reading list

What is it, to be in a rut? For me, it’s a lack of excitement for drawing, paired more sinisterly with a disinterest in synthesizing that excitement. A lack of focus or purpose. I’ve been so tired lately, napping in the early evening or sleeping later than I have in years. I’m drawing in my […]

Lynda Barry’s Syllabus, which excerpts her notebooks with a focus on her teaching, instructs students to draw “electric spirals.” Begin with a single point, she explains, and slowly draw a spiral around it. “If the lines touch, you die.” It’s hard to do well, and even harder if you’re impatient like me. But if you […]

I recently reread Maré Odomo’s Internet Comics 1 & 2. These comics feel like an ode to a version of the Internet that no longer exists. At the time they were published (2013 and 2014, respectively), they were already looking backwards; one sequence discusses meeting someone in a chatroom. But the mood of the comic, […]

What a strange month. Obviously. I’ve been able, so far, to maintain my artistic productivity through this madness. To say that is unimportant is an understatement, but it makes me feel better. Of course, it’s in large part a function of my privilege and circumstance; I’m able to comfortably work at home, I don’t have […]

I’ve started tracking, and trying to think about my productivity in terms of time instead of pages. I try to spend at least two focused hours drawing each day, and that should matter more (I tell myself, and for now it seems to be working) than how many pages I produced in that time. — […]

Today, I finished and published the essay about Virginia Woolf’s diary that I’ve been working on for a while. This is the same essay that I’ve posted excerpts from for a few months, but now it’s more polished. Read it here. I already wrote for the Comics Journal about my favorite comics published in 2019, but […]

January 1920 – The day after my birthday in fact I’m 38. Well, I’ve no doubt I’m a great deal happier than I was at 28; and happier today than I was yesterday. Virginia’s first novel, The Voyage Out, was published when she was 33. Mrs.Dalloway, arguably her first real masterpiece, was published when she was 43, […]

August 1922 – I am beginning Greek again, and must really make out some plan: today 28th: Mrs Dalloway finished on Sat. 2nd Sept: Sunday 3rd to Friday 8th start Chaucer: Chaucer – that chapter, I mean, should be finished by Sept. 22nd. And then? Shall I write the next chapter of Mrs. D. – […]

Jul/Aug 1926 (undated?) – I shall here write the first pages of the greatest book in the world. This is what the book would be that was made entirely solely and with integrity of one’s thoughts. Suppose one could catch them before they became”works of art”? Catch them hot and sudden as they rise in […]

I’ve written a few times over the past several months about Virigina Woolf quotes that have been helpful to me. I’m no2 beginning some early work towards what I think will be a zine about what cartoonists can learn from Virginia Woolf’s process and thoughts about her own work. She was a micropublisher! She only […]