goodbye dusty knickers

when i did the prototype pages for this comic, back in my drawing II class. way back when i was pregnant for poppy, spring of 2013, there was no dusty in the panels. the dusty in my life asked me, “how come i’m never in your comics?”

so when i started the actual comic pages, i wrote in a dusty. but he morphed into how i felt, deep down, about my own dusty–abandoned. his character has been forever absent from the story, only appearing in flashbacks.

then, briefly, i thought things were going to work out between dusty & me–so i started to bring his character into the present pages of my comic. while i was doing this, it came to light just how deceptive & damaging he was to me and my love for him.

episode two ends with dusty knickers coming back into the life of moses jones.

but now i have packed up everything that is mine, and i have left the dusty in my life. we have 4 kids together. we will always be connected, but i am starting a life without him. a life i have dreamed of starting all these years of feeling abandoned by him–lonely in his presence–but a life i never escaped to because i worried about him and couldn’t leave him for that worry.

i am in the middle of leaving. finishing up at our old place and packing the kids into a car for our new place. i have to get settled, but then i will continue my story, and we will find out how things work out between dusty & moses jones.

i’m not optimistic that their relationship will fare much better than mine with my dusty–my dusty who is no longer mine.

the ending is the beginning.

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biggest mojo ever

here is the large piece i was working on.

i have two more sheets of paper that i am hoping to put stark raving whimsy stories onto.

i forgot to take pictures at the zine fest. i was having a really bad day. dusty vanished the night before & i became neurotic and wasn’t able to sleep. then i became angry & depressed. then the print shop didn’t have my postcards ready and i yelled at them. then it was raining & cold.

sigh.

but people seemed to like my stuff. being halloween, the crowd was thin. being cold & rainy, the crowd was thin. plus there were so many amazing tables of zines & prints & art & political dissent…i think people were really picking & choosing where they spent their money.

i did sell a few zines. i hand made some postcards to sell before the man from the print shop showed up to apologize and give me a donation of my postcards that i had ordered printed up. i sold some of the hand made ones. several, in fact. it was kind of cool. and sitting there painting pictures took my mind off of being on display.

fortunately, the nice lady sitting at the table next to me was an extrovert & became a big fan of my work. she hawked my stuff to passersby–especially touting my writing skills. so that was nice.

onward. i am hoping to set up a website, produce more pieces for prints & postcards to sell. while continuing to work with mojo & whimsy.

plus, i am finally leaving dusty.

for real this time.

moses jones banishes dusty knickers

i have to keep explaining to my kids that she is not killing him–just banishing him.

i was raised catholic. one of the stained glass windows in my small town church was of michael the archangel banishing satan. it has kind of stuck with me all these years. and here it is representing my character’s conflicted relationship–and, in that, expressing my own angst with my own fucked up relationship.

i am also working on a piece titled “the return of dusty knickers”…he will finally enter the story as something other than a flashback and in the dna evidence of mojo’s kids. what will happen next? i honestly don’t know. if you know what i have been going through…there will probably be another woman and a whole lot of ugliness…. at least mojo can take out her frustrations on the zombies….

i have to go to my art class critique in a few minutes. this is part of it. as well as my completed gift to fidgit–the wooly bear mammoth.

waiting for keanu

i have a new laptop! and a new digital camera! (thanks student loans!)

and my drawing class is going great…(my digital art class not so much….)

my professor wants me to go epic with my graphic novelling. he gave me a rolled up sheet of paper to do a huge page with. meanwhile, my larger page is almost done.

i totally should be done by now. but i had to go to court for a disorderly conduct charge & that had me too neurotic to draw for way too long. but, note to self, any dude who is going to put you in the position to get a disorderly conduct charge is not a dude who is worth getting charged with disorderly conduct over–especially if he also cheats, lies, and treats the mother of his children like poo. so new leaf turning time. i need to dedicate my passion to my art & children…not to their absent father. in my comic i have him physically absent–but in real life he is emotionally absent.

up top is an in process rendering of my very first comic venture as a child–hey, diddle diddle. i think i will do just the one page. or more. but more as prints than as a continuing story. but, as of today, i have decided to write a graphic novel about all the fucked-up-ness of all my relationships and title it waiting for keanu. maybe i will make that one epic as well….

