sketch diary, Sun. 12/17

December 17th, 2006

Damn beavers. Read the rest of this entry »

Sunday round-up

December 17th, 2006

Instead of using my reprieve from my strip deadline to do all the other work I have to do, I seem to have plunged into a blogging frenzy. But I have a few more things I want to post about, mainly a whole bunch of Fun Home stuff.

• The Times (London) said Fun Home was one of the 10 best books of 2006—books! Not “graphic books,” not “memoirs” (not that there’s anything wrong with that), just Books. Crikey! Sarah Waters’ Night Watch is number 3. Fun Home is number 10.
• Salon has posted an excerpt and an interview with me.
• Time and Entertainment Weekly have both included Fun Home in their ‘best of the year’ round-ups. I think they’re on the newsstands now.
• Medusa…I mean Amazon.com has picked FH as one of the Top 50 Books of 2006 (it’s #44 on the list), and one of the 10 best memoirs.

On another note, I finally got around to reading some of the coments on episode 501, and have a few remarks.

1. I see that Pjeannechild had my sabbatical under discussion on the blog before she emailed me about it. Sorry I missed that.
2. The library in #501 is indeed an old Carnegie library. It’s based on the Franklin library in Minneapolis. I found it on google image search, and liked the look of it. I.e., it seemed easy to draw.
3. Raffi didn’t say FTW, he said WTF. Which as far as I know means What The Fuck. (But doesn’t FTW mean “fuck the world?”) And ‘tool’ in my book is a synonym for ‘dick.’
4. I love syd’s insight about Mo’s new boss at the library perhaps being a Gay Librarian Bear.

I need to get on the threading project so your instructions for zesting oranges don’t get all buried in the theological discussions about original sin, or the nostalgic reveries about ancient computers (and ancient languages). Though I kind of like everything all mixed up together. I love the comments on this blog. If I do say so myself.

And hey, did anybody notice what happens when you push the ‘play’ button on the “Buy Alison’s Art from PSAW” button? Gahlord the webmeister made this cool little pan & zoom quasi-animation.

sketch diary, Sat. 12/16

December 17th, 2006

Actually, before I did the Friday cartoon posted below, I did another one based on something that happened to me today.

But before I show you that, let me just say that the main rule of the sketch diary is that I can’t spend much time on it. I can’t do any photo references, or look anything up at all. I can only draw stuff that comes right out of my head. Well, I can do one quick pencil sketch. But that’s it.

So I went out for a hike this afternoon after putting up the Gentle Reader post, and it was while I was hiking that I got the idea for this little story. And then later on during the hike I got the barbershop idea.

I don’t know if I’ll keep this up. I might not. But it was really fun to do these little stories. (NOTE: I’m having some trouble getting the art to display properly. It might take a while to get that figured out. Sorry. ) Read the rest of this entry »

sketch diary, Friday Dec. 15

December 17th, 2006

No sooner did I post that guilt-ridden message about blowing off my strips this month than I was seized with a new idea. I could post other kinds of cartoons here, like a sketch diary, until I’m back on track with strip.

I think I was inspired by Roz Chast’s new book, which a very kind reader of this blog just sent me. I was looking at it last night and envying her free ‘n’ EZ drawing style and wide-ranging subject matter. Well, it was a combo of Chast’s influence and James Kochalka’s. I’m also envious of his simple, haiku-like American Elf sketchbook diary.

I just thought it might be fun to try something like that, and it would make up for slacking off in the DTWOF department. I know, I know, everyone’s been making these very kind posts about how Read the rest of this entry »