INKtober day seven–i’m still in this

i ran errands all day today. for an introvert, that is like doing a triathlon.
i went to goodwill to get presents for my kids (fidgit & poppy have a birthday week after next.) i go to goodwill to save money & to save the environment. i love thrift stores, but i usually stick to the ones i know–goodwill & st. vinny’s.
however, today, after goodwill i went to a thrift store i’d never been before.
it was cheaper…but smelly. and had kind of a serial killer vibe. but that might just be me.
then i dropped off a cat carrier someone lent me to take a rooster home in.
(i saw four deer cross the road–which is the universe reminding me to be gentle–something i am super dooper struggling with)
then i went to the library to report that i have not yet found the dvd of “box trolls” that a certain 3 year old saw fit to hide away somewhere. the librarian was very sympathetic & gave me another week.
then i went to the grocery store. grocery stores for me are a full-time job because i take food buying very seriously and have to read labels and debate every purchase in my head forever.
then i ended up going to another grocery store because the first one just didn’t have the right things that i needed.
then i went to a farm store to price fence posts & get straw bales (i’m going to build a cold frame out of straw bales to grow winter veg–i’m so excited!!)
then i went to a local farmer’s market-y type store to look for bones & cow hearts for my dogs.

at some point in my adventure i glanced in a mirror and was weirded out by my own face. it looks different. like someone replaced me with an exact copy that wasn’t quite exact. next time i looked in a mirror my new face was still there.

so that’s where i was when i sat down to do my inktober drawing for today.
maybe that explains it?
i was tired, so i started with a rabbit yawn. rabbit’s have the cutest yawns. my rendition of a rabbit’s yawn, however….

so was born chimp plays a snake tuba with a yawning bunny & red balloons

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INKtober day four–catch!

colored ink today
another place i like to look for the pictures,
in ink splatters.

i love messy. messy everything. messy art. messy gardening. even messy kids. making a mess in fun. finding art in it, is most excellent.

i started one picture that turned into a princess having her hair done by a t-rex. yes, sounds cool–but looked “meh!”
while i was doing it, fidgit, my number one minion, asked me to draw him a picture.
i asked him what he wanted a picture of.
he said, “a whale.”
i LOVE humpback whales. i’m not great at realism, but i can do a half-decent humpback whale (thanks to fidgit teaching me how. he is also to credit for my squid pictures.)

so i soaked a piece of paper. then i splattered it with black ink. then some more black ink. more. then i let it dry for most of the day. then i drew in the whales. then i painted the world with ink. then i painted the water. then i painted the whales. then i used my pen some more.

to recap: ink, with more ink, followed by ink & ink & ink.

doodles.

here’s a doodle from my journal.

i am working on a new page. i have some words…some panels…. now i wait for a break in the chaos to pencil in some interactions between mojo & dusty.
man, she is stupid for that man.
i know the feeling.

i hope to have it finished today.
okay, just kidding.
a page a week?
maybe i can beat that this week.
we’ll see.

while my children scream at me

i sneak away to my scanner….
since my camera is sad these days, i will try scanning more. since i have a home again, i will try scanning more.

i finally have the right ink in my pens. though this page was done before it occurred to me that i could dump the wrong ink out of my pen and refill it with the right ink. i was just trying to run it out by using my pen. my pen was not digging that and no amount of shaking or tapping was getting it to draw. so this journal page is a bit rough. also, i was using styles that aren’t mine. just for fun.

iggy called the bikini top “weed boob sacks”–ha!

i’m still reading amanda palmer’s book. i am tempted to contact her. maybe i will. she touts her own accessibility quite a lot in her book, however, i am new to the fan base…and i think i just rub people the wrong way–so i dread contacting her & being ignored. as she says in her book, social rejection hurts as much as physical pain. it does. plus, i realize that i may never be good at asking. as a child, i was ignored by my parents. the fourth of six, they just kinda forgot about me. they were pretty lackluster parents to begin with, and i was lost in the shuffle. instead of making a ruckus–like poppy does (i admire his 4th child technique of constantly demanding he get at least equal consideration, even though said technique exhausts me!)–instead of demanding attention–i decided to disappear. my feeling, even as a young child, was that if they weren’t going to give me the attention i deserved, i would not stoop to ask for it.

and i didn’t.

and now the art of asking is an art that i cannot grasp.

though i need to.

so how do i start interacting on a better level with my fan base? how do i reach out to people? how do i become human? these are the puzzles i occupy myself with these days. i hope to figure it out. being a successful artist & writer is important to me, but it may never happen if i do not learn how to interact with my audience.

ay fuck.

as for moses jones…my living room is still full of the wrong furniture & unpacked boxes. my desk sits amidst the mess, calling to me. hopefully, i will get the excess furniture & boxes out of the living room tonight so i can set up my desk & feel like myself again. and get some pages of mojo out to y’all. soon!

