Jackie Ormes returns! This cartoonist was known for drawing glamorous fashion as well as political/social commentary. So when she appears in SuperButch, I want to do her wardrobe justice.
Here's a page of "Torchy's Togs," a paper doll series that appeared next to the Sunday issue of "Torchy in Heartbeats." (The original Torchy Brown strip ...
2021-09-03 17:27:21 +0000 UTC View Post
Hello! I'm back. As promised, here are the illustrations I did for Emotional Labor: Why a Woman's Work is Never Done and What To Do About It. And here's photographic evidence of me being relaxed last week:
2021-08-28 22:02:21 +0000 UTC
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Hi patrons! I'm writing this from my partner's parents' house, where we're taking an honest-to-gosh break for a couple weeks. Thanks for your patience this summer. We're still looking for a rental house, and I've been working on a book illustration project that JUST finished up. On the bright side, the book illustration project just finished up!...
2021-08-07 18:18:51 +0000 UTC View Post
Hi patrons,
Summer camp is back at the children's theater, which means I don't have to draw any more Zoom meetings! The first week of camp provided enough inspiration for a month's worth of newsletter cartoons, which will free up some much-needed time for SuperButch. (Sorry again!)
My housemates and I have also been looking for a new...
2021-07-11 19:15:20 +0000 UTC View Post
Hi patrons!
This page led to some fun research. In this video from 1943, entitled "Basic Typing Methods," the narrator informs us that "Today, typewriters enable women and girls to perform military and industrial services as important as those performed by ...
2021-06-13 22:25:20 +0000 UTC View Post
Hi patrons,
The end is in sight for the next SuperButch page! Remind me not to draw several different layout options for each panel of a 9-panel page. It does terrible things to my schedule. But I really like how the page is looking, so let's face it, I'll probably do that again. :)
In the meantime, I had a very inspiring trip to the...
2021-06-07 22:30:55 +0000 UTC View Post
Barry and I got a very stressed-out email last week saying "I borrowed my friend's signed copy of SuperButch Issue One, and...well, my housemate has a dog. Can I get a replacement copy?!" Of course the answer was yes, but we demanded cute dog pics first. :)
Off the subject:
2021-05-25 01:31:27 +0000 UTC
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"Oh good," I thought. "It's an 80s transcript page! That shouldn't take too long to draw..." And then I went through six different page layouts. ::shrug::
Here are the layouts I tried:
I'm really happy with how this page turned out. The last...
2021-05-01 17:59:20 +0000 UTC View Post
Hi patrons!
I got my first vaccine dose at the Oregon Convention Center, the usual site of Rose City Comic Con. In many respects, the experience of looking for the right entryway, walking through numbered stanchions, and being directed by event staff felt completely familiar. But also it felt like being in a disaster movie. That afternoon,...
2021-04-19 01:42:32 +0000 UTC View Post
Ta-daa!
The Photoshop file for this page has about 20 layers of sketched chairs, tables, and figures. This was one of those pages where I just scoot everything around til it looks right. In the screenshot below, you can see MOST of the layers I was working with.
2021-04-06 18:26:33 +0000 UTC
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This postcard was originally titled "Stay-at-Home: Week 48," but it took me awhile to get to it. By week 54, it was deemed "not the right vibe" for the theater e-newsletter. The weather is sunnier. Vaccines are rolling out. Theater-parents are planning how to get their kids back to school (eep!) and how to get outside a little.
This is the...
2021-03-25 04:14:11 +0000 UTC View Post
Hi patrons,
The book Shoulder Angel is holding is Station Eleven , and the comics on top of the bookshelf are True War Stories, MADI, ...
2021-03-20 22:36:25 +0000 UTC View Post
Hi patrons,
Finally got the chance to draw the exterior of Moira's! It's based on the historical Mona's 440 in San Francisco. Mona's is long gone, but the buildings from that era are still there. So I used a grainy photo of Mona's over Google street vie...
2021-03-05 02:39:17 +0000 UTC View Post
Hi patrons!
Confession: Barry finished lettering this page yesterday, and I didn't post it to Patreon right away because I was distracted by the new vacuum cleaner that had arrived in the mail.
2021-02-25 17:17:27 +0000 UTC
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Hi patrons!
Here are some different layouts I tried for this page. (Of course, as soon as I don't have to figure out how to fit 10 people in each panel, I want to explore all the page-layout possibilities!) After sketching five different layouts, I finally told Barry "HERE, PICK ONE."
