A quick comic I drew for this week's Drink & Draw

I've found that the more comics events I organize for DCP, the less time I actually have for drawing myself. This was a quick comic I made for this week's Drink & Draw. I was given the title, then I had to come up with a story to match the title.

Birthday Comic

True story...

I am considering making this my submission for the Durham Comics Project.

While You Were At Work

Sewing Lessons

Where's Lyra?

At the library...

Solstice at the Marsh

I went to the most magical aerial dance retreat in Georgia last week. I spent 4 days at The Marsh Studio with lots of amazing people, bruising myself on trapeze, learning to open myself up and make myself vulnerable and receptive to the experience of dancing with my apparatus as partner. I think my favorite lesson of the whole weekend was the reminder that I am enough. Never apologize for a performance and what I have created.

Jam Comic from Durham Comics Project

This was a jam comic from the last Durham Comics Project "Drink & Draw" by myself, Mark, Sam, & Hope. I was particularly happy with how this one came together.

Which reminds me - The Durham Comics Project. I haven't mentioned it on here yet. It's a project that I've started through the library. I will be teaching workshops through out the next year, teaching people of all ages (for some reason people keep thinking this is just for kids - thus far I've only done out reach to adults) how to make comics. Hopefully I will get lots of different people to draw short comics about moments in their lives and collect them. Sort of like NPR's Story Corps. but with comics. If you want to find out more about the project check out the website: durhamcomicsproject.org
And if you're interested - make a comic! I would love love love your comic to be apart of this project.

Kirill Draws

For some reason tonight I decided to draw Kirill, not how comic Kirill looks, but a little closer to real life Kirill.

Summer has arrived...

Bellybuttoned Cockroach

Apparently I forgot to post this one. I didn't make it the full 28 days of February. I only made it 11 days, but that is much better than last year.

Fun-A-Day 2013: Octopus

Fun-A-Day 2013: Wash Tub Mouse

Fun-A-Day 2013: Majka Sings

Fun-A-Day 2013: Birds and Accordions

Fun-A-Day 2013: Bee

Fun-A-Day 2013: Fish

Fun-A-Day 2013: Squirrel

Fun-A-Day 2013: The Cheese Stands Alone

Fun-A-Day 2013: Elephant

Fun-A-Day 2013: Bear

I'll  be posting these sporadically as the month goes on.  This year's project is a Russian Bestiary.

Sketches for an upcoming project

Christine tells it like it is...

Comics Roundtable

A couple of weeks ago I participated in this Comics Panel Discussion at Chapel Hill Comics along side Ben Towle, Jamie Hibdon, Flynn Smith, Rio Aubry Taylor, & Mr. Jan Burger. Click the link above to see pictures if you're into that sort of thing.

Headaches

Warning: this is a little self-indulgent, but it was necessary at the time. 

 

So, disclaimer, things are much better than they were when I drew this comic about a month ago. My doctor had put me on a crazy anti-seizure medicine in hopes it would help with my migraines. Not only did it not help with the headaches, but I had really bad side-effects. I had trouble thinking and focusing, I would forget words all the time which made it very difficult to hold conversations, I was running into things while walking, I lost weight because I would forget to eat for a whole day, my fingers would tingle all the time like my hands were falling asleep, and I was having panic attacks. I was on this for a little over a month and for that month it became really hard to deal with daily life because now I was not only in pain but I felt like my brain was failing me.
It took so much energy just to get through work that I didn't really have energy for anything else so I mostly stopped hanging out with people because it was too hard to hold a conversation. I didn't go right back to my doctor to be taken off of it because I no longer trusted myself and I thought, maybe this is just what I'm always like. The headache specialist I started seeing this month took me off the medicine right away and things got better fast. Now that I'm seeing this specialist I feel much more hopeful that the headaches will pass with hopefully as few unobtrusive medications as possible.
I wasn't going to post this one originally because it just felt too personal, but I also wasn't really talking to people about what I was going through at the time so I will share now.

Zoy!

