COC sections 4-6 (ok, really just "installment 3")

I'm going to shut up and just post this installment of the COC. See the post I uploaded right before this to hear more about my life.

 

  

 

Completely unrelated

Hi!

So the other day I was alone. All alone. Being alone would definitely belong in the top five things that Katie is bad at (the others being: spelling, writing in a non stream-of-conscious way, getting up in the morning, and not being a grandma). By about one o'clock, I had already sent out two emails to my ladyfriend and to my friends being like "what are you doing tonight. hanging out with me? for the LOVE OF GOD say yes." Thankfully one of them, who had stayed home from work that day, suggested that we both head down to Tryst. Tryst is a great coffee shop in Adams Morgan and the hub of the unemployed/artist/angtsy-people-with-DC-flag-tattoos crowd. It was a really good idea; no longer was I overwhelmed by feeling completely alone, and I was able to bust out the below drawing and the 12-panel next installment of the COC. Here's a drawing that I did after sitting in the same place for three hours, having drunk the well of inspiration dry.

COC page 2

Hello out there! Please enjoy this second installment of the COC (Coming Out Comic). As always, click for a legible version.

I spent all day today working on the draft for a Suggestion Box #3, which I am really looking forward too. I will upload more on that later! But for now....

If you really want to live this moment with me, click here.

Coming Out Comic: the beginnings

Things are kind of a mess here. I have spent this whole morning applying for jobs. This means that I have spent this morning updating my resume and debating whether "arranged" or "scheduled" is better (I came down on the side of "scheduled") when talking about giving tours ("giving" does not even enter into it). 

I also FINALLY bought myself some new pens earlier this week. Here is a picture of them, and how beautifully different each one is:

The brush one is a bit hard for me to work with, because I basically carve into any paper I work on and to make this one work well, you have to change the amount of pressure you put onto the pen. It will take me some more practice to make this a efficient tool, instead of just something that is really fun for doodling with. When it comes to actually drawing comics, I have a lot better luck using the straight-up pens, since I can anticipate exactly what the line will do and exactly what the end result will look like. If I want to make a thinner or thicker line, I can just use a different pen. I know what I will get if I use a .08 or a .01. The only problem is that sometimes the drawings can look like they were made in a doctor's office they're so sterile. The brush looks so freaking lively and quintessentially artistic. You could drawing a smiley face with it and it would look like some sort of fine art about the "human condition" or something similar.

Ok, this is definitely enough rambling for one day. Here is a first installment of some of the work I am doing on the coming out comic (hereafter to be referred to as the COC, which is pretty funny when said aloud about realizing one is a dyke.). Click on the image for a larger copy of it. Enjoy!

Already excited

I got an email earlier this week from the SPX coordinator saying that tables are up for reservation for SPX 2010. For those of you who do not know what SPX is, it is basically the Promised Land of indie cartoonists and self-published cartoonists and zine-sters. Click here for more info. It's not going on until the weekend after Labor Day, but my joy is already set to an overwhelming level.

I have really done some soul-searching (cause I'm deep like that, shut up) about the next big project that I'll be working on for the fall show. I recently had a working date with a friend of mine and as I started just doodling before she came over, an old story that I have heard popping out of the back of my head for a while finally took hold. I've thought a lot about making a comic that has a really heavy personal meaning, and the 0ne that really takes the cake is the story of coming out and of knowing that I was a big gay basically from the start. I remembered that one of the reasons why I got so into comics in the first place when I was in high school was that was the closest place to where I felt someone "got" me. I didn't need to know them, and the story didn't even need to be real (in the case of Terry Moore's "Strangers in Paradise" series) or really that terribly decipherable to a 14 year old who has a hard time reading other people's handwriting and knows nothing about drugs (Ariel Schrag's high school comic books.)

All differences aside, these were the books that I could bury my nose in and feel the "holy-shit-I'm-different" anxiety come down from the break-neck speed at which it would attack.

There will definitely be more to come as I work on this. I just really needed to get this out of my system.

Basically what's going on right now.