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6/1/2004 - So, Erika finished her comic, I Like Girls, which is a touching story of coming out to ones parents.
Me, I'm just going through one of those moody bits I go through. I re-read the last 8 months of Bruno and tried to figure out what the hell is happening, but at the same time feeling it's been really good lately, and I've actually recieved an abnormally high rate of email confirming that.
I think it's just that my life's been a topography but lately with shifting tectonic plates and earthquakes, and a large mining company hard at work. Lots to write about, and with a loose grip (on the reins, on sanity, on stability).
I'm fine. I'm just pining for something.
(link: http://www.brunostrip.com/notes/200406.html#20040601)
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6/2/2004 - I don't know what happened. I had Wednesday and Thursday's strips written, some difficult issues brought up with Amy, some sort of half-resolutions made.... and then this. I have no idea. I just sat down and it stuff came out. Angry stuff. Totally re-written long-winded stuff with no punchline stuff.
Like I've suggested, stuff seems to be going on in my head. trying to keep up.
Keep up on sleep now first though.
And don't forget:
Dicebox!
Check out this week's installment.(link: http://www.brunostrip.com/notes/200406.html#20040602)
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6/3/2004 - Stumptown Comics Fest!!!
Sunday, June 6th, at 1:00, $5.00 admission. Be there. All of you. I will be speaking and answering questions. I've been a bit emotionally unstable. I may rave. Little is more fun than some cartoonist babbling about a project he's been doing for ten years and doesn't understand. (my strength, my weakness, my curse).
The rest of the time I'll have a table and will sign books, sell books, and babble personally to every person who so desires such attention.
And it's just a walk from the Broadway Theater, so on your way to the fest, buy an evening ticket to Harry Potter, and then go to the fest, and afterwards, you are so all set!
Oh, and on other notes, I received lots of kind email today about the current storyline. I have more to say on that, but don't wnat to drown the strip totally to the bottom of the page, so for now I'll say "thank you, and leave it with promising you more next week (oh, and Monday, btw, is not only the release of Little Dee, but it's also Bruno's birthday. Get outta' town.).
(link: http://www.brunostrip.com/notes/200406.html#20040603)
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6/4/2004 - This week's sketches are pretty straight forward. I know I'm obsessed with portraiture, of capturing that "something", and so I knew I needed to break things up a bit, and so I played with drawing landscapes. My favorite is the bottom left. I did very brief pencils for the bottom two, nothing for the top two. The photos are from my trip to Europe in 2001. You'll find that the two on the right appeared in Bruno here and here.
hi. :)
(link: http://www.brunostrip.com/notes/200406.html#20040604)
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6/7/2004 - Little Dee at www.littledee.net begins today (coincidentally Bruno's birthday, honest, it actually was coincidence). It is releasing with being in no newspapers, but I remain undaunted. I think the mailing will still help get it in papers, it is just a slow process. So for now, enjoy the web exclusivitiy. :)
The Stumptown Comics Fest this weekend was fun. I was really impressed with the job Indigo Kelleigh did puting it together (many helped, but he held it together).
And we got back to Olympia very late, and I'm incoherently tired. G'night.
(link: http://www.brunostrip.com/notes/200406.html#20040607)
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6/8/2004 - I spent hours and hours editing down the next several day's Bruno texts, and almost as quickly they'd balloon back up. But they seemed to get better and better and seemed to strike more and more chords with me (even upsetting me). So yes, it will be still texty until next week, but I feel it's worth it.
(link: http://www.brunostrip.com/notes/200406.html#20040608)
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6/9/2004
Dicebox!
Check out this week's installment.(Sheesh! Bruno, Little Dee, and Dicebox all in the same day. What more could a happy reader ask for?)
(link: http://www.brunostrip.com/notes/200406.html#20040609)
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6/10/2004 - So, this whole Amy and Bruno conversation. I want to talk about it a bit here, but let me begin with not apologizing. I write and draw this strip and what i put out there i created, good or flawed, it is part of me.
So, I have receieve a few responses yesterday regarding Amy seeming too precocious, both in her thought process and her knowledge of things like polyamory. And I admit, I may have her too far off, portrayed with too much advanced "wisdom", but to the point, making her precocious was on purpose. Whether I went to far or not is open game for interpretation.
For a further understanding of Amy, allow us to review the facts which have been expressed in one way or another in the strip.
