I don’t normally share them here, because they’re a little rough around the edges, and also because they’re not my strongest suit, but I wanted to share my Asian Reporter cartoon from this week because I totally have the bug:

This is actually an unrevised edition of the cartoon. For the final, I ended up removing the ‘Yellow Mamba’ Lin-ism because the editors always want to tread on the path of ‘make-sure-no-one-is-offended’, which I totally understand. Though part of me wanted to joke and say, ‘Well, if anyone can get away with it, we can! We’re an Asian newspaper.’ But I didn’t because I know better!

And here’s a quick illustration I did for the Willamette Week a couple of weeks ago for this article. I busted this mother out in like two and a half hours! I made not be the best illustrator, but I’m fast! For that, I am super-proud.

That’s it for now. Besides prepping for my class, I have some free time to work on some commission projects for some friends. I will do a little update about my class and teaching sometime tomorrow or Wednesday [if prepping for class doesn't take up all my time!].

At the beginning of February I was able to snap out of it. Things went from ‘eh’ to wicked-busy real fast, which is just what I needed - I am always better and more focused the more I have going on. The two most pressing things were a big illustration project with a deadline on the horizon and then my class at OCAC that started the beginning of the month, which has been really amazing and so much fun, but a monster to prep for.

Anyhow, since I’m back to actually being productive, I thought I’d go ahead and share some process. Here’s some of the stages for the back side of the map:

It’s a map of the city of San Jose, Costa Rica [duh. I guess it says it right on there] for the next ICANN conference that’s coming up. They saw the map I did at Powell’s, and wanted something similar, but with functional maps of the venue space on one side and the downtown area map for people attending the conference to use on the other side.

It was a pretty challenging project because of all the parts to think of and layout and actually drawing a concise map of a city. But in the end, I’m pretty happy with how it turned out. Something that was interesting for me was that I ended up turning my handwriting into a font, a process that has mixed results. In the end, I don’t like it all, and would prefer to always hand letter things, and there is still a good amount of hand lettering mixed into the project. But I won’t deny the amount of time having my own font saved when typing up the street, restaurant, and location names and having to fix and rewrite them.

That’s it for now! I just wanted to share finishing up that big project. I’ll try to update more things that have been going on over the course of this coming week.

This year was a weird one for me. There were a lot of things that happened and then, well, a lot of things that didn’t.

Here’s my year in review:

Professionally, it seemed like things were moving forward, while moving backwards or staying the same at the same time. The biggest thing, of course, was Americus finally coming out. It was so awesome to be holding an actual hard copy [and hardcover, too!] of it in my hands after seeing it on the screen in pages around the studio for the last couple of years.

I had an awesome installation at the Basil Hallward Gallery at Powell’s of all 200 pages and it was a pretty hectic couple of months this fall doing promotion for it, but it was a lot of fun. Despite the fact I’m kind of a recluse, I actually love giving readings, doing classes and being in front of a crowd. It felt good to return to SPX, which was my first convention I ever tabled at, and have a book and do really well. It got some buzz, and ended up on some lists, but those were mostly from librarians or book lovers, so it seemed preaching to the choir. Could MK and I could’ve done more to promote it or get word out there? I don’t know. Probably. We were both new to this stuff.

Freelance work almost completely dried up this year. Places that I had taken for granted as a source of work/income the past couple of years just stopped e-mailing. Could I have done more to promote myself? Absolutely. I had a little existential crisis after Americus came out, where I was asking myself ‘What do I want to do?’, ‘Where do my skills fit in?’, ‘What am I capable of doing?’. Asking these questions and not really knowing the answer really seemed to kill the buzz of the book coming out.  It was a post-book-release depression, that was exacerbated by the fact that a lot of my friends were seeming to break out in a lot of ways – getting gigs storyboarding, teaching, other publishing work, etc. It’s not that I thought Americus would come out and I would be plucking jobs off the work tree and raking up the dollars that fell down afterwards, but I thought that something would come my way.

The big thing that I was working on this year was getting the Searchers, my next book, off the ground. Things have been moving along and I feel good about it, but I also feel like they’re not as far as I want them to be. I am also a bit overwhelmed at the ambition and scope that this project has compared to Americus. I’m super-excited and motivated, but part of me feels like I might have bitten off more than I can chew.

The biggest, most rewarding project I did this year, was the Lorian Gendarme Guidebook for Adventuring Standards. It was the project that MK and I worked on over the summer for SPX to help promote Americus. It was basically a world-building guidebook to the realm of Apathea Ravenchilde. For about two months we were writing/drawing collaborating machines. It was so much fun to basically just putting our nerdiness together to flesh-out and reverse engineer this whole world. It was an intense time, but I think it was the perfect endcap to our work together on Americus and I’m super, super happy with our final product. If only we could’ve made some money off it!

