College Radio

I'd like to color this one eventually.

Drawn In Class

I Have Another New Blog!!

It's called



It's an autobiographical strip entirely about real conversations that I have on the telephone. It will probably be updated less frequently than this blog so you should follow it or else you'll probably forget about it.

Check it out right here.

32. Cecil Abels

Audiowoods

I'm super into trees right now.

31. Mazie Ash

I admit that this is a drawing I did long time ago, not an original. But I thought it appropriate. It's totally Mazie's now.

31. Markel Uriu

30. Kent Hays

See it?

Bonus Bird + Doppelganger

A while ago I drew a bunch of birds, and forgot to post this one.

+

A friend sent me a picture.

Tin

This was a promotional poster. In high school I was in charge of Coffeehouse and ended up drawing/putting up all the posters myself. Also begging my friends to come.

I Can't Stop Drawing

This is the first page of the second chapter of Eighth Grade. If it were a date it would be 2/1/8. As you can see, it's just the pencils right now. And also I've chosen to render the second volume in a grittier "graphic novel" style by passing each page through an iSight camera until the entire comic is rendered illegible.

Party Games

I simply never posted this correctly. Here it is at last, as it was meant to be viewed. I drew this during my first few weeks at Whitman.

An Enigmatic Comic

I drew this a while ago, and can no longer remember how I explained the sign on his back. I have some theories, all of which implicate the mom, but to what degree and why I'll keep to myself. I think there are about a million other ways to end this strip that would have made more sense, but I guess I'm a little intrigued by this one.

July, on a walk with my brother through the pasture

I Kilt A Bar Wunst

29. Finn Straley

28. Joyce Chen

27. Claire Foster

My cousin, now also a novel.

7. Dash Robb

In the mirror, it's more obvious.

Poor Professor Elliott

This was my interpretation of the first day of Intermediate Creative Writing. Whitman students are the wishywashiest orators.

26. Scott Foster

Not to be taken as a comment on Scott himself. I just drew this in class and thought he might like it.

More English Major

I found all these old pages from EM and I went through them this afternoon. I remember being really proud of the six vanishing points in this panel. Yes, you just heard me brag about perspective.

25. Jade

24. Nadim Damluji

23. Loretta Johnson

Pictures of T.S. Eliot are sort of like potato chips, in that you cannot draw just one.

22. Michaela

From The Department of Abandoned Projects

This was the front page of a graphic novel that I worked on for the duration of Senior year of high school. It was about a depressed college professor.

Things about this graphic novel which were okay:

1. The art, which I completely killed myself over

2. A few tiny scraps of dialogue

Things that sucked about this graphic novel:

1. The plot, which was whiny and unoriginal and packed with obvious, boring symbolism

2. The vast , overwhelming majority of the dialogue

I had grand hopes for this thing, and then I showed it to Brett Warnock before I was even working for him (if you don't know Brett, please look at the guy on the left and imagine the voice he might have as he speaks these words) and he flipped through it and said, "Well, you've certainly studied your textbooks, man," and I could not help but feel that was a bad thing. I realized how bad it was after the first chapter and jettisoned the whole project.

Comics, Sans Comic Sans

This was for the back cover of The Secession Volume 2, Issue 2. It draws a few misleading conclusions, which a hot minute on Wikipedia could easily disprove. But it was the Comic Sans MS Issue, so you know.

Treacle

HOW TO BE A LESBIAN

Written by Alex Kerr, drawn by me.

P.S. If anyone figures out the secret hidden message in the numbers at the top I'll give them a cake. Or maybe just congratulate them.

21. Laura Valenzuela

2. Joey Lubitz

HERE'S WHAT I THINK OF YOU J-LUBE

Northern California, Last Winter, Sitting on the Beach in a Down Jacket

20. Ian Maier

The Creative Mind

So I made a book for Book Arts, and it was poorly bound and looked like a third-grade art project except worse, and at one point it was bound on both ends, creating the ultimate post-modern literature: the book that cannot be read- and so I decided to embrace its cruddiness and title it

THE BOOK OF MEDIOCRE ART

On the back I wrote my personal motto for the endeavor, "I'm okay with this". The idea was that unlike pretty moleskein sketchbooks, this is a book in which I can draw anything I want, as badly as I want, and not feel like every page needs to be a thing of beauty. As you might expect, I end up with a lot of stuff like this:



But I also made some stuff that I'm surprisingly proud of, which looks way looser than most of my other art because I wasn't trying so hard.