with my desk en route

at the point of this update, my desk–the home of my art & writings–is in a uhaul somewhere in stoughton, wisconsin en route to madison. i miss my desk terribly and anxiously await her arrival.

meanwhile, i doodle on. as my life rises and falls beneath my feet, i doodle on. i ride the waves of my own drama while i doodle and vent in the pages of my journal.

mojo, i have not forsaken you! i keep you close, but do not dare remove you from the portfolio which is your temporary home for fear of young children wreaking havoc on your fragile pages….

and i continue to read amanda palmer’s book the art of asking. i think i have ventured past the point where i am envious, petty, and sad–and now i am able to enjoy the book. i fear repeating my mistake of making contact with someone who seems a kindred soul. lynda barry has taught me to stay hidden in my hole. but i still fantasize about it. what would amanda palmer & i talk about at lunch? would she like my comic? would she make me some new eyebrows? what would she wear? would she let me draw on her eyebrows?

i’m a crazy stalker chick. there is no denying that. however, the book does have me wondering–in addition to what would happen if i started asking for things–where in my life can i be more giving of things? any book that gets me thinking is a good book in my opinion. hers is a good book. a memoir more than a self-help. and it isn’t chronological. and there aren’t chapters per se. she seems authentic. i like that. neil chose well. i look forward to attending one of their anniversary parties once amanda palmer & i have become best friends & gotten matching tattoos.

while the baby naps…

i have doodled a bit.

& written bad poetry…as i am prone to do when feeling heartsick…or hopeful. or both at the same time.

and i have started reading neil gaiman’s collection of short stories trigger warning. i have only read the introduction and the first couple of stories, but i can tell you this–though i have always loved neil gaiman’s writing…now i am in love with his writing. plus, he seems like such an authentic person. i think about trying to contact him…but i’m still recovering from lynda barry’s callous treatment of my heart.

i miss my bubble. i know i live in somewhat of a bubble. the fictitious town of madison, wisconsin. where farmer’s market abound and local organic food is a given. where everyone recycles and liberal bumper stickers decorate many a hybrid car. not the kind of town that in on the landscape of moses jones’s world. and a rare town in my own world, i am realizing as i leave my bubble.

i miss my dusty. i can’t make the coffee right on my own. i have no one to tell the funny stuff to. and the scary stuff. well, no one i want to tell it to. how does moses jones live so long without her dusty? she must have strong walls around her heart. she must be protecting herself. not just from zombies…but from love.

ah, the insight one gets from leaving one’s comfort zone.

while uploading the picture of my daily doodles, i realized i also had pictures of dusty & poppy–and dusty & fidgit–on my camera.

i miss dusty…i even miss watching him playing killing floor 2. (dusty spends a lot of time preparing to fight zombies.) i think we will be back together soon though. he has given me reason to feel hopeful that we can save our relationship from the (w)horrors that cannibalize it. however, i find that dusty waxes and wanes like the moon, controlling the tides of me. right now the moon is full & bright…although i have learned the hard way, there is always a dark side to the moon.

home is where you ink your comics

i sit in a borrowed house that is home until the end of july. peaceful chaos abounds. not quite a room of my own but also not staying in a guest room. not being forced to “helicopter parent” my children for fear they will break, damage or be damaged in another person’s living space. parenting in someone else’s space has to be one of the most stressful ways to parent. parenting with an audience–also extraordinarily stressful. add in stressed out minions who are amped up on uncertainty and lack of familiar routines…it is a perfect storm of a parenting nightmare.

in the nick of time, before i lost what was left of my mind, a friend of mine abandoned her house, leaving the door open for us to squat here for a few weeks.

i miss moses jones. i think this journal page shows how much i miss her.

yesterday, at an impromptu birthday party for me, a friend of a friend who is involved with the michigan womyn’s festival asked if she could use some mojo for the back cover of the zine for the festival. i agreed–though i do worry about some of the politics–i mean, i am a feminist, but i am a very inclusive feminist…a feminist who believes that all the infighting among women should stop and we should be a united front…and that one of our best hopes for the future is to raise feminist sons as well as feminist daughters….. anyhoo, one of my early early moses jones pictures (done for an art class) is about to be used as the back cover for this zine. it will be cool to get some exposure.

speaking of zines, i am hoping to get the final pages of this episode finished & have two zines for the madison zine fest this year. hopefully, now that i have a space almost of my own, i will be a bit more productive.

history of the death of a pen

(current projects–doodling as i think about bluejean & trials of the moonfish. and i just started jonathan lethem’s the ecstacy of influence–i have never heard of him, though i gather from how he refers to himself that he is pretty famous. i am enjoying his writing style…but i have only read the preface.)

