Reading another steamy book by Alan Hollinghurst, The Swimming Pool Library, got me inspired to do this lil’ sketch while I was riding the train from NYC to White River Junction.

The past month or so I’ve been helping out at the CCS Summer workshops. It’s been really nice reading comics from a wide variety of people, many of whom had never made a mini-comic before. I’m glad I got to read their comics, and also to be a teacher again; this time, teaching about mixed-media comics! I began with a PowerPoint slide-show featuring work by Franz Masereel, Jack Kirby, Souther Salazar, Eric Carle, Vanessa Davis and many more, introducing and reminding the class of so many of the artists I admire. After that, we did an activity where we made a 32-page book out of a single 8.5″x11″ sheet of paper. In each class we created a Tiny Alphabet Zine!

I love planning templates, and getting entire comics to fit on a sheet of paper. I supplied the template for the project, and then divided up the pages with the students. Each person designed 1 or 2 pages using at least two different mixed media materials. We had zipatone, origami paper, old comics, pastels….

Some even used hair! The final comic is tiny with 2.75×4.5″ page spreads. Thanks to the students for making such cool artwork, so quickly!

Posted a companion drawing over at Joyteeth.

These are kinda Nancy/self-portraits. I got a buzz cut now!

Sitting around, watchin’ True Blood, getting sleepy, and sketching on sheets of paper around me; ahh…typical Summer night. I decided to keep drawing on the same sheet of paper, on both sides, using whatever was lying around, like pieces of zipatone I got in Japan or the Crayola markers my mom brought me. I ended up making this little zine-thing, which has given me ideas for a future project.

Here’s the original sheet of paper with the photo-copied zine version…I’m not sure which is the original anymore!

Also, check out Joyteeth for 3 little doodles I made using cheapy markers.