Anyway, I highly recommend keeping a Mediocre Art book. If I draw anything else blogworthy I'll be sure to share it with y'all.

19. Marie von Hafften

In Front Of Me Now

A. Racist tourism poster for Mexico which I'm slowly turning into a collage
B. Printouts of the cover for Eighth Grade
C. A painting of a Walla Walla street
D. My elaborately decorated schedule
E. Reference photographs of trees
F. Pencils for the first page of the second chapter of Eighth Grade.

3. Jens Tamang

Drawn with three different pens* during my Critical & Alternative Voices class.

*Staedtler Pigment Liner 0.7 (the thin single-width pen)
Micron Pigma Brush Pen (most of the picture)
Pentel Brush Pen (the tree trunk and limbs)

18. Eliza Young/Robin Lewis

I've avoided drawing pictures of the actual people so far, but Robin and Eliza happen to have a lot of excessively rad photographs of themselves online. They also have a brand new fashion blog still in its infancy, which I predict shall grow and blossom into a truly beautiful thing. It's called in the middle middle of nowhere nowhere.

Crime on Campus

This is another Pio illustration. They've got that distinctive eleventh hour look to them.

On this topic, did you know that Whitman College security maintains a highly addictive blog?

GUEST ARTIST: Jens Tamang

So my talented friend Jens used black tape to create a GIGANTIC version of this tiny (3"x3") drawing that I did with a tiny Micron .001 pen of a tiny bird. He has pretty much skyrocketed to the top of my Best Friends list.

Here is the original drawing:


Jen's version, is, in my mind, way superior. He got the feathers to look more feathery; mine are more like hairs. And also, you maybe haven't noticed this, but his is REALLY REALLY BIG. And done with TAPE.

Parent's Weekend

Everything interesting on the corner of NW 15th and Everett

Plus directions to a kind woman's disgustingly-titled zine.

17. Emily Basham

Hilight?

Drawn to accompany an article about drugs.

16. Luke Rodgers

15. Gregory Safranek

14. Sam Epstein

13. Ari Rampy

I realized after posting this that it kind of looks like it's intended as a love note to Ari.

It's not. That would be weird.

9. Alexis Johnson

Elijah

He's into slam poetry.

Beck + Beck + Beck

One of these Becks is my own drawing. One of them is from BECK MONGOLIAN CHOP SQUAD THE ANIME. One of them is a musician.

WHICH IS WHICH DEAR READER

Budget Cuts

So the Valley Transit line might be closing a lot of its routes. That would be cruddy.

This drawing has fled from the Pioneer's cold rejection into the warm embrace of the people reading this blog

12. Ashley Wyatt

Since the time of uploading this, I have revised the drawing so as not to read "Asley".

Status Update, drawn in class

But when I got home
I had FLOWERS.

11. Sam Tucker

All About My Brother

So my seventeen-year-old brother Toby has the best blog on the Internet.




I'm not kidding around. He has the best blog on the Internet. Don't take it from me: read this direct quote from Sophie Johnson, a responsible adult whose journalism has been published in major American newspapers and who teaches children for a living. This comes from an e-mail to me in which she stated:

"i don't mean to be offensive to you and your internet endeavors, but your brother's blog is THE BEST THING I HAVE EVER SEEN."
-Sophie "Work Published in Major American Newspapers" Johnson

Just go and see for yourself, while I list the three most badass things about my brother.
1. He is the funniest person I know.
2. He has the best blog on the Internet
3. I was having a conversation with him tonight about his blog, and he expressed concern that if I mention his blog on mine he will start getting more views, and "the whole joke of my blog is that nobody looks at it". Am I the only one who considers that statement a compelling argument for immediately viewing his blog?

I Love My Brush

On the advice of my professional cartoonist friend I purchased a reasonably nice sable brush, size 4. I spent all day using it to go over Eighth Grade and make everything pretty. If you use your imagination, you can see how much worse these panels were without all that nice black inky goodness.