So I've been working on a few longer comics, or longer for me and it's been a slow process so I haven't had much to post. I did, however, find the first two comics I ever made when I was 13 years old. I thought they had been lost years ago, but apparently were hiding out in a folder somewhere, so I thought I'd share. I posted them ridiculously large because they're nearly impossible to read at the next smaller size.

Can you tell it was the 90's?

This one is only a very mild exaggeration of the ridiculousness of my Global Studies teacher, if exaggeration at all.

Turtle in a Forest Fire

Did I ever mention that I once saved a turtle from a forest fire on my lunch break? Well, I did.

Majka is a Hotdog

It's True!

Today in the Kitchen

I drew this a couple of weeks ago when Lyra caught a bird and brought it into the house. Majka seemed very uncomfortable and didn't quite know how to react to this lifeless body. However, a week later when Lyra caught a bird in the yard, and didn't kill it, Majka was happy to finish the job and gobble it up. Sorry birds.

Row Your Boat

My first attempt at working with water color and playing with grey scale.

An Oldie: Russian Lessons #2

Some more old comics. These are probably from around 2006. I recently discovered that my old comics had gotten infected with mold during the great mold outbreak in our house back in December, so I am digitizing them all so I can (sadly) dispose of the originals.

An Oldie: Kirill in... Dear Diary

(Click on image to enlarge) 

I drew this comic about 7 years ago right around when Kirill and I started dating. I drew comics through middle school and high school, but then stopped for many years. I started drawing again right around the time Kirill and I got together and he's the one who really encouraged and inspired me to keep drawing, I suppose that's why he's so frequently the star of my comics - my muse.

It's kind of interesting for me to look back and see how much my drawing style has evolved. It's also interesting that the early Kirill comics are purely fictions that he happens to star in, where as my comics about him for the past few years are all non-fiction.  

The Dragon and the King

 

(Click to make image larger)

1984

Majka's Dream

Fun-A-Day 2012

This year I am not running a Fun-A-Day and I will admit that not worrying about who's participating and organizing the show is making the whole experience much less stressful. Since there will be no Fun-A-Day NC I'll be participating in the Buffalo Fun-A-Day that my friend Curtis is organizing. Last night as I was trying to figure out a theme for this year's comics, something different from strict daily diary comics, and it occurred to me that this is a leap year so there are 29 days in February, and this is my 29th year so I'm making a comic for every year of my life.
February 1983 I was about 7 months old.

The Proposal

I actually drew this comic about 6 months ago, but alas, I'm slow. This is how Kirill and I decided to propose to each other at the same time.

I would like to point out that the conversation leading up to this point was a discussion about how we should get married (and not me demanding a proposal). Kirill wanted there to be an official proposal because saying we had a discussion and decided to get married doesn't make for a very good story.

Superhero

It's been a while since I've posted any comics. My computer died, we moved to Durham in July and I have yet to set up my office with scanner and such, so I just haven't been on top of digitizing. Here's a comic I worked on for an exercise for the now defunct drawing group. We had to pull 2 genres out of a hat and draw a comic that mixed the two. I got "Superhero" and "Real Life".

The editing is a little inconsistent because I still haven't set up my new computer with Gimp so this is all done on Picnik, but I figured if I wait for that I may never post again. 

 

Oops.

and 3 months later I still can't touch my toes. 

Majka wants to eat a squirrel.

and maybe someday she will get to try one that isn't already flattened on the road.

This is why I'm shy around people I don't know very well...

because when I talk things like this come out of my mouth.

Gogol Bordello

Kirill and I have an unexpected secret obsession with Gogol Bordello. Well, I do, and Kirill plays along, but we have on occasion found ourselves on long walks playing Gogol Bordello 20 questions. 

This one's an annoying grumblefest. Sorry.

I try not to have my fun-a-day comics be grumblefests, but somedays I can't avoid it. This was one of them.

Pleather Elvis

Haircut!

and months later my hair still looks more or less like, this so it's still relevant, or something. 

Lost in translation.

Sometimes Majka's love and excitement for Lyra gets lost in translation and just leaves Lyra terrified.