Art From The Margins

This May marks my forty-eighth birthday. That’s a long time to have been living! If it were the Middle Ages, I’d have died like thirty years ago! But thankfully these are modern times, so my life is really only three-quarters over, with only the slimmest threat of being stabbed by a knight. Not too shabby.

I often think, if I was born in the Middle Ages, I’d be one of those monks who sits and illuminates books all day. Though, truth be told, I’d likely spend more time scribbling comics in margins than painstakingly brushing gold leaf on enormous letters. Here’s some of my religious art:

Nevertheless, like a religious vocation, this job feels more like a calling than a career. I pretty much have to draw every day or… well, I don’t really know what would happen because I’ve never really gone more than a week or two without it. I suspect, if it was taken away long enough, I’d be not unlike a zoo animal. Just a pile of flesh in a concrete cell, joylessly eating, joylessly sleeping, smearing my feces on the plexiglass. But smearing in like, an artful way.

So for this diary entry, I thought I’d share some of the art that never makes it into my books. The stuff that no one sees, that just sort of falls out while I do all the things that keep food in the fridge, and the lights on (except in the fridge, unless some insensitive clod left it open).

Scaffolds Can Be Beautiful Too

Bookmaking is a demanding medium because the pressure to get everything absolutely right is so great. You only get one chance to print a book, especially when it’s on someone else’s dollar. Getting the details perfect means making iteration after iteration, and some pretty neat art gets left on the cutting room floor. Here’s a few of my favorite pieces that never saw the light of day:

Abandoned poster for New In Town. I just ran out of time on it. But I kinda like it better unfinished.

Early rough spread from New In Town. To date, New In Town was the book with the most permutations. The final version that went to press was the fifteenth iteration.

Here’s some neat character designs from Chapter Two Is Missing!

Here’s the sketches upon which those character designs were based.

Here's a whole slew of ideas that didn't make the cut for the cover of Go To Sleep, Monster!

I made this image of a moose being imagined into existence as the original title page for What’s Scarier Than Thunder? There’s something I really like about the image, AND it was a great way to not have to draw a moose!

World Building: all the fun of real building, without any of the supply-chain management headaches.

Much of my time is actually spent practicing, keeping my skills sharp and experimenting with technique. For years, I did this by making concept art for a fictional world I created in my salad days. Genre-wise, this world—

What? Salad days. It means “in my youth”.

Sigh. I’m not sure what it has to do with salad. I’m just being colorful. If you’re going to read my secret diary, you’re not allowed to complain when I say nonsense things.

Ahem… genre-wise, I’m never sure how to describe this world. I think of it this way—it’s pretty much a western, except no one’s invented gunpowder yet. I suppose a publisher might call it fantasy, but I shy away from that term. I think because, in my mind, fantasy tends to mean magic, and for me, magic muddies up storytelling. Too easy to “problemicus solvedicus” everything, if you know what I mean. Here’s some of the art I’ve made for this fictional world of mine over the years…

I draw A LOT of figures. Originally it was just a way to keep my anatomy sharp, but over the years it’s been a great way to practice rendering fabric.

If you’re one of the lucky few who have made it to Zinefest and bought a copy of Man In A Bog, you might recognize this illustration! It’s called Old Tom Gate.

World-building also requires a lot of making maps. Here’s one of my favorites, circa 2015.

Landscapes are another common subject matter for me. They’re a perfect vehicle for exploring color and light. Bonus—boats are super easy to draw when they’re tiny!

I have to say, I’m a little nervous to be sharing these pieces. I strongly believe that when you make art for a living, you need to cordon off a little section of your craft for yourself. A safe space, where you can create and explore and test and discover without ever worrying what other people think. For decades, this was where I could do that. But I put my efforts on this world (and the stories it contains) aside sometime around 2021. I’d been working on it pretty consistently behind the scenes for thirty years, and I thought I could use a break. Sometimes the best thing you can do for your art is put it aside and forget about it. That way you can return to it later with fresh eyes, a lot of objectivity, and—probably?—a great deal of regret? I guess we’ll find out.

Ta for now, sweet gentle beings who repeatedly and unabashedly violate my right to privacy and read my secret correspondence with myself!