Excited that Scholastic wants me to keep working on this script...offering a much-needed break from drawing so much. My brain can only take so much of one thing so much. 😭

It's late but creativity never sleeps. What's on your desks this evening? I'm turning gestural stick figures into actual people for my Five Wishes GN and realizing you can tell I've read far too much manga from the way I draw side profiles. >_>;

Because the @cartoonist.coop is rockin' it, that's what.

This is why I wish we had a Cartoonist's Guild. Not a collective. Not a union (legally not possible). But a guild with collective bargaining (and insurance omg). But who of us has the time to maintain one??? We are kept so damn busy bleeding our fingers dry for publishers who have NO CLUE.

Finally got around to watching this, and honestly, I think anybody who has kids needs to watch this with them STAT. It was actually fun to watch, highly accessible and easy to understand, and difficult to walk away from unchanged.

Holy cr*p, this is adorable, and I so want more. 😭💖

Every day I wake up and read the news and go "Wtf?" towards something my country or this admin did, but today was pretty new level. WTF? And boomers and gen Xers wonder why we younger generations have no pride in our country. /throws up hands/ Because we have EYES man. And actual ETHICS.

I may have gotten a little speedline happy while getting back into the work groove today. 😅 There's not a lot of action opportunities in FIVE WISHES (mostly a lot of moody brooding) so things got a little out of hand. That ball looks like it's gonna take his face off. I'll tone it back. Maybe. 😆

Sometimes when I'm working on pages like this, I just wanna lay my head down and give up, but then I whisper *it'sworthitttttt*, sigh heavily, grumble a bit, and get right back to it. There is a reason I've off pushed cleaning up all my car scenes to the end though. 😑

2026 New Years Resolution: To put more kindness in the world. I mean, I aim to do this anyway, and I've raised my kiddo to act this way, too, (we're big on the Campsite Rule in this house) but it never hurts some years to make a real POINT of it. Kindness can be a weapon too.

Boosting because this looks so cool! I've never done a residency myself, but I'd apply for this one in a heartbeat if I could*. Hoping some of the awesome cartoonists I know apply!Cultural comics xchange is ALWAYS a great thing. 💖💖💖 *(being kiddo's primary caretaker kinda puts a damper on travel)

Hell yeah. @cartoonist.coop I think y'all'll want to follow this. (pardon my Texan double-contraction for "you all will")

Reading K. O'Neill's TEA DRAGON SOCIETY set with the kiddo right now (it was one of their Winter Solstice gifts), and it is both the sweetest and one of the most wonderful things we have ever read together. We're both absolutely in love. 💖💖💖

For 2026, I'll be finally finishing FIVE WISHES (ink, limited color, lettering). I've been working on this GN since 2019 (with another GN thrown in there somewhere), so...yeah. It doesn't feel real. This one's my baby. If I were to die after I finished, I'd consider it a life pretty complete. 🌈

You know why the American dream is a lie for every American except the b/millionaires? Because even if you do manage to own a home, medical debt will eventually, innevitably, take it all away. The medical system is DESIGNED to siphon off every. last. penny. until there is absolutely nothing left.

ARTIST JOB ALERT: I am looking for somebody who can TIGHTLY PENCIL animals for me in my graphic novel FIVE WISHES, specifically, several pages of squirrels and birds. This is PAYING and work would begin immediately, but it's not a rush job. cont...

IT IS TIME. 😈

Wierd persistent whooshing sound in one ear: internet tells me either I'm weeks away from dying from a stroke or it's nothing and it'll go away eventually--wait three weeks and see. Having no insurance is GREAT. 😑👍 Hopefully I don't die. I'd REALLY like to finish this book first.🤞

One of the VERY first questions I ask my students is who is learning comics in order to make a living vs who is in it to simply make them. Neither answer is wrong. But it guides how I advise them in the future because somebody who wants to live off their work will undoubtably need some sharper truth

Theo is totally right! BUT... it's tricky imo both do need to happen. You both need to be a good artist PLUS be good at sharing your work. As someone who teaches grad-level comics classes who is consistently trying to decode the art school mindset where students avoid marketing, like it dirties art.

I wish there was a way to tell young beginner cartoonists looking for promotional advice that they need to stop putting all their energy into marketing & work on their comic instead without sounding like a total bitch. my love, there is nothing to market

croisssssahhhhhnt. Cutie got a Merry Early Giftmas this year.

My Clip Studio Tabmate is dying. Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo. You can't get them in the US anymore! 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

Family lunch topic of the day: "Would lava be a good or poor choice for disposal of a body?" Various lava viscocities vs body density, surface vs internal temp, whether to place body on top or in the path of the flow, and remain traces all discussed. This is what happens when you live with nerds.

Every time I read the news here in CT then go and read the news back in Texas, I feel like I'm living in two different countries from two different centuries. 😑

Finally watched up through the end of episode 2 of Pluribus, and I hate the main character so much I just can't stomach watching any more. Rarely have I met a character I wanted to throw out a window so much. Which really doesn't make me want to keep watching it.

