Diwali! It’s actually a little late this year – normally it falls in October. To celebrate, here’s my sixth goddess illustration – the Hindu goddess Lakshmi. Click to see her at full size!
Like many Hindu deities, Lakshmi has literally dozens of different forms, incarnations and names, has complex relationships with other deities (like Vishnu and Ganesh) and plays many roles. She’s probably best known for being a goddess of abundance – and that can mean simple good luck, personal fulfillment, or material wealth. Lakshmi is the one who fills your cup.
In most devotional images Lakshmi is depicted standing or sitting in a giant lotus blossom, floating on a tranquil sea – a bit like Aphrodite, she was born from the ocean. She has four arms (the better to distribute wealth!) and holds lotuses in two of them. She is sometimes attended by two white elephants. This is an illustration, not a traditional devotional image, so she is behaving a little less formally here! Lakshmi is generous of spirit, so hopefully she won’t hold it against me.