March

Starting to see the sun...

Hello and welcome to my very first monthly letter!

To start us out I’m going to talk a little bit about the professional projects I’ve been involved in this month.

Lately I’ve been spending a good portion of my time on a new fantasy card game created by an independent designer, Andrew Solheim. I’m drawing 30+ monsters, icons, card designs, and having great fun with them. I don’t do a lot of DND-style fantasy so it’s interesting to bring my style to a new genre. I’m trying to incorporate a lot of texture and fun proportions in the character designs, and the item card assets are inspired by medieval illuminated manuscripts. 

In big news this month, Alice is Missing is getting an expansion pack which is now on Kickstarter! AIM was one of my first freelance projects, and though my style has changed quite a bit since, I still have a soft spot for the moodiness of these pieces. It’s also done very well since its release- it won “Best Game” at the 2021 Ennies and now there’s a major motion picture in the works at Paramount! Of course the credit for its success goes to designer Spenser Starke and the amazing team at Hunters Entertainment.

I did the box and manual art for both games, and my old teacher Caleb Cleveland designed the cards!

Another piece I finished up this month was a splash page for Comics are Dying, an original graphic novel by writer Louis Southard that’s a satirical look at the history of comic books. Louis commissioned 100 different artists who each contributed a page to the book; it’s a massive project and I’m psyched to be a part of it! Here’s a lil sneak peak of the page I did.

Lastly, I just finished up a box design for a game called Goats vs. Aliens, by designer Mitch Pengilly. The spacey theme is very much in my comfort zone, though I can’t say I’ve drawn many anthropomorphized goats performing piledrivers before. I really like how the colors turned out on this one.

OK now it’s time to share some personal work. I try to make a little time each month to do art for fun, both to keep my skills sharp and because when I don’t for a while I start to go a little crazy. A lot of times my personal art ends up being traditional because I already spend so much time on my iPad. Lately I’ve been doing a lot of experiments with printing on fabric and making various clothing pieces, because I have an in-person job now and it’s my duty to the public to come up with innovative ways to serve day after day.

These jeans were one such experiment. I block printed the designs onto some white cotton towels I had, then sewed them on with embroidery floss. The hand design was carved into linoleum, which I think turned out great, but I used rubber for the other two and I don’t think I’ll ever try that again because it creates so much extra noise which is aggravating when you’re trying to get a clean print.

I’ve also made some attempts this month to wrangle watercolors, one of my most hated mediums. I’ve never had the looseness or carefree attitude that watercolors demand. But shoutout to my friend Rese for mentoring me through my struggles.

I dropped this one in the mailbox of the people that own this library!

Digital art will always be my first love, because I can erase and select and warp and skew and apply as many edits as I could possibly desire, and it will never reach the point of no return. That’s why I always draw comics digitally— and because comics are HARD.

I’ve applied to the Madison Print & Resist this April and I’d like to have some more comics in case I get in, so I’ve polished an old one I did for a poetry class in college. I wrote it right before graduation, and it deals with resistance to that big life change. Read the full thing here.

That’s all I’ve got for this month! I thought I’d be struggling to find content but I’m pushing up against the Substack length limit and there’s even more stuff I could’ve added. I hope this wasn’t too much, let me know if you guys have any comments or suggestions of stuff you’d like to see more of! Have a great March and I will see you all next month!