Another thing that I did a lot of, that I was pretty happy with, was all of the public appearances and helping out at local schools and libraries. Outside of the fancy events like the NW Bookfest and Wordstock, I helped the Washington School for the Deaf raise over $400 for graphic novels for their library, and I did lots of workshops at schools and libraries around Portland. I haven’t done any community service since I moved to Portland, and it was something I did a lot of in Savannah. I forgot how much I enjoy it and how rewarding it is.

There were also a lot of other goals that I didn’t meet, which all falls on me. I wanted to start to teach myself how to paint, both digitally and well, you know, with paint. I wanted to collaborate with friends on some other projects too, but those just never panned out.

So here I am at the end of 2011, looking at 2012. There are certain things that seem lined up for the year that are pretty big reasons to get excited. I have a teaching gig at OCAC this Spring, I have a really great client I’m working with now on a project that although it’s not the most exciting, it plays right into my skill set perfectly that will hopefully turn into some repeat work, and I’m on track to really get the Searchers into pitching shape, with a very wonderful and well-respected agent willing to help me get it out into the world.

Despite this, I still can’t shake the malaise that’s been hovering over me all year. Granted, this is all within my control. There’s so much that I could have been doing to push myself foward, and I don’t have anyone to blame but myself. I know that things don’t just happen to people – you work for them, and you have to work hard. Really hard. Maybe I needed this year to remind myself of that.

Before I sign out, I would like to mention that despite sounding like a whiny bitch, I am never forgetful of how lucky I am. I am surrounded with so many great friends and family and such wonderful opportunities. It really is pretty rad.

Here’s to working hard, learning from my mistakes, and really getting things rolling in 2012!

Hope you had a Merry Christmas. Go Blazers!

Have a good weekend!

I have some great news to share!

I’m teaching a comics class at the Oregon College of Arts and Craft here in Portland this spring! It’s called Crafting Comics: Narrative & Technique.

It’s basically an intro to comics.

Anyhow, I’m super-stoked. I have always wanted to teach comics, but I thought that it would be important to have some actual experience under my belt. Now that Americus is out, and I’ve been freelancing here and there the last couple years, I feel like I have a lot of experience and knowledge to share anyone willing to learn.

Here’s the link to the Continuing Education page of their website: https://cms.ocac.edu/

And here’s a link specifically for the drawing & painting classes: https://cms.ocac.edu/taxonomy/term/3

Please help spread the word! I need at least 5 people or the class doesn’t happen!

Also, if you have any questions about the class, you can e-mail me at jonathan@oneofthejohns.com or leave a comment here on the site and I’ll get back to you!

Can you see my dilemma?

Year after year, I think to myself – I should just design a thank you card and then print them up so I always have them on hand. It’s the best of both worlds – it’s more personal than buying them, but without the hassle of having to make a new one each time.

Anyhow, I did a set of four for the great people at First Second to wish them a happy holidays and thanks for all of the work they put into making Americus. They’re all Apathea based.

Here are the other three:

I decided that I’ll print the Liskot one at the top of this post and use that for my thank you cards for the coming year. I love that lizard man!

And if you haven’t noticed, things have been really quiet  – no posts, no Diary of a Space Marine, etc. There’s a couple of reasons for that. If you like reading about excuses, read more after the cut!

I’ll be honest, one is Skyrim. I wasn’t even going to buy it, but then my buddy Todd kept talking about it and I caved and bought it on a whim like a week after it came out. I had never played and Elder Scrolls game before, and I have to say, I didn’t know what I was getting myself into.

Another is that I really feel like I need to be focusing on my next book. Diary of a Space Marine was supposed to be a way to keep myself drawing as I wrote. But then it became something that was taking up too much of my time and then I wasn’t writing. I would still like to do it, if I have the time, but right now it has to go on hiatus.

On the plus side, I have been writing. I haven’t say down and turned it into thumbnails so I can give it a page count, but I think it’ll be around 50-60 pages, bringing the total to roughly 150. I’m hoping to get it in order so that I can start drawing the first chapter so that I can send it out to see if I can get any bites from publishers.

And then of course – Thanksgiving and the holidays. December’s looking pretty booked already, between family visiting, writing, and then some freelance work. I’ll probably take some time to write a year-in-review post and then have some things here and there, but expect it to be pretty quiet here for awhile.

Later!

Later!

As always, I struggle with spotting blacks and giving things a sense of form. I think this is a good example of how even just doing the simple shapes of color in Diary of a Space Marine help out with that. I wish I didn’t have to rely on the computer. Oh, well. There’s always something to be working on, right?

Also: If you live in Portland and are interested, I am teaching a cartooning class this Sunday at the Woodstock Library on SE 49th Ave from 2-3! You can click on the link in the sidebar to the right to register or get more info.