Amy is a very intelligent thoughtful young woman, who has been regularly and consistently ignored by her parents, which can lead to serious angst and self-analyzing. She reads a lot and reading a lot leads to a much expanded access to any information on diverse topic, and with the internet and with the growing and broader acceptance of different lifestyles (often, I've noticed, among the younger generations). And so, her knowledge of polyamory, although obviously from perhaps (or perhaps not, not that she expressed much on the topic) a rather naive perspective of someone very young, is not very far-fetched. And despite being a very deep thinker, she also is young enough for things to still often feel very black-and-white. And I think that "moral clarity", strengthened by a hard-headedness she's often shown around Bruno, has been coming up a lot in their conversation. And then there's the actual Bruno factor. if you look at their past interactions, Amy's emotional push-pull (not judging that, merely stating it's existance) on Bruno is not new. But also, Bruno kinda' became a role-model to her when she was in the 4th grade (a big seed for Amy's naval-gazing), where Bruno told her about relationships, politics, and even homosexuality. Amy didn't quite fully understand it all, but it helped her begin thinking outside of the societal box. Now, seven years later, she's a sophomore in high-school, it can be assumed has grown and learned tremendously, not to mention that this is an emotional and often sexually (with often a remarkable lack of sex) charged time period. And so yeah, Bruno has been the leaven to a lot of Amy's life, and a somewhat absent one in many ways, Amy's obviously experiencing a lot of mixed feelings, Bruno being both the savior from her childhood and in ways not being too different from her parents.
Anyhow, all that should be able to picked up through the text. If not, then i didn't do it well enough, but I'm always learning and developing. And I know this whole post probably sounds defensive as hell. I simply can't talk about any subject in the strip without coming across defensive. I gre up in an environment where I was taught that conflict was bad. And so even when I feel strongly about something I've created, I get defensive when talking about it. Sigh. Bruno's crazy. Amy's crazy. I'm crazy. Where does it end?
And if the things i wrote int his post make no sense whatsoever, well... chalk that up to a growing severe lack of sleep, to be dealt with in mere moments.
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
(link: http://www.brunostrip.com/notes/200406.html#20040610)
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6/11/2004 - So, this week's sketches just weren't happeneing. It's difficult sometimes to draw without a script, you sit and say, "what do i draw?" and then just scribbles and nothing come out and nothing looks good. So yes, these three scribbles are the best of the best for this evening sketches, and that is why i scanned in the big "hero" pic, which i drew sometime around the end of high-school beginning of college. it was for a comic Ethan Sicotte was writing, but which ended up not happening. Oh, plus this week i tried my new synthetic brush, which isn't nearly as good as my usual sable one, but I want to find some, any, decent alternative to having to kill sables merely so I can draw. That seems so wrong.
If anyone has any thoughts on exercises in b&w pen-and-ink which may be good for me, feel free to shout them out.
(link: http://www.brunostrip.com/notes/200406.html#20040611)
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6/15/2004 - A few things.
The return of the punchline to Bruno, like a lost child finding his way via a piece of yarn trailed from his sweater.
For those who asked, "yes", to get sable bristles, they kill the sable. They do not simply shave it. If anyone knows of any companies which make their brushes from shaved live humanely raised sables, I'm interested.
Bethanne and I are moving across town in Olympia this month. Very exciting. the new place is really nice and you can see the coastal range from it. I am happy.
Saw Shrek 2. I laughed a lot, which felt good. Made me think a lot about parody and "references" in comedy, making it easier to juxtaposition for sake of humor plus ride a previous work's popularity, but I've ranted about that before, so I'll let it be. When the cat did "big eyes" though, it reminded me of Kip. :)
Oh, and I forgot to mention, this made me happy, i was talking with my dad on Saturday and he had to get off the phone because he and Martha were off to a "gay marriage". Somehow made it more a reality for me. :)
(link: http://www.brunostrip.com/notes/200406.html#20040615)
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6/16/2004
Dicebox!
So this is the final installment of my fill in of Dicebox. The comic really amazes me and so it was great to be able to express it this way, plus play with her characters. But almost more exciting is that starting next week, she's back. I've missed my Dicebox weekly fill.(link: http://www.brunostrip.com/notes/200406.html#20040616)
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6/18/2004 - The sketch this week, i decided to try a scene this time. Found a picture online which I used vaguely as a background. The characters (although the inking hides it, i did pencil them in some detail) are from other sketchblog pics I've done. So yes, I did pencil the characters, but went free-form on the background. Tried using a synthetic brush and didn't hate it as much as when i tried one last week. It helped to snap off the back third as the brush was too long and thus the tail was too heavy. As a whole, though, it was interesting, I learned a bunch of little techniques just messing around with the brush and background.