Barry copy-pasted some of my sketches in...
2021-02-11 23:53:27 +0000 UTC View Post
Hi patrons!
Whew, it feels good to get to a new panel layout. [Barry's script actually says "We finally (finally!) change angles" for panel 2.]
(reference photo for Lillian's arms and jacket)
The poses for SuperButch and the flying cop are ve...
2021-02-02 04:33:30 +0000 UTC View Post
Talon and Perry Winkle host a series called How Do You Do. They interview students, artists, and families in our community about their creative projects. This comic will feature in Season 3 Episode 1! It goes up on Facebook on Thursda...
2021-01-28 05:50:29 +0000 UTC View Post
Hi patrons!
If I find out what brand of noise-canceling cotton balls Lillian is using, I'll definitely post a link for you here. XD
I imagine that New Year's Eve is no longer on anyone's mine, but I wanted to share this postcard:
2021-01-19 17:52:40 +0000 UTC
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I love how Barry set up this scene in the previous pages!
I chuckled to myself when I first read the script, but I knew it would be a challenge to fit Lillian, a waitress, a dancing couple or two, some background characters, and the police officers into each panel. It's hard to draw something that both looks like a chaotic crowd, and is ea...
2021-01-08 02:19:10 +0000 UTC View Post
Page 150: That is a nice, round number. Thanks for helping Barry and me reach it!
2020-12-28 20:01:00 +0000 UTC View Post
We're almost to page 150--woohoo! ...and I just realized that Lillian's necktie was black last week, and now it's white. I'll go fix that.
Special thanks goes to Barry's niece Sydney for this page. I couldn't have drawn Lillian's hat and jacket without you!!
2020-12-24 17:05:40 +0000 UTC
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Hi patrons!
My coworker Talon has been filming a series called "How Do You Do" for the children's theater. It's a talk show where he plays both the host AND the co-host, the puppet Perry Winkle.
I'll admit, I spaced out during a Zoom staff ...
2020-12-24 06:55:28 +0000 UTC View Post
Welcome to Moira's, home of Turtle City's greatest Male Impersonators!
It was based on Mona's 440 in San Francisco:
I couldn't find any interior photos of the original Mona's, so I got to make it up. I wanted to give Moira's a very different...
2020-12-14 20:59:40 +0000 UTC View Post
Hi patrons!
Please give a hand to Barry for the lettering and singsong word balloons!
It feels great to have this page done. A significant portion of the time spent on this page involved reading lyrics about hot nuts, 2020-12-07 19:06:39 +0000 UTC View Post
Hi patrons!
I'm trying a process where I pencil several pages at once, then move on to the pen-and-ink phase. So SuperButch will be updating again starting this week! The plan is to have a few pages in different stages of progress, so I'm not starting at square one every week. I think that'll help with momentum?
In the meantime, here...
2020-11-29 17:34:09 +0000 UTC View Post
Hi patrons,
I'm still on a quest to balance drawing SuperButch with living up to the ideals of a conscientious lesbian cartoon character à la "Dykes to Watch Out For." I spent a few blocks of time last week at Laurelhurst Park, where ~75 people have been living in tents. The city announced an impending sweep of their camp, so a bunch of a...
2020-11-20 04:52:11 +0000 UTC View Post
Hi patrons,
Here are some changes this page went through before I could break out the pens and ink wash:
I tried to use ink wash to make the wood on the house and railings look a little worn, like they hadn't been repainted in awhile. I also...
2020-11-08 01:50:49 +0000 UTC View Post
Hi patrons,
In addition to the new page, here are some postcards from the children's theater!
Online dance classes:
Our upcoming online show:
2020-10-30 22:57:20 +0000 UTC
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Hi patrons,
You may remember that SuperButch picked up the Prism Award for Best Webcomic last year:
So this year, Barry and I got to be judges!
There will be panel discussions with the finalists (and some judges) in every category, Sat...
2020-10-17 17:17:54 +0000 UTC View Post
Hi patrons!
Jumping backwards in time a bit, here's some funny background about the end of Issue 5. According to the original script, Lillian went directly home from the Rabbit Hole (no changing into femme clothes at the bar, no bumping into Kansas in the street, no stopping in the park to work on the SuperButch story). However, Barry real...
2020-10-10 23:50:37 +0000 UTC View Post