(keanu, where are you? i’m waiting…come home!)

page 36

here it is. i’m afraid my scanner sucks. and i am kind of distracted so my work looks sloppier than usual. but here is page 37. i hope it is readable. also enjoyable. if you feel like you have forgotten the plot line due to how long it has been since i last posted…go over to moses jones on tapastic where you can read the entire story from start to end.

recap of my roadblocks to page 36:

packing
moving (like four times over the summer??)
homelessness
dusty’s infidelity
broken elbow
and, of course, the ever present & delightfully distracting minions….

but it is here now…& that is what matters. right?

so today i go back to art school at uw. i am taking an introduction to digital media & intermediate drawing. so watch out, people. i’m only getting better from here.

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.

i’m still here! i’m still here!!

another rerun….

i have been doodling and could post a picture accordingly, but i don’t feel like walking downstairs & finding my camera to take a picture of my artwork. plus, my canon digital camera is acting as if it does not have much longer to live. if i have any benefactors out there…hint. hint. too many kids dropping said camera after massaging it with sticky fingers, i suppose.

but i am doodling. exercising my pens, as it were, who are much happier now that i have started shaking them loose.

i am still–still still still–between homes. we had to move out of the abandoned house we were squatting in. we went back to dusty’s sister’s house, but after a fight with dusty, i packed up the minions and went to my brother’s house in my gloriously flat home state of illiniois. at least my brother keeps his fridge stocked with beer.

why did dusty & i fight? spoilers! the other woman factor…which will be addressed in comic form eventually. the other fucking woman. as if moses jones is not enough woman for any man?? phih-shaw!

so i drove off…as i will…moving my babies for the fourth time this summer. but my brother’s house, as i said, has more beer…and has fewer (none) pitbulls. there is one cranky golden lab mix however. a lot more room! a trampoline even! iggy should be in seventh heaven, but iggy is iggy and like his dusty daddy, he is hard to please.

forgive me, i babble a bit. must be the well-stocked beer fridge.

in one week…one week! if dusty & i work out our differences…in one week, we will be sleeping in our own beds and irritating our own neighbors. so exciting. in one week, i will have a space of my own once more.

and the art will flow!

until then, don’t forget me. (i have not forgotten you.)

where did the time go?

i had plenty of time to get a page done by friday in order to keep the rhythm of a weekly page post….

durp.

i have gotten this far on page 34 & 35. i did the inking one night when i woke up & dusty had disappeared. off to see his “just friends” ex-girlfriend…. i read my tarot. did some inking. tried to stay calm…. this is proof that i can remain productive in times of emotional upheaval. which is good, because if you are me, times of emotional calm are few & far between. however, the situation with the hello kitty stalker ex-girlfriend does continue to stress me out and distract me, making my creative process a bit clogged.

i have not gotten any more done.

also, dusty has been home all week so i am easily distracted. we went adventuring two of the days. we need to find a new place to live, so that takes up a lot of my brain space.

process. progress. i went and got some cedar incense–i am told it is good for grounding. i also got some sage to smudge our home and get all this bad fucking energy out of it. and candles–to burn with intent.

then maybe i can get more work done.

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.

can i call this “process”?

or lack thereof?

i want to practice drawing dusty who will eventually return to the story. this was drawn the upteenth time my kids made me take them outside. i was all like, “i will just draw while they play.” i got the above drawn just as poppy decided to plop down in my lap and nest there. poppy wants to be held. he wants to be nursed. he wants to be outside. usually all three at the same time. which makes it really difficult to draw.

can blogging about my inability to get any drawing done count as process? it is part of the process, in its way. i do get a lot of thinking about moses jones done as i chase, soothe, and distract small children.

dusty is the one who clogs up my thought process with daily drama. so much drama! just to insure his return to the storyline? he is lucky i love him so much that i will not sacrifice his character to a mob of famished zombies.

look how pretty he is. how am i supposed to resist? i can’t just feed him to the zombies. which, by the way, is not the appropriate way to deal with relationship problems…apparently. i guess you’ll all know if i manage to be mature and make things work with dusty despite our differences by how he plays out in the comic. hopefully, he will not end up as zombie fodder. don’t expect a “happily ever after,” but maybe there can at least be less abandonment and bitterness–& more sex.