The first installment is nearly, nearly done. I promise it'll be published before every page has already been put up on this blog.

I Draw and Talk About Drawing

The audio was recorded for a friend's radio show. The drawing I did so that I would have something to talk about.

Before The Hipsters, There Were Whalers.

Slightly larger version here.

Analogue Video Game

I got the idea while listening to this track off of my friend David Kanaga's website. My thought was that a music video for video game music, which is infinitely loopable, would also have to be endlessly loopable. I'd like to do more with this kind of thing in the future.

Message Otter Sez

Photo Reference

Because I am- REVELATION- not very good at anatomy- I used a lot of photo reference drawing Eighth Grade. Usually this meant setting the timer on Photo Booth and then quickly running out into the middle of the studio and assuming some ridiculous pose. It got tricky when I was trying to draw, say, a thirteen-year-old girl, because I am-REVELATION 2- a twenty-year-old guy. These are some of the more direct translations.

It's Done

I drew and submitted this as a poster contest for KWCW 90.5 fm. The prize is 100 dollars, which if I win I will request be put into ones and arranged in a briefcase so as to look like a vast sum of money.

Including pencils, inking, and the time last night and this afternoon spent inking, I have been working on this for ten hours.

YIKES.

UPDATE: I am trying to be mature about this, but the sad fact of the matter is that I lost the poster contest. The winning entry was by a Studio Art major with an emphasis on New Genre. This was his submission:

I suppose I "get it", but I feel like I should at least get some credit for putting in more hours. I'm sorry, I'm being unnecessarily bitchy. It's just that I worked really hard on my own submission and I guess I'd hoped that would be recognized. SIGH.

Anyway. Depressing post. Sorry.

Demons

Hail To The Chief

Nadim, in stereo.

Walk "The Talk"

Not Quite Flying, Not Quite Floating

This is a fantasy that I frequently entertain. I drew it last year for my old roommate Greg Safranek, who incidentally had the summer that everyone fantasizes about before sighing heavily and heading back to the organic farm. Listen: He got a "job" in which he was given free room and board in this coastal town on the island of Kauai, in exchange for a few hours every day of choppin' sugarcane. The rest of the time he could do whatever he wanted. I know. I know.

In The Water

This is a tiny detail from a giant poster that I'm drawing for KWCW. The color is pretty sloppy and not at all final- it's just that once you have something on Photoshop, I mean, obviously you have to try coloring it.

Those are, by the way, the sixth pair of headphones to feature on this blog in the last year.

More Police Procedural Humor

A Green Felt Turntable

Painstakingly handsewn for my very talented friend Julia Gfrörer and her incredible new child Franklin.

This is obviously the sort of thing that people give new mothers ALL THE TIME.

The Funny Is Brought

UPDATE:

The show went really well.

LOOK:

It's called What I Was Doing A Year Ago.

It will be up for one month, and will feature a new diary comic every day. The strips, it should be noted, were all drawn exactly one year before their publication date.

Sleoping Peeple

A girl, Portland



Rose and Alex, New York



Myself, from a photo

My Last Two Weeks of Summer

Portland-> Walla Walla-> Portland-> New York -> Connecticut-> New York-> New Orleans -> Portland -> Zimbabwe -> Iceland -> Ancient Mesopatamia -> Atlantis -> Surface of the moon -> Walla Walla

Norah

More From Le Sketchbook

I got a new bottle of Higgins Black Magic Waterproof Ink and basically went on a raging inkbinge.

D i s i n t e g r a t i o n

Here's a detail from a nearly finished page of Eighth Grade.

About this comic:

1. The final piece will be pretty long. If I really bust my ass it'll be done by my twenty-third birthday.

2. The protagonist is, as you can see, slowly disintegrating.

3. There's lots of awkward middle school sexual tension.

4. The paper I'm using is more enormous than any I've drawn on ever.

Craig Thompson uses his Scary Face

I apologize for the art on this one. It was scribbled out with a Uniball on crappy paper. As you can see, I had also just broken my wrist and suffered a stroke.

I Know I Been Gone A While, Baby. Lemme Make It Up To You.

