First digital on the new Acer

My very first digital drawing on my new Acer Spin 2-in-1, "Janis."

It still looks like my stuff. I have a tendency to use traditional techniques, even on the most high-tech machines.

This was done on the little Paint program that came with the puter. For learning purposes, it's perfect. Got me working with automatic hand movements very quickly. 

Not a lot of brushes or colors - but what do we usually have on our drawing table, anyway? You know it's just that little cup full of brushes and markers and sometimes scissors or a screwdriver).

Paint doesn't have layers or anything (although it DOES have a kind of 3-D option. Hm. I see the next thing I'll have to do is figure out the keyboard options for emojis. 😁 And now I have).

I want to finish up a project that's been having problems, and I haven't got a scanner yet. I had been using the library scanner, but welcome to the New Normal. That's going to be resolved soon, I hope (Thank the Spirits).

I seldom print out anything because - well, why else have a puter if you're going to be piling up dead tree scraps on your real desktop? The only reason I want to see anything Real is if I do a commission or send a fancy postcard to a Patreon.

I'm getting over an injured neck - thanks to the help of a good neighbor - and I want to give my neck one more day to heal. I think I just rolled over wrong in my sleep.

This little Windows computer shows a huge improvement over my expectations of 10 years ago (TTS). If you want a nice little computer for basic needs and a pretty nice tablet, all for about $700, you could do worse than an Acer Spin.

All My Comics Online

WEBTOONS:

The Desert Peach

Stinz

Afterdead - all of Donna's Characters together!

The Desert Peach Extras

The Black Manuscripts, courtesy of San Diego State University Special Collections.

WHERE AND WHEN WITH DONNA BARR

I don't know if the real cons will happen or not. I'll keep this updated. BUT - there a lot of fun virtual things to do.

How To Draw A Horse Right. Youtube.

I'm attending the virtual ConCellation2020 on Facebook. Highly recommended, and a LOT of fun.

2020 - Olympic Collectible Expo - Cancelled? We'll see.  

2020 - RainCon - June  

2020 - Comic Book Swap Meet - July

2020 - Opttacon - August

2020 - Emerald City Comicon FLOOR ONLY - August 21-23

2020 - ShortRun - November

Clallam Bay Comicon (Holding Page)

Window Plants 2020

Sweet potato, potato, black tomato.

With everybody thinking about growing at least some of their own food, I'm posting photos of my window green house.

If anything makes it, it goes outside in a couple plots. 

The peppers are doing surprisingly well. I think these are from seeds one of my readers sent me.

The sweet potato is the one I used to clip starter sprouts from. 

Sweet potatoes, avocado, and ?

No clue. Fan sent it?

The black tomatoes are the continuing generations of tomatoes I rescued from a drie-out plant in a tiny plot at the edge of a small Capitol Hill park.

The avocado won't get much of a life. It's being grown for the leaves, that will be dried and ground for a kind of filé powder. It's related to sassafras.

Next to it is a plant I have no idea about. Another sent in by a reader probably. I'll plant any old thing, labeled or not.

The wild tobacco is mixed with leaves from alder, mint, coltsfoot and raspberry leaves. I have chronic bronchitis. Medicinal smoke helps keep my lungs from tipping into pneumonia.

Sweet potato sprouts, wild tobacco.

The aloe is because we have a wood stove, and if you have one of those, you get burnt once in a while. Grabbing a leaf and squeezing the gel onto the burn sure helps.

It's not a lot of gardening. Most of that is masses of kale in the garden. We cook it in everything, for iron and calcium. Marinated overnight, it makes good salad.

It's about all I can grow up here without a real struggle. Slip point has a cold, dry, salty wind all summer, and is too wet the rest of the year.

Peppers

Hello, fellow brown thumbs in uncooperative environments, everywhere.

North American tobacco

A

Aloe

West window.

COVID 19

Hi, everybody!

I know I've got a lot of information about upcoming conventions, but all of them are only possibilities at this point.

Like Emerald City, the folks who run these conventions are responsible people. They're monitoring the situation.

I expect Olympic Collectible Expo to be at least postponed, because it's in the Kitsap Mall, and is much closer to Seattle, the epicenter of the outbreak in the United States.

There is another event coming up in Port Angeles in early April - that I don't know if I can share yet - and they are monitoring as well.

AnimeKat (the Port Angeles store and nerd central) and OCE on Facebook are the best places to check out what might be happening.

So everybody stay safe, wash your hands, sanitize all surfaces. Let's get through this the best we can.

San Diego Comic Fest 2020

Pam, me and Ka-Blam

The San Diego Comic Fest is a heck of a show! 

Held at Sheraton at 4 Points in San Diego, it makes about 2000 people very happy. Everything about it is classic comicon.

First up is Pam Jackson, Pop Culture Librarian (She got to make up her own title) at the San Diego State University, at my table in the artists alley.

AND me in my Ka-Blam shirt. They are the best drawn-book floppy printer, and only about a dollar more per issue than '80's prices! High quality, friendly and helpful. You can't go wrong with the Blamster.

Girls can do that.

