SF Zine Fest

Guess what. I'll be at Zine Fest this weekend! www.sfzinefest.com We'll be selling comics, and I have a new print of a brand-new one page comic I did. Yahoo!

Zine Fest is at the Women's Building, at 18th and Valencia. This, by the way, is an awesome place. I spent a lot of time there, getting my head sorted out by this terrific lady, Y., during the first year I lived in California. It was not an easy year, but then, are they ever?

Friday, October 5, 2-8pm
Saturday, October 6, 1-7pm

Letter Rip

Lettering is making me crazy. Or more precisely lettering made me crazy on Tuesday. I just could not. get. it. right. Matt told me it was fine but it just looked like a big misshapen badly placed blob to me. That, combined with a somewhat frightening health concern combined with a current lack of health insurance, combined with the crazy feeling I get from hours spent trying to interpret health insurance forms so that I might one day (the sooner the better) obtain it, sent me to bed in frustrated tears.

Yesterday, I did not look at it.

Today, I looked with fresher eyes and re-positioned the text and I feel a bit better.

I never thought much about lettering until Matt looked at our most recent comic and said "I've been thinking about lettering." And then all these problems started to jump out at me. Too much space between words. Too much space between lines. Too much room around the sides, or not enough. Poor placement in the panel.

It's frustrating but I know getting the lettering right is a super important step in making my work look professional. It just sucks right now trying to get it all right. I have lettered and re-lettered each panel like three times. And this weekend I decided to re-do all the lettering for the first 11 pages.
But, I mean, then I'll get the hang of it, right?

**
I'm wearing all green today. It looks really stupid.

Someday when I'm not broke, I'll kiss my boys goodbye

One thing I love about my new gigs---drawing and babysitting---is that I get to sing all day long. I know that makes me sound like a total kook. But singing really makes me feel good---I mean physically, mentally, everything. Something about the breath control. But also I grew up singing all the damn time, I was in choir all through school, and I sang at home too.

So now I sing to the babies I take care of, and they love it. It's like there's something magical about it to them---they just stop whatever they're doing and watch you. One of them sometimes touches my mouth, like he's trying to figure out how that sound is coming out. And in the studio, I like to listen to cd's I can sing along to. It helps me focus and keeps me from getting restless.

Some of the albums I work to:
Frida Hyvonen, "Until Death Comes." This one is lovely and there's lots of harmony so it's pretty to sing to. I listen to this one at least once a day.
Regina Spektor, "Begin to Hope." I just love her.
Joanna Newsom, "The Milk-Eyed Mender." This one really had to grow on me. Her voice is so weird and squeaky. I really think I heard the album about 20 times before I actually liked it.
Sleater-Kinney, "The Woods." Now I have a lot of S-K albums and I think this is the BEST ONE. Seriously. They have a sound in here that is unprecedented. Corin Tucker sounds like she ripped off all her clothes and is bleeding in the street.
Lily Allen, "Alright Still." This dame deserves a standing ovation!!
Guns N Roses. DUH.

The Law of the Land

It's afternoon, and everyone's asleep. Meehan's on the punk rock chair, Wolfy's on the couch, Tubby's probably under the bed, and Lola is on the little orange rug under my studio chair. Why am I home to see all this? Well, this brings me to my great news! I lost my job!! It's a long, gruesome story, but suffice it to say that in the two weeks since, I have cobbled together an income of babysitting, temping, and unemployment benefits, I'm doing quite well, and I now have oodles, literally oodles, of time to work on comics. And I'm going to keep it this way for a while.

It's funny, this was actually my plan for "when we move somewhere cheaper," but I guess it was time. And as it happens, I'm getting paid amounts for babysitting that would be unheard of in cheaper locales, just by virtue of living where I live.

It was a surprise, and a nasty shock to lose a job that I really did enjoy, but it is definitely better for everyone that I no longer work for the person I was working for. You're not supposed to say this when you lose a job, because you sound like a bitter person who is covering up their own culpability, but all the experts agree, she was a bitch. Really, I have told people things about her that have made them swear---NICE people. So, you know I am not lying.

Anyway, back to drawing now---I'm laying things down fast.
Fast.
Next up: photos of my new studio*!!

*closet

The Plotte

At the moment I am taking a teeny tiny (promise!) break from drawing to set up my new studio, and to put together this blog about comics and life and you know, the works. I love reading comic artists' blogs---it's so great to see what people are doing and working on day to day, not just when they have a book come out.

I'll get more pictures up here soon, but for now, here's a link to some of my finished comics:
www.comicspace.com/inabnitt

I just got back from San Diego CA, where I went to ComiCon for the first time. It was the fourth comics convention I have ever been to and I just now feel like I am starting to get the hang of them. I had so goddamn much fun. I saw great panels, met awesome artists, embarrassed myself fawning over Dame Darcy/blushing in front of Terry Moore; ate packed sandwiches, soggy cookies, and $3 cokes; drank a lot of coffee; completed about 3/4 of my little bird needlepoint; drove through the mountains of southern California (and LOVED it), traded, bought, gave away, talked, read, watched, oh yes, and DRANK. I hardly ever drink these days so I love when I have a chance to get good and ripped. I have super vague memories of the Hyatt, making a new BFF (a gal in a motorcycle jacket with flames who said she did voices on WOW), and seeing some of the Sarah Silverman cast come in. That Steve Agee. One funny fucker.

I'll write more and put up pictures soon. I did my pictures the old fashioned way so it will take me a little longer to get them up. But they will so be worth it.

Hi internet!