First: This action-packed panel, from the upcoming first installment of my middle school epic Eighth Grade. More on this later.



Next: birds.









And finally: A tender moment between brothers, lovingly captured in the pages of my sketchbook.

As Promised

Admittedly, this is some messed-up stuff.

Next post: Cute animals wearing headphones. I promise.

Portlanders

From my new sketchbook. These were all people on the corner of NW 10th and Burnside. The woman with the sunglasses seemed to be posing for me.

"It was a blonde. A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained-glass window."

This is a detail of a larger piece. I went through a big Raymond Chandler phase in high school.

Summer Kids

This little scene is all based on true or almost true events, taking place on May 20th, 2009. All of these people are real, although some likenesses are better than others. Clockwise from top left: Ben Kegan, Carly Spiering, Peter Richards, kind-of-Alex Cassidy-looking guy, Larsen Close, myself, and Ari Rampy.

A higher-resolution version is available aqui, in case you want to make it your desktop or something.

My Wittiest Comic to Date

Post #100

Challenge Accepted

2 minutes -> 16 seconds

Flock

This was kind of fancy. I drew the statue (about 2'x3') in graphite. Then I cut out 300 silhouettes of birds from blue construction paper, in two different sizes and six different positions. I animated them by substituting each cutout in the next frame with the next bird shape in the flight pattern. I managed to get them to go behind the statue by cutting out its outline with an exacto knife. The animating itself took about six hours.

In other news, my social life is thriving.

The Stream

Made six months ago from a china dish, some rocks I stole from a beach in Turkey (really) branches from our Christmas tree, tin foil, magazine cutouts, plastic bags, a toothpick, a piece of paper, and potato slices (to keep the trees standing up). Considering that our Japanese home-stay helped arrange the rocks, I'd say this is an impressively multicultural little endeavor.

DayGlo Killed The Dinosaurs

This is a page of my sketchbook. I drew it on an airplane about a year ago. It's shown here larger than actual size.

The Final Ten

In August 2008, I finished six months of work on a comic book entitled



It's a kid's adventure comic, about these cool little Dia de los Muertos calacas children who live in this perpetually sun-drenched summer world on the coast. There's a protagonist, Petey, who's got a mad crush on his neighbor Ida, who in turn is enamored of this luggish bully kid.

So because the one kid's a sailor and the other is an inventor, they have a crazy cool race between a giant 16th century galleon and a homemade airship to impress the girl. Then it all goes HILARIOUSLY WRONG.



It's hand-bound into this sexy brown paper cover. The printing was done at home with a printer designed as a toy for Japanese schoolchildren.



Plus, in the tradition of the nerdy kids books I was into, I included diagrams of Petey's inventions AND an exactingly labeled map of Gingerland.



Out of two hundred printed copies, only a handful of Gingerlands remain. If you'd like to be one of the last people to ever own one, you can buy one. They're $4 apiece, and I'll autograph it. And just see how pretty they all are:



If you want to buy one just reply to this post or send me an e-mail at movtrapro.gmail.com. I'll send it to you through the mail. Again: $4!

P.S. To anyone who noticed that I have webbed toes: congratulations.

Wild

Nadim's Favorite

Is This Desire?

This is some colored-pencil album artwork that I drew to accompany a burned CD for my good friend Fanny. The album is P.J. Harvey's Is This Desire?, which is a thing of beauty beyond the scope of anything on this blog. Go buy it. Apologies for the picture quality, which I know to be crap.

UPDATE: I just saw PJ Harvey at the Roseland and her light show actually used this exact same color palette. This is more evidence that I am pretty much about as good as PJ Harvey when it comes to artistic endeavors, and maybe a little better actually.

A Cozy Little Corner of the Internet

Natural History

ATTENTION ILLUSTRATORS OF THE WORLD
Did you know that all you need to do to make something look balling is to draw a pair of headphones on it? Think of it.
hedgehog + headphones = balling
eggplant + headphones = balling
belt sander + headphones = balling
I've discovered El Dorado, boyos. When next we speak I'll be posting from my sixth house, the one overlooking the Sea of Marmara.

The Alley

What's In The Box?