(link: http://www.brunostrip.com/notes/200406.html#20040618)
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6/21/2004 - So Bethanne and I moved to a new address this weekend (posted at the bottom of this page for those of you who keep losing it). Her father and brother came up to help, and we've just been working non-stop. We're actually quite fortunate in that we have 'til the end of the month to clear out the rest of our stuff from the old place, so we've only got the big stuff and the main stuff so far. Sadly our phone won't switch over until wednesday (so if you call from now 'til then, expect to get the a/m). But that also means juggling where to draw Bruno. Tonight I drew it at the new apartment, but then came back to the old one to scan it. Which I did on my scanner which is perched precariously atop a several-inch-tall unsound pile of papers directly in fron of my monitor (I use mac fortunately, so my toolbar is on the top of the screen, not on the bottom)
On the bright side, the new apartment is fabulous (as well as less expensive) and we both love it. Plus i seem to have some clue as to where Bruno is heading next. What more could a silly cartoonist hope for?
(link: http://www.brunostrip.com/notes/200406.html#20040621)
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6/24/2004 - Moving is going semi-smoothely. There was a couple web link problems on Bruno which I wasn't able to fix right away due to lack of internet access (sleeping in one apt, phone line still in the other, although now both are in the same place again). Wish i had more to report, but just wiped out, trying to stay afloat.
Cheers.
(link: http://www.brunostrip.com/notes/200406.html#20040624)
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6/25/2004 - This weeks sketches... this past weekend Bethanne, her father, brother, and i all went to an air show. It was pretty interesting (if you could overlook the overdone "patriotism" and war themes). So yeah, i did a couple drawings while there, pencil then ink with my usual Pilot V5. And the rest i just drew tonight, just sketches. Pencil and then ink with a brush-pen.
I'm glad the planes are there, because the rest, although fine, are unremarkable. I mean, I do seem to be becoming more comfortable with a brush. i really like the control I had on drawing the guy in the upper-left. But it's the same faces over and over. I mean, that could be stanley, Louis, cat and ummm... not sure who she is. But the point of the sketchblog is to keep it moving, keep on going to new things. So yeah, the planes are okay. I mean, it's my usual "Bruno" style, which i could do in my sleep, just look at something and my hand knows what to do. But I know that. I want to do other things too.
So I prefer last week. The dark shadows as they walked into the woods. I mean, it wasn't a great drawing, in fact, I'd say that these are better drawings. But last week I was doing something i couldn't do in my sleep.
I don't know. Part of me has been thinking that if I don't get the sketchblog more shaking, i should really pick a project instead, maybe a comic book (if only my graphic novel were written) and then do a page or half-a-page every week. if it's not new, it might as well be a sturdy project. Right?
(link: http://www.brunostrip.com/notes/200406.html#20040625)
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6/28/2004 - I managed to see Farenheit 9/11 this weekend. There wasn't much I haven't already read here or there, but it did a decent job of compiling it all into a compelling case. For mose liberals, this movie will likley be just preaching to the converted, and I am certainly not without quibbles of Michael Moore's style and product, but I think it's a worthwhile see. And I also think it's also a worthwhile see for conservatives. If you're conservative and wonder what liberals are thinking, why they are questioning things as strongly as they are, this movie can give you a fair glimpse. Even if you disagree and think that Moore is lying, this might aid you in understanding, this movie is what the majority of liberals believe (give or take) is happening and to be true.
(link: http://www.brunostrip.com/notes/200406.html#20040628)
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6/29/2004 - btw, Erika Moen, who you may remember from my linking to her story I Like Girls, now has her zines available online.
Oh, and I am very happy that Guantanamo Bay prisoners and others can finally get a trial. I believe very strongly in that right.
(link: http://www.brunostrip.com/notes/200406.html#20040629)
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6/30/2004 - So, if you're curious what your high-minded intellectual artist uses for photo scources, well... many times he googles. Today, this is what I used as reference.
(link: http://www.brunostrip.com/notes/200406.html#20040630)
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