I’ve been seriously slacking on the book, spending most of my Work time reading (today it was Vonnegut’s GOD BLESS YOU MR. ROSEWATER and a great article on commuting in the New Yorker with a great spot illustration by Kevin Huizenga) or messing around with the sumi-e brush.  Yesterday I just entered random junk into Flickr and drew whoever looked interesting (except for the third drawing — that’s from a picture of my dad and my brother Nick). 

I really love working with ink and brush — I can be fast and loose, and everything just kind of flows out.  Working with the woodcut style, on the other hand, is a real pain in the ass, but I like the results a lot better. 

Best of all, though, is free-associating with a regular old gel-ink pen:

(Meg is mortified that I would publish a nudie drawing on my blog.) 

Nothing beats straight pen-to-sketchbook drawing.  Check out these pop-up drawings by Jim Woodring.

I keep thinking about serializing the book as a way to keep up work on it.  I was going to write today a bunch about the potential to make a long book out of a weekly strips, but depressingly, I wrote about that last summer.  (Almost a year ago, and I’m still stuck on the same idea.) That post has a Vonnegut quote, a George Saunders quote, and a Mark Newgarden comic in it.

Why can’t I write posts like THAT anymore?  Yeesh.