Sunday, February 27, 2011

Cold Hands pg6


Over the holidays, when I had started making this comic, I was doing a lot of baking. It was a nightmare when I was in the middle of a cookie recipe and realized I had, previously, used up all of my vanilla extract. Hands over my head in exasperation, I panicked for one second and then ran out of my house, not properly dressed. Snow was on the ground and I was in socks and my peep toe flats. No scarf. No gloves. Though considering I was running around, that actually kept me just warm enough.

I'm still doing a lot of baking and cooking. Thanks, in part, to the great gift my older sister gave me: The Unofficial Harry Potter Cookbook. Man, is there a ton of pie recipes in that book. Some of the meals I've made haven't been too good. Here are some of my favorite recipes:

Cheesy Chivy Scrambled Eggs
English Farmhouse Scrambled Eggs and Bacon
Custard Tart
Rice Pudding
Homemade Fudge
Beef and "Guinness" Stew for Kids (I didn't have any actual Guinness on hand to make the real thing, so the kid's version used soda instead)
Kreacher's French Onion Soup.

Making my own desserts from scratch has really opened my eyes to just how much sugar goes in to this stuff. I wanted to test out a lot of the recipes in the book right away, but now that I've made a majority of them, I'm content to wait a good while (maybe even months) before I make them again.

Sunday, February 20, 2011

Cold Hands pg5

Things are starting to get a little strange.

One inspiration for me, for this particular page, is the movie Cabaret, starring Liza Minnelli. My favorite scenes are when the camera pans around to the inside of the lounge to the laughing audience. There is something very grotesque and unsettling about watching everyone laugh, and even more so in the context of what is happening outside the lounge (the Nazis running rampant). These things stand out most in my mind just like the scene in Citizen Kane, when all the men are gathered and the troop of girls are dancing in honor of Mr. Kane. The camera shows a close-up of Kane's two closest companions alongside the other men, laughing and clapping, and not on Mr. Kane, himself.


Sunday, February 13, 2011

Cold Hands pg4

I made a comic a couple of years ago and it, also, had the same idea of this black bird that was watching over me. I'm not fascinated with all birds, just the ones that tend to perch outside and across from my window.

The other day, though it was freezing outside, I felt like Spring had finally come. The snow was melting and, most of all, there were plenty of birds out chirping away. They were in the trees and in the bushes, too. I feel extremely content when I wake up to the sound of these birds. I, also, love listening to crickets chirp at night. There are a lot of people who would be annoyed by some of these sounds but they keep me aware of the world outside of my studio. Plus, I think they are far, far more pleasant than the sounds of traffic. One of the reasons I hate summer is because of the sounds of lawnmowers and that dang ice-cream truck that stays parked adjacent to my building. I really despise that truck.

Friday, February 11, 2011

Black Morning 01


"Black Morning" is a new series of paintings inspired by classic black and white films.
Watercolors and ink. Original art for sale here.

I do love a man in a suit. A proper, pulled together suit, too. When I was at the train station the other day, looking around, I noticed a lot of guys with:
1. No tie
2. Jackets unbuttoned
3. First few buttons on their shirt collar unbuttoned

And it was sad.

But public television is great! "Arsenic and Old Lace" came on a good while ago (it's probably been months yet I'm still thinking about it) and that is such a fantastic film. Cary Grant is simply superb.


I, also, want to mention (if you hadn't already heard): A little while ago, I was hired to illustrate issue #92 of "The Gutters." It's a web-comic that parodies the comic book industry. Here is my issue, but I recommend reading it from the beginning as there is some really funny stuff in there.

Monday, February 7, 2011

Cold Hands pg3


Jiminy Crickets! I had the Superbowl on my mind all yesterday and completely forgot to upload a new page ^^' It was my first time trying to sit through a whole football game and I must say, I didn't make it. I fell asleep. Those games are too long and I'm getting too old. I did wake up in time to see the winners, so there's that. Mostly, I watched the ads, ate wings and cheesesticks. Yum. And of course, slept.

Back to my yarn and more relevant to this week's page, sometimes I find looking at the rolled up skein more beautiful than a finished object. I mean, I can't deny the beauty of an FO, but I think, especially, hand-painted yarns look gorgeous untouched.

Sunday, January 30, 2011

Cold Hands pg2


Adventures at my LYS. The place here is a store I first found when I did the NYC Yarn Crawl in 2010. I still prefer buying yarn online but it's always nice to be able to touch and smell yarn, before deciding whether or not I want to buy it, in order to get a better sense of the quality of it all.

Sunday, January 23, 2011

Weekly Comic

I had been thinking about doing this for a while now but I could never pull a script together that I liked. I think there is a post way WAY back near the beginning of this blog where I talk about doing this, too. As it happened, I began work on a book for the Sketchbook Project 2011. You can see the actual artwork (not copies) as the project tours across the country. Over 28,000 artists participated in this project. For more info on which cities it will tour at, visit their official website.


So, I scanned in all the pages before I mailed off my book. I decided I am going to digitally color the whole thing since the watercolors I put on the originals didn't scan very well and update it here once a week for everyone to see in case you can't make it out to see the real thing OR, better yet, you can follow updates here and go see the book in person, too. The cover of my book features a miniature glove I knit, making the book all the more tactile and hopefully enticing to the people who will peruse through it.

I thought about compiling the whole thing into a mini-comic. If I do decide to do that, I was thinking about adding on to the story with some extra tid-bits (art, stories, etc). It's still up in the air for me and depends on how this all schedules out.

Obviously this weekly comic idea won't run forever since it has a set number of pages I created for this particular story, but I'm hoping this gets the ball rolling for me to put up more regular posts to this blog. New page updates for the comic will be posted every Sunday.

And after that big ramble, here is the cover and opening page to my comic: COLD HANDS





Check back next Sunday for the next page!
:)