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So much fun, you have to be ready for it.

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 I think the key to handling a backpacking trek is to always be generally active. Walk, run, bike, skateboard, roller skate —- whatever. Our bodies are made to move, and we need to keep them moving. I hear they tend to last longer and perform better that way, AND you’re more ready to take on that backpacking trek that comes up now and then without having to put a lot of time into getting in shape. You can spend that time instead on figuring out how to make sure you have what you’ll need and still be able to carry that monster of a pack on your back.  Those things are heavy. 

My experience with Jim McMullan

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As a second-year illustration student at the School of Visual Arts, I sat confidently in Jim McMullan's figure drawing class working through yet another series of five minute poses. This would have been my second semester in his class, and I had the notion that I'd picked up a few things. I was blending the High-Focus Drawing ways of thinking with inspiration from Egon Schiele . I recall having the distinct impression that I was making some significant progress. My drawings were pretty different from the character the rest of the class was attempting to achieve. The elegant lines that Jim tried so adamantly to train us to execute were replaced by something resembling the scrawlings of someone crippled with rheumatoid arthritis. After some time, Jim came over to me and sat down.  "You're not a genius." He said.  This obvious news had been hovering near me for a long, long time just waiting for a willing conduit to deliver it. It was devastating. I think he said a

On Sobriety and keeping an eye on your characters . . .

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 Deadpan Stan.     I take so much in stride anymore that I get amazed when I back up and actually reflect on what exactly is going on. I created this character (or maybe “discovered” is a better term) over 20 years ago when I was crafting comics in college. Someday I’ll have to expound more fully on the nature of all the characters I had created over that time. Seeing how they’re all little facets of my own subconscious displaying traits I was ignorant of at the time is just . . . weird.      So Deadpan Stan was an undertaker with a drinking problem that played a kind of Wile E. Coyote vs. Roadrunner game with another character — a mostly naked man with no head. His goal was to capture the obviously dead naked man and put him in the grave where he belonged. Deadpan was never successful. Even when he was able to get the corpse into the ground, the corpse had friends who would dig him out.      After many years marinating in the seasoned wine of time, the spiritual reality (or what oth

Read Aloud Book Award

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Hey guys!   What to Do When You're Sent to Your Room  won the Comstock Read Aloud Book Award for 2015!  I'm pretty encouraged by it.  Now the book gets a gold sticker on the cover.

New Stuff

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I've updated my portfolio page!  Really, no kidding.  Just click on the link in the bar.

Busy

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What to Do When You're Sent to Your Room

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Hey guys!  This is pretty neat.  One of my books I wrapped up recently was selected for "The Original Art" children's book illustration show that starts at the Society of Illustrators this month.  Those Candlewick people really know how to put a book together, and Ann Stott's script is hilarious. You can buy it here. here.