Windy City comicon was fun! Here is a picture of Corinne drawing something for a very lucky fan.



In related news, we're doing APE next month too, and while I am very excited to visit San Francisco, I am getting convention'd out. I think we might take a break from doing comicons for a while, after this one.

"Ouija Interview is hauntingly and perfectly handled."

(crossposted at Shortpants Press)

Hey I'll be at Windy City Comicon again this Saturday! If you live in Chicago, the Windy City con is awesome. It is cheap, it is laid-back, and it is in an entirely reasonable and easily-CTA'd neighborhood, instead of being way the crap out in Rosemont like some other conventions I could name.

I will probably not have the new issue of Shuteye ready by then, unfortunately, but I will have many other great books for you. Also, I'll be sitting with Bernie McGovern, Neil Brideau, and Corinne Mucha, all of whom are perfectly delightful people. Plus we'll have some free activity books from the always marvelous Uncle Envelope!

Spent a very inky weekend finishing all of the pages of the next issue of Shuteye!



40 pages in all. Quick question, if a minicomic is 40 pages long, is it fair to still call it a minicomic? There should be a word for, like, a comic book novella. graphic novella?

Unfortunately, marathon inking session notwithstanding, it probably still won't be ready for the Windy City Comicon this weekend, unless I forego my standard hand-silkscreen covers. It will, however, be ready for APE. This is also the first issue of Shuteye that makes more sense if you've read the previous issue, so I think I'll be offering a deal, if you buy Shuteye #5 I will throw in #4 for something ridiculous like $1. $1!! Is she out of her mind??

Maybe. Last night I went to sleep and immediately started dreaming about uninked pencil pages, and a very sad me, crying NOOOO THERE CAN'T BE ANY MORE, I FINISHED THOSE, I SWEAR I FINISHED THEM.

Spent the better part of last night putting together paperwork for this Xeric thing.



Sending it out today!! I really, really, really, really, really would like to get this grant. It's a good book I'm submitting, but I think there are a few things that might discount me. One is that the ouijas aren't really your normal comic book. The other, slightly more problematic thing is that it's specifically for self-publishers, and I don't know if this whole Shortpants Press thing will disqualify me. I mean, it's essentially still me self-publishing, since it all comes out of my own pocket anyway, but still. Cross your fingers for me!

Now that this paperwork is behind me, this weekend is all about copious amounts of inking the next Shuteye. Tracing! :D

Spent the last 5 days finishing up the pencils for the next issue of Shuteye! Here's a picture of our one-eyed cat, trying her best to stop me from working:



Over the next few weeks I am hoping to finish gathering the Xeric application paperwork and finish inking this Shuteye issue. It's going to be called "Castling," and it's about what happens when a girl and her estranged father exchange dreams one night. And with any luck it'll be ready in time for APE!

I'm taking tomorrow and Tuesday off work, for a grand 5-day weekend, in a mad bid to finish pencils on the next issue of Shuteye. I've had this issue written for about a year. I've had it blocked and laid out for months. But for some reason, sitting down to draw comics lately is like pulling teeth.

Perhaps I've been too easily distracted by Tom Nevers Head or by my flamenco classes, or by projects like the Katamari Cupcakes I made last weekend, I thought. But then I was poking around John Campbell's blog the other day, and came across a post about a book that he's trying to finish. "really been draggin my feet on this one," he types, "still not entirely sure why that is, just kind of hate everything, hate every little thing down to hating each atom and each part of each atom."

And oh, does that sound familiar. I don't think my comics-block issues right now are about hating everything, but I think I kind of hate everything about comics. Don't worry, I'm working through it, and I'll finish this book and the next and the next, but right now the medium just feels so thankless, unrewarding and tedious. I labor for months and months for a finished product that people will read in 30 seconds and then discard. And I don't know what exactly I want. I mean, clearly not riches or fame, or I wouldn't have chosen comics as a medium. Still, at least people clap when I play my accordion onstage, you know?

But Sarah, you say, all of life is transient and fleeting, comics are only more obviously so. And you're right. And I'll work through it, and I'll get over it, probably by the time I get around to inking this next Shuteye issue. In the meantime though? Comics, I don't care for you very much right now.

À propos of nothing at all, I leave you with a picture from our office building's roof patio, to which we only recently gained access.

Minna daisuki cupcakes!! Here is the prince, and 23 of his cousins, in katamari cupcake form:





The fondant was slightly harder to work with than I expected, and these turned out much sloppier than I intended. For next time, I think I need cornstarch, a non-stick rolling pin, and some actual decent cutting tools, something more than just a small knife. Some good cookie cutters should do the trick. Something that makes this feel more precise, and less like messing with play-doh.

Here's a closeup:



and one of them halfway done:



Painstaking! Took up way too much of my Sunday. The next batch will be much better. :)

In other news, Liz was kind enough to drive me to Junes - I mean, Mitsuwa Marketplace this weekend. Every day's great at your... Mitsuwa! Here are some of the treats I picked up:

I made fondant icing last weekend. It is sitting in the fridge. Here is a modest plan to turn it into two dozen decorated cupcakes.



