Lovely session at Figure Drawing Club tonight. We had a guest model (@whatifwefly_model over on Instagram) and it was a blast. She gave us a bunch of really good foreshortened poses. These are all done in Procreate with MaxPacks Gouache brushes.

I’ve made my first YouTube video! It’s a four-minute rundown on how to bring emotion, action, rhythm, and clarity to bear in writing for comics.

Folks who follow me on Patreon know this came about because I’m working on a graphic novel called Seacritters with my friend Kate right now and it’s her first time moving from prose to comics. I DO NOT ENVY HER. Most of what I learned while putting this together had to do with remembering just how many factors there are to consider in telling stories visually. Hopefully this makes it a bit less overwhelming.

(If you want to learn more, I originally delivered this information to Kate in a much more expansive, 54-slide visual presentation. I’ll be uploading that for Patreon subscribers at all levels later today. An excellent time to join.)

I miss going into Helioscope and getting to enjoy these kinds of conversations around the lunch table, but a nice side effect of the Pandemic is that we’re making more of them available online. (I say “we” but what I really mean is Leila, who’s been a champion about recording, editing, and uploading all kinds of content to the studio YouTube channel. Go take a look around if you like this sort of thing!)

Unearthed this particularly fine birthday card (c. 2007) from my dad today.

Sometimes you’ve just gotta get it all down on paper.

Studies of the Meadows Preserve during a recent storm.

Another digital landscape study from a photo I took in Greece in 2008(!?!?). Done in Procreate with Joe’s Brush Set in about 20 minutes.

Been doing little landscape studies on my iPad at the end of each day to try and get more comfortable with digital painting. This is a barn I fell in love with on a blueberry picking expedition to a friend’s family farm over the summer. Brushes are Joe’s Brush Set, by illustrator Joe Lillington.

Hello, long-neglected blog. I launched an odd new project on my birthday last month and I wanted to talk about it here because it seems like the sort of thing that Tumblr might like.

The Right Number is basically a secular confessional housed in a voicemail box. Dial (503) 673-6267 and you’ll hear a brief prompt, after which you can record a response for up to three minutes. All messages are confidential, prompts rotate every two weeks.

The first two prompts (“What’s something you wish someone would say to you right now?” and “What’s something you wish youcould say to someone else right now?”) both elicited a wide range of thoughtful, heart-wrenching, funny replies. I’d say it was working as intended if I’d had any real sense of how this was going to go ahead of time, but I didn’t.

As it stands, I’m very happy with the project so far. The user base is still small—an intimate crowd of willing weirdos—and I’m perfectly content for it to stay that way. Recording freewheeling audio updates over on Patreon every two weeks for the last couple years has taught me that sometimes the quality of conversation and connection I’m hungry for online is best cultivated through sustained, vaguely directed projects over long periods of time.

So: that’s the thing!

If you want to play along, you can sign up for this tiny newsletter that’ll send you an email reminder every time there’s a new prompt (usually on Mondays, but I make no promises).

I’ll see you in the voicemail box,

L

China marker studies from Figure Drawing Club, a lovely new remote art session happening Wednesdays.

Working on a new series of illustrations this month.

Little lighthouses.

A good day for drawing boats.