i was born in a white town (page one)

this is my memoir comic on growing up white. it isn’t very thorough. maybe i will work on doing a more thorough memoir that will touch on this more in depth…but for now, it is a big step for me to write about this and to try to do a memoir comic at all. i prefer fiction because it is like hiding in plain sight. a memoir is when someone pulls back the curtain on my fiction and says, “look! here she is! and she is not a wizard at all. just a plain old human being.”

hence my hesitancy to write memoirs.

but here is the first of four pages. i was going to wait & put them all up at once…but i really don’t want my audience to wander off. plus y’all are probably used to my being serial with my presentation.

i’m not sure how i feel about this page. it fits better with the rest, i guess. alone, not so much.

i worked on this with my kids running about which is how i am doing art these days even though dusty criticized me for it (but fuck it’s not like he’s volunteering to take the kids for an adventure to give me time to work on my art because then who would play killing floor 2  for him? [snark]) i gamble that i won’t get bumped and that if i do i will be able to work the resulting smudge in as part of the whole. misha watched as i was doing shadows. every time i brushed in a shadow, she would ask, “pee?” so maybe my shadows look like pee. everyone’s a critic.

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paper mache is cool

i finished bluejean’s arm for my art class.

i’m pretty happy with it. i really love paper mache. the messiness of it even is fun for me. i want to keep experimenting with paper mache and related projects.

also, i have worked a lot on my second big whimsy piece (somewhat visible in the background)…i have been adding random visuals. stuff i pull out of my ass. i think my epitaph will be “she was good at pulling stuff out of her ass.” i got that from my dad. thanks, dad!

anyhoo, i am starting to like the piece better. it’s getting weirder & weirder. which is good–but i worry that i am just david-lynching it up. whenever i watch a david lynch movie i get the feeling he was thinking, “let’s throw a dwarf in right here. that would be weird.” i want my weirdness to be pertinent to the story. but i also like weird…hmmm….

so i’m having fun with my art, which is the point, right? i need to have the big whimsy piece–yet to be named–done by monday for my critique.

plus! for my digital media class, i have to make an “alter ego website.” so i am making a website for bluejean. the big whimsy pieces will be presented in a “reading rainbow” fashion via a video and my narration. argh. i hope it works!

 

doodle pad family portrait

do the drawings i do on my three year old’s doodle pad count as drawing a picture a day?  she comes and asks me to draw “gaga” (her 9 year old brother,) and i do.  then she clears it and asks me to draw “wahwah” (her 6 year old brother.)  then it is “mimi” (herself) and then “baby” and then “mama” and then “daddy.”  i draw her the family, and she erases each picture to have me do it all over again.  sometimes pepper the cat is requested as well.

here i recreated–with a little more detail than allowed by the doodle pad–the people i draw for her.  minus daddy & the cat.

so that’s as much as i have been drawing other than when i remember to draw in my journal.

one of my doodles here is from Jen Wang’s graphic novel Koko be Good.  i have been working on noticing drawing styles i really like and drawing them.  i don’t want to copy someone else, but if i can evolve my own style, inspired by someone else’s work, that would be cool.  that’s how moses jones was born.  i was trying to re-create this character based loosely on me.  i looked at Jaime Hernendez’s work as well as Tank Girl to take in new ideas and evolve my own style.

speaking of moses jones, i was able to ink a page last night!!  the baby stayed asleep!!  the night before that, i drew two squares–before a tumbling stumbling baby wandered to the living room to find me.  i am working on getting the brushwork done now.  hopefully, it will be up by tomorrow.  maybe i can develop a rhythm.  sleep for 3 nights–stay up the fourth and do art.  something like that.