& back onto topic:

i use rapidograph pens. which i love, but i have heard them compared to keeping a pet in terms of upkeep required. if you don’t use them frequently, they dry up. then they are a bitch to clean.

but i love them. i love my high maintenance pens.

i got a full set of them back in the old century. when i lived in lexington, kentucky. i had just moved out of the house of my first husband. we had been married a month. i had known him for about two months. ha! another theory tested. another failed experiment in life. i decided to write a zine. i was going to call it “twat.” then i started working on the comic that would be featured in it. confusion perfume. a girl, her dog, and her neurotic dealings with life & relationships. the zine was forgotten, and i fell in love with writing & drawing comics.

backtrack to 1990. i decided i wanted to go into comics. i went to a local iowa city, iowa comic book store called “daydreams” to ask about comic writing and was directed to one of their employees, paul tobin. then a struggling comic writer. now a more successful comic writer. we became friends. but my comics were not taken seriously by me nor by him and were filed away. but i learned the comic process. pencilling , inking, lettering. & the tools. rapidograph pens & illustration board.

(as a side note, in 1992 i ended up dating a comic book artist named tim bradstreet, but he left me for this nasty girl who was apparently the love of his life. whatever. he also failed to take me seriously as a future comic powerhouse. however, i also was unimpressed with his comic art–though he was extremely impressed with himself.)

then, as mentioned, in 1998, i began my first real comic endeavor, confusion perfume. i used illustration board and a full set of rapidograph pens. my most used size–the red one–broke at one point when i lived in athens, georgia…what year was that? 2000? 2001? anyhoo. i bought a new red rapidograph with the birthday money from my grandma. and i sent her a gracious thank you note. i have continued to use that pen–reviving it when it dried up–up until yesterday when i said, “fuck it,” and put it in the pen holder with the rest of the set that i no longer use.

i had to buy new rapidographs as i started working on moses jones because i started working on smaller pages–watercolor paper instead of illustration board–therefore, in a smaller format. the smaller pens from my original set where too clogged & too tenacious in their death to be revived. so i bought new pens to work in my smaller format. my red pen just wasn’t getting the time. if i need bigger spaces inked now, i use my brush. a changing of the guards, perhaps.

rest in peace, red rapidograph.

ps. sometimes i wonder if i should revive…reissue? my comic confusion perfume. with packing to move, i still have all of those illustration boards. i’m thinking i should somehow mat & frame them & sell them. maybe i need to make a name for myself first? or i could just decorate my new place with them….

but! should i put them out there like on tapastic or something? maybe i’ll do that….who wants to read confusion perfume? speak now.

also, here’s a doodle from an idea that has just begun swimming around in my head.

filling up the page

i’ve been writing bucket-loads of bad poetry instead of getting drawing done. whenever i open my journal, my tormented thoughts spill out in my juvenile voice. so i haven’t gotten much drawing done. i did try to fill up this page with some drawings. drawings of words. describing my rabid state.

but, in theory, moving my hand is moving my creativity…or something like that. there’s something there about how writing by hand…drawing…how it creates bridges….

okay, i’m just rationalizing now.

page 34 & 35 are in the works. i drew the panels.

i sometimes wonder if i should use less panels & open the page up more. but i kinda like panels. some order to the chaos.

i hope my life mellows out soon and stops taking me for this twisted, fucked-up, roller coaster of a ride i’m on right now.  i could use some peace. my art could use some of the attention i’ve been giving a certain stupid situation i am in.

as much as i complain about my kids & my husband, their distractions are a part of my life and i love them for it. they keep my life interesting and give me inspiration. i do not need any psycho hello kitty drama clogging up my creative process…keep your eyes peeled for a hello kitty zombie for me to decapitate. it’s bound to happen.

being invisible is easy; it’s being VISIBLE that takes super powers….

in fact, i spent most of high school invisible. maybe i’ve gotten so good at being invisible that i no longer know how to be visible…if, in fact, i ever knew how to be visible. i was a pretty shy & quiet kid.

anyhoo. i spent a lot of today goofing off on my laptop and wondering why exactly i am not an internet sensation. but i did work a bit more on my page of sketches for in-the-works comics. i like where i’m going with bluejean, but realized i am giving her almost the same dog that moses & the gang has, a cattle dog. so then i started working on a border collie/cattle dog mix. that’s when misha discovered she could lick her finger and smear the ink as i was drawing. misha is three now. “three year old,” in my experience, translates to “asshole.” i suppose it didn’t help that i was so flabbergasted at her audacity that i burst out laughing.

maybe i will work on the dog more tonight. as she sleeps & recharges.

also! i entered chuck wendig’s flash fiction contest:

http://terribleminds.com/ramble/2015/03/27/flash-fiction-challenge-you-filthy-weirdos/

with a short story i wrote a million years ago that was once published on a web magazine called danse macabre. my story, however, has been since archived and the archives have been dumped. but it’s a pretty decent story, fitting the theme of “fuck you, clean reader” as it is a dialogue about profanity in literature. i put it up over on a tumblr blog that i use to specifically showcase my art & writing:

http://emjemccarty.tumblr.com/post/114794889091/bukowskis-undertow-and-hemingways-dashes

i need to work on my powers of visibility.