do you believe you can hide?

[turtlesoup]

Just a little update today. I'm on the home stretch with my thesis project (and only beginning the journey of this book, which has a title now: Asylum, as in seeking) ... and probably I'll wait to share more peeks at it until things are handed in.

However! Today we hung an art show of CCS student work at the Hotel Coolidge in downtown White River Junction (if you're in the area for some reason, come check it out!), and for that I needed to finish a two-page spread from the second chapter a little head of schedule. I can't resist posting this thing.


You might remember the Hostel (abandoned hospital complex) marketplace from my proto-draft back in October, although the storyline surrounding it has been changed and developed quite a lot since then. :) I am ... quite pleased with how this came out. Hopefully it feels much more immersive than the first version.

Also, while most of my life plans are severely up in the air at present (CCS commencement is on May 18: after that ... we'll see), I'm starting to compile a 2013 convention schedule! Keeping it relatively light this year, given all the upheaval I'm expecting, but still quite excited about it. I'll be tabling with the indomitable Betsey Swardlick at MECAF in Portland, Maine on May 19! A super fun show, right on gorgeous Casco Bay, with some amazing guests lined up this year ... and I'll be debuting minicomic versions of the first two chapters of Asylum. :)

I'm hoping to attend CAKE in Chicago on June 15 & 16, but things are a little up in the air, so I'll update on that later. And I've just submitted my application to MICE (September 28-29, Cambridge, Mass), so we'll see about that as well! However, I will be tabling at SPX in Bethesda on September 14 & 15, with my deeply talented classmate Joyana McDiarmid and the Queerotica Anthology! By which point I hope to be debuting at least the third chapter of Asylum, although we'll see.

It's an exciting year any way you cut it! I must get back to my pencils, but here are a couple of miscellaneous little strips:


A warm-up exercise inspired by watching the unfettered interactions between celebrities and their fans on twitter; specifically, an exchange between Gerard Way (of The Umbrella Academy, Killjoys and My Chemical Romance) and a fan who asked him what topping she should get on her pizza. I admit to a certain amount of bemusement at the way this breaking down of social and professional walls is working out. Also, it was an excuse to draw Max and Amira, rockstar characters from a comic project I have on the back burner! They are super fun ... I'm looking forward to having more time to play with them. (And spending more time thinking about their voices; talk about unpolished dialogue.)


Yeah, um, that happened. (In my defense, I was at a CCS event and had just been eating pizza; also, it'd been quite a long day.) My sketchbook still has the dried blood to prove it, I'm afraid. More a consequence of extremely dry skin than my vocation, probably (or my administrative day job) ... although every facet of my life does seem calculated to torture my poor hands!

I hope you're enjoying spring (if you're in this hemisphere)! It's a beautiful sunny day in Vermont today (which, contrary to the opinions of some of my colleagues, is what I would call perfect cartooning weather). And hey, maybe keep my former city in your thoughts, as well as the other places in the world that are experiencing such trauma and destruction this week ... I remain shaken by the bombing at the Boston Marathon, grateful that my own friends are safe and sound, and sad and angry on behalf of a place I love and the people who are suffering there.