Diana Leto and I ran the "Girls Can't Do That" panel. We were told we had the panel only a week before. There was some scrambling, but we got our art files together, and with my moderator chops and Diana's tech expertise, the panel was fast and furious and funny. Audience member Buzz Dixon told us "this was the best panel" he'd ever attended, and took our picture. Mucho gracias, Buzz!

Mary Fleener did even better with the Underground Panel. Her, me, Roberta Gregory, Trina Robbins, Bruce Simon. QUITE the lineup. Again, well-organized, ran fast. At the end, an audience member threw a wad of cash at Mary and said, "Take everybody to dinner!"

Sketches

That night we hit the Emerald Chinese around the corner from the hotel. The place was full of comicon folks. Drawn book people aren't racist OR stupid. Our table plowed through a mountain of goodies like savage badgers. It was so good!

Stinz

Of course, folks show up for sketches. I did this little drawing of Stinz in a guy's book. And after 30 years, asked myself why a centaur would need a cane. Fashion, of course!

Colleagues!

One of the best reasons for going to SDCF is to meet up with old friends and colleagues. Here we have Roberta Gregory and the Lustigs! 

John is the creator of Last Kiss, an hilarious series based on old romance comics he bought the rights to and provides with smart-alecky word balloons. It's a big hit, and for good reason!

Surf's Up!

This year's theme was The Two Rays - Ray Bradbury and Ray Harryhausen. 

There were crazy old movie posters all over the big panel room. Thanks to the volunteers who put in so much time making it fabulous!

Here we have Robert, on the surfboard of the RatFink installation. It's built of slats and chicken wire and cloth and spray plastic. 

He also built this party-girl Medusa. Who else feels sorry for the Gorgon? She was just minding her own business when a guy showed up and cut her head off.

The art of war.

Robert gives her a Miss Comic Fest banner AND a glass of wine! She's one of the gang, now.

Appropriate headgear.

Here's Robert with an absolutely fabulous samurai warrior. A fully home-made costume. Cosplay amazes me.  These people turn out the greatest outfits.

Spider Cool

The guy in the samurai costume makes a different helmet crest for each event. They're plastics - he must be running them off a 3-D printer. I wish I'd asked.

We can't have a comicon this year without the Spiderverse. This cosplayers's outfit matches the carpet!

Finally, a starry character from a comic book I should know. Whatever it is, it's grand. It's covered with tiny fairy lights.

That's all I had time to photograph this year - there was so much going on!

If you get a chance, head to the SDCF. It's worth it. 

See you next year!

ShortRun 2019 Powerhouse

I can only share one photo because I simply didn't have time to take any more!

Bruce Simon and Me - I told him all
about Ka-Blam, the best floppy printers
for the best prices.

Never in all my years going to hundreds of conventions has the floor been hotter. 4,000 people crowded into the Fisher Pavilion in the Seattle Center, and they were there to BUY. They wanted books, tshirts, facetime - they were in the moment, and ready to party. Thank Goodness my Square reader was working!

The photo is of Hoo-Hah publisher Bruce Simon, who offered, among other books, a truly well-done collection of the classic Out Our Way cartoons from the 1930's. We got on so well we've shaken hands on sharing a table next year, if ShortRun will have us both back! 

I told him he MUST submit the Out Our Way books to the Pulitzers this year, in the publisher category. The books meet all their criteria, especially being a very well-done collection of a wonderful American series.

He came up from Berkeley, and was unprepared in a number of the business points of running a table at a show, because - according to him - the comics scene in San Francisco is badly faded. 

I told him to run right over to this site and look up the Clallam Bay Comicon and start the process of running his own one-person minicon. The secret to this is, after about seven years of what is really quite easily organized, somebody else will want to take it over and expand it, as happened with the CBCC, which has morphed into the Forks RainCon. 

So, anybody in Berkeley or environs who wants to help out, look up the book on Amazon,* where there's always a contact email block.

*(I'm sorry for that - so many of us put our books on Amazon before it went asshole).

I missed the afterparty again because I was just so exhausted. I have a lung infection, and am on antibiotics. So I can't drink anyway! I should have just made up my mind to Uber* home, but I'd only used Uber once, and my brain was fried from the intense show. 

**(AND I will have to transfer to Lyft, because Uber's CEO is calling the murder of a journalist by his Saudi shareholders a "mistake." We know what Friends' Rachel had to say about mistakes. Which is sad, because I really like Uber.)

I did make it to the Fantagraphics afterparty Sunday evening, which featured an interesting music/animation from Berlin.

Sunday, there were two great ShortRun events downtown and on Capitol Hill, featuring Shortrun authors. And did I just pick up an opportunity to talk at the University of Washington? We'll see.

ANYWAY, I was dreading the bus ride back home on Monday, but not because it was a bus ride- Clallam County Busses are fabulous - but because it was Veteran's Day (Properly called Armistice Day, before America got mad about losing the Korean War), and rural areas get stupid. 

BUT - it turned into an opportunity to POSSIBLY start the gay pride festival in Port Angeles. I can't share how, because it's Somebody Else's Story.

But I can share how I walked by the old vets selling vet stuff in front of the Safeway and said, "We're going to try to have a gay pride parade in Port Angeles." 

Their answer? "All RIGHT!"

I will certainly be back to ShortRun next year, especially if I can run at least a quarter table. That's a privilege.