If they turn out even half this cute I will consider it an unbridled success.

More alligators!

Sometimes I get paid to draw things like cartoon alligators.

wading around in lake michigan is a very pleasant way to start the day:

Just finished a series of posters for my sister, for a series of children's theater productions! These were a lot of fun to work on. :)

Some teasery pages of the next issue of Shuteye:

Been working on some art for silkscreen posters and shirts and demo labels for the band I'm in...

Flamenco recital this coming Saturday! Get tickets here if you wanna. There will be many stompings.

The weather has been so pleasant lately that I've been going out of my way most mornings to bike up Chicago's lakefront path. This morning I left myself enough time to stop at Albion beach. I locked my bike up and took my shoes off and walked about in the sand for a bit, and pretended that I was on vacation instead of heading into the office.

There's a free book of mormon in the sand there, by the by, if you were looking to pick up a free book of mormon for some reason.

Here is a photo I took in a ladies room in a bar in Portland, Oregon.



We played Professor Layton on the flight home - it made the 4 hours go surprisingly quickly. Say, that reminds me of a puzzle I once heard...

We're off to Portland tomorrow for Stumptown. If you're in the area you should come see us! I'm just hoping the trip goes well; I hear getting to Oregon can be a perilous journey, fraught with hardship and disease.



Spring is shaping up to be a giant ball of stress, actually. I have three weeks between Stumptown and TCAF, and then two days after TCAF we're flying straight to Arizona. Two weeks after returning from that trip I have my first flamenco recital. After which I should really be collapsing into a 3-day slumber, but, well, Man Man and Gogol Bordello are playing the very next night, just down the street, and how can I miss that?

I'll sleep when I get to June. Providing no one in my party dies of dysentery.

here is a nice photo karl took of me playing my accordion.

Oh, I guess I should probably say something about this:



Anyone who enjoys seeing me embarrass myself in public by playing Irish songs on a giant accordion, you won't want to miss this.

I've started a set on my flickr page for photos I take on bike trips. I'm going to be training for a century ride, and taking lots of long bike trips. The only photos there right now, though, are from biking to work this morning, the first morning in many moons in which it was possible to ride the lakefront path.

So, we didn't get into MoCCA. Got an email this morning saying space sold out before they got to our application.

Immediately I let out a sigh of relief. I applied to MoCCA before I realized how crazy our spring is going to be. We're going to Stumptown in April, TCAF two weeks after that, and flying to Arizona seriously the day after we get back from TCAF. Adding an early June show to that would prolly make me a nervous wreck. So this is good news.

But here is the thing, cats and kittens, I sent the MoCCA application in the very selfsame day that they posted it on their site. I am suddenly thinking, suppose one year I manage not to overbook myself (I know, this is just so likely to happen), and end up wanting to do MoCCA? If sending the application in the DAY they post it isn't fast enough, how's a girl supposed to ever be a MoCCA exhibitor?

Happy Paczki Day!

News in the very very slow website updates: Cleaning up the links to your right there, adding some new artists to check out. Something must be done about those entirely useless archive links though, let me see what I can figure out. Also, I've been informed that my portfolio's javascript was built incorrectly - got a friend looking at that for me tonight. Once that's cleaned up, new portfolio images are coming!

In industry news, apparently Getty Images are bigger jerks than I suspected. I had been feeling a little guilty for using microstocks all the time, but no longer.

I have been woefully neglectful of this poor website. Updated the navigation imagery this afternoon. Coming soon: many, many portfolio additions!

tomorrow is my birthday! in celebration, here is the russian birthday song i learned in college, as sung by the inimitable krokodil gena:



because in russia, even birthday songs are kind of sad, and all about how much the weather sucks. i feel you, krokodil gena. windchill today in chicago is 2 degrees. :(

the youngest of the becan clan got herself married this past weekend! clans descended upon san antonio to get drunk and celebrate. photos of everything - including a traditional czech grand march! - are here.

we got a tree on saturday! it was actually a ridiculously perfect winter day. it was snowing, very gently and prettily, and niles and i walked down logan boulevard and looked at the houses and giant old trees in the snow, stopped at starbucks for a hot cider with caramel... got ourselves a white pine, walked home carrying it through the snow... we got it all decorated, went to kuma's for insanely tasty burgers, and spent the rest of the evening playing video games. just a perfectly happy and content day.

anyway. when i first left home and got my own place, my grandmother sent me a box of her christmas ornaments, so we have a lot of very old and strange ornaments on our tree. here are a handful of them:

this one is now named mcnulty, the "what the f*ck did i do??" elf:


this is a very doughy raggedy ann. made out of actual dough, and several decades old. i'm a little worried about the utter lack of decomposition:


this adorable plastic horsey:


doubles as a pencil sharpener for some reason:


and my personal favorite, the recently christened "gotta pee real bad" santa: