Click to enlarge. Not only is it now the year of the Dragon, it’s the year of the Water Dragon. I did a little brush drawing in my sketchbook and tried some new things to color it.

Not sure what to do with this blog any more, but here are some recent sketches. Trying to get going on a new story, but at least keeping in the habit of drawing every day.

Between this blog and The Cartoon Picayune blog, I’m all blogged-out. In two days, I will be “entering the world” and for the first time in many years, not returning to an academic institution in the fall. Because of this “turning point,” I’m putting this blog on hiatus for summer, and replacing it with a weekly email list that you can sign up for here.

I think it’ll be a little more informal, and I hope it’ll allow me to honestly address the changes in my life as they come in a more ephemeral format. And yes, there will pictures. I’m just gonna give it a try this summer, and we’ll see what’s what come fall.

Also, I’m very excited excited to share the Thesis Senior Showcase blog, which will feature the art of the Class of 2011 and hopefully make us more visible. There’s gonna be a lot of excellent work posted on here daily, so I hope you’ll check back often throughout the summer. We’ll already getting some love and I think it’s going to be really good.

So thanks, and have a good summer! If you wanna hear from me, these three options are pretty good, but this blog will be quiet.

Sign up for the email list.

Happy day, Mothers.

Here they are! I created 8 packages for the thesis committee, my advisor, the library, etc. But what’s inside? So you turn one over and take out the flap…

…and what do you see as you open the flaps?

Aha! And what books are these, secured inside?

Well, that on the left, of course, is The Cartoon Picayune #1, available for $3 on cartoonpicayune.com. That’s the bulkiest, weighing in at 40 pages. The blue guy is Part two of my ski story, Fly By Night. None of that is on the internet to read, yet. The cheese story with the die-cut is the newly repackaged One Place, One Cheese. Finally, there’s an appendix on how I’ve done my reporting. I’m very pleased with how everything came out, and I think the red, blue, yellow thing came off better than I could have hoped. My year may be nearly done, but there are exciting things to come, sooner than later.

OK, enough purple prose. Peel at least two bananas, preferably ripe, but the older they are the sweeter the end product. Break them into smaller pieces, maybe two or three each, and freeze. Once frozen, cut into thin slices and put into blender or food processor. If you’re making a lot, it’s probably best to not start with the blender more than three quarters of the way full. You can add the rest once you get going.

Now comes the only tricky part. The first time I tried this I wasn’t careful and nearly broke my mini food processor. So go slow, on the lowest setting, and add a little water if you need to. Remember frozen bananas are pretty hard, so this is not easy for that little motor.

When you get the bottom mixed a little, use a spoon to mash it up a little. Then mix a little more.

Repeat until the consistency is starting to change, and when it’s about half gelato-looking stuff and half baby-food-looking stuff, push the bigger chunks toward the bottom.

If you’re like me, when you get here, and it’s mostly mixed up, you add two large dollops of Nutella. Oh yes.

Check out the video. Mesmerizing, no? When it’s nice and creamy, get it out of there and back in the freezer if you really want it to taste like ice-cream. At this point I was literally licking the rest off the blender blade, which I do NOT recommend.

Here’s what it looks like after about a half-hour in the freezer, which made it nice and frosty. This is two bananas, so keep that in mind. When I’m eating this stuff, and this is the third time in the last week, I’m thinking… THIS IS ONLY BANANAS. Well, in my case there’s also Nutella, but you get it.

Will it ever go bad? Maybe, but I doubt it. Is this the perfect dessert? You tell me. My new goal is to always have frozen bananas in the freezer.

Well, I’m back to school after last weekend’s adventure in New York at MoCCA fest (a big indie comic convention). Here’s me with table-mates Beth, Pat, and Ben, who really could not be better people to stand next to all day. (I’m the left-most beardo.) Lemme tell ya, reader, that it sure is humbling to try and sell your stuff at one of these big shows. It’s one thing to stand up all day and sell things, which isn’t that strange for me, but when it’s your art, the thing you spent hours and hours on, it can be rough. I’m sure gallery shows and books signings can be exhausting, but when you can’t push a piece of your soul into strangers’ hands for $3, it can wear on you a bit. If that seems cynical, don’t worry, I really did have a good show! I had a fun time showing people my new pride and joy:

This comic is 32 pages of my black and white journalistic comics and a pretty good product all together if I do say so myself. It can, by the way, be yours for $3 plus another dollar for shipping over here. I’m nearly sold out of the first run already and I haven’t even turned in my thesis!

Briefly, I’ll say that things have been humming along here and I’m in great spirits having completed penciling, which can feel like pulling blood from stone. Inking has a wonderful instant gratification that I miss when I’m not doing it. We also just had a fantastic two-day writing workshop with Lynda Barry, which has renewed the town’s energy level. And it’s warm again! So, in what I think is becoming a tradition around here, I leave you with this:

Thanks to Beth Laura for the picture at top.

And of course I’ll be in New York this weekend at MoCCA. Will other people from The Center for Cartoon Studies be there? Well, let’s see, I know of friends tabling at least in row M at tables 1,2,3,4,7,8,9,10, and I’m at M11 with some great friends. So, yeah, basically:

The Great Wall of CCS! Make sure you make it all the way to the back. I’ll have new books, including the first issue of The Cartoon Picayune!

Dear Readers! I apologize. A cursory glance at what’s up on this blog fails to really capture what’s been going on in my life this semester. I’ve been working hard to create new comics, which I will be selling in New York at MoCCA Fest in April. Mostly I’ve been drawing comics about kids jumping through the air on skis, and I’ll soon post pages from that on The Cartoon Picayune. But I’ve also repackaged that short comic about cheese into the handsome $1 mini you see below. Yes, they all actually have a hand-cut window on the cover.

In short, there’ll be more from me soon, that I promise you. In the meantime, here are some pictures from when I was Montreal recently with my girlfriend.