Busted out the ol' timer to try and rein in my ADHD again. One of the things I do when I'm noticing long stretches of being unable to focus for long periods of time is to time how long I'm actually working each day. It's a kind of mental noting and makes it easier to return focus to my work.

I love this. Honestly, one of the reasons I've decided to ink FIVE WISHES on paper instead of a screen is because I need at least one step in my comics making process that reminds me of the joy of making art with tactile tools.

Honestly, I love bsky precisely because it IS so slow. I'm not here to perform. I'm here to dwell on the little wierd micro thoughts of people in my industry that tend to get buried under the more popular art and video posts elsewhere, stuff people post not for ❤️s or follows, but just because.

Lovely thread and analysis of trans representation in Japanese manga and culture from @sequentialscholars.bsky.social One of my favorite accounts here on bsky! They always have thoughtful and insightful social takes on classic as well as contemporary manga.

I love when somebody comes to me asking if I know anybody available for inking/coloring/lettering etc and I'm able to actually refer someone. Which is why it really DOES help to post on social media or let friends know when you're looking for work and what kind of work!

Very rarely do I draw a face and on the first try think, "nailed it." This might be one of those rare times. There's a lot of very subtle expressions in FIVE WISHES. It takes a lot of tries sometimes to get the nuance down on the paper the way I'm seeing it in my head!

Authors need to start including clauses specifically stating that publishers cannot use our content, likeness, or any identifying information to train an LLM. Like STAT. I plan on bringing it up with my agent and publisher on my next book, that's for sure!

One stellar example of a REALLY HORRIBLE contract. No-holds-barred right to derivative works, an agressive NDA, author-paid expenses & cost recoupments, and royalties based on NET AFTER COST, or, in other words: the "we're going to deduct as much as we can so you don't get a penny nyanya" clause.

I'm in the beginning stage of cultivating a new hobby, something that takes me away from the stress of drawing while engaging my OCD in low-stakes creativity. I find the sanding and filing, the trimming and cutting, the micrometer aligning oddly soul-soothing. We shall see where this leads. 😖

It's supposed to snow 1-3 inches tonight and I am PSYCHED because this is early for snow in the Hartford area (we are in a warm valley bubble) and hoping this portends a long, snowy winter. ❄️🤩❄️ (because, if you ask me, we haven't had anywhere near enough snow since we've moved here! 😭)

I don't know what took me so long to start using the layer color feature in CSP, but it makes it so much easier to draw over and make corrections when I do. 😭 This is from early in the book so it's WAY messier than my pages from later! I hadn't settled on character designs yet, and it shows. 🥲

Just had to turn down a fairly lucrative teaching gig because making a 546 page graphic novel look nice isn't something anyone can moonlight. 🥲 Probably one of the hardest things I've ever had to say no to. I LOVE teaching. But I'm in the last million miles of my 5-million mile marathon...

Um. This may actually be life-changing AND life-saving. For reasons (medical trauma mostly), I haven't had a pap smear since I was 18, even though cervical cancer runs in my family. So many people don't realize how traumatic a pap smear can be for some people. But this...this I could do.

Zach Rabiroff, as always, pulling back the curtain behind the people who make the comics-selling market tick. SO MUCH nitty-gritty behind-the-scenes info in this interview with Books With Pictures' Katie Pryde.

You know it's real, genuine, god-to-honest love when you're diving to catch your kid's vomit IN YOUR HANDS like it's a final-seconds Friday Night Football touchdown.

Lost in the depths of make-comics-land for this and last year, I am missing my teaching gigs. I ALWAYS welcome the craft and industry Qs.

Have fun at MICE everybody and good luck!!! Wish I could be there, but I'm 🤒🤧😷 so...another year. 💝

Boo. Sick again and still going. No MICE for me this weekend. 😭😭😭💔 (like most good humans, I prefer not to spread the plague)

My editor's supposed to get back to me this week with her edits to FIVE WISHES, and I have nervous butterflies in my stomach. Susan ALWAYS has spot-on feedback, and I LOVE it, but there is always a little voice in the back of my head screaming "YOUR BOOK SUCKS. BURN IT ALL!!!!" Yup.

Survey: Who struggles with backgrounds? (and what do you struggle with?)

One day I need to do a short tutorial showing how I do a wide-angle shot with what looks like a 1-point perspective that is actually 4-point. It's how I make small interiors look more dramatic than a single-point show would allow...and that are too cramped for moving the camera to a 2-point angle.

Math is knowledge. Knowledge is power. 30k is also way WAYYYY too low. IMHO, anything less than 50k for a 200 page full color book is highway robbery. So if you have to get robbed to get published (and self pub isn't an option)...at least make something you love, okay?

This looks so freakin' adorable. Can't wait to read it! 😭💖

I have found that if you trace the same kind of object over and over again, our hands tend to learn the shape of what we've traced. Long long ago, *I learned how to draw perspective this way. Now...learning to draw complex foliage this way. The hand remembers what the head forgets. 🫡