It's the 19th, which means:

a) tomorrow is my birthday, and
b) vance_lightning and I got our webcomic going!

You can start reading it here. There are four pages up now; it will be updating twice a week from now on.

I am very excited, or I would be if we hadn't basically stayed up all night to get the website up at the last minute. As Pif remarked, "It is a truly momentous occasion, for which I would rather be asleep."

Anyway, we hope you read it and have fun reading it.

Laura! You have this sketchblog but you never update it! And you haven't published anything or posted anything on-line anywhere in ages! What is the deal here?

Okay, yeah. I tend to work very slowly and recently a lot of the stuff I've been working on is ongoing project stuff that is taking a while to get done and that I don't feel comfortable talking about UNTIL it's done, so what it means is very few on-line updates and shit, for, like, the five people who care.

That's stupid! Surely you have something you can share with us! Maybe you are starting up a new ongoing webcomic soon that is going to be totally awesome?

OH DAMN! How did you figure it out?! I guess since it's like a week from the launch date, I might as well say something now. (Marketing, I suck at it.)

Yeah, so, basically, the story is this: About a year ago, I met vance_lightning, and we worked together on some magazine stuff and we figured out that we have fun working together and we both like comics so he was like, "Hey, we should make a comic together" and I was like, "Yeah, okay, sure."

And then several months later he was like, "So, do you want to start working on some comic concepts soon?" And I was like, "Yeah, okay, sure."

And then EVEN MORE MONTHS LATER he was like, "Okay, I have this character who I think we could use." And I was like, "What?" and he was like, "... remember the comic thing?" and I was like "Oh, right, that. Hey, we should actually do some work on that." And then he gave me one of those looks where I know he totally wants to hit me with a sock full of pennies but he never would because he's a gentleman.

Anyway, then we got down to business and some time later we approached the wonderful Girl-Wonder.org and they agreed to give us hosting.

THE MORAL OF THE STORY IS, um, our comic starts up on the 19th and I'm pretty excited! Not just because it's the day before my birthday, either.

Can I see some artwork from it?

Can you ever! I'm super-pleased with the art so far.



Pencils are mine, Pif inks and colours it. He is a pretty fantastic colourist!

Will you tell us when it goes live?

Yes I will. And you will be amazed. Or at least hopefully sort of entertained for a while.

I did one of those "conversations with a younger self" comics and now I cannot stop doing them. My younger self has settled in beside me and won't fucking shut up. Man! What is her problem anyway.



Tiny Laura is holding the book close to her face and squinting because she does not have glasses yet.

She is not always such a cocky little jerk, though.

( Oh, the trauma. )

Every time someone new friends me here I feel bad about never updating this thing. Hi, new people! I'm Laura, I draw stuff. Most of it does not make it up here, despite my intentions.

I am wondering if maybe a schedule for updating this thing would help me remember to actually do it. Perhaps once a week? Perhaps on Sundays? Okay, sure, let us (and by "us" I mean "me") try that. Let's see how long it takes for me to completely fall off the bandwagon on this one.

Anyway.

I got a new Moleskine journal for drawing in. I used to not understand why everyone raved about them but now I know that spending twenty dollars on a sketchbook makes me really motivated to actually use it for stuff.

Here is a page from my new fancy sketchbook.

I'm designing a little booklet for a workshop on basic bondage and flogging safety and techniques. Here are a couple of pictures from it!

( Nothing too dirty, but not exactly worksafe either. )

Did you know that in Montreal you can get foie gras poutine? It is true.



I kind of want to move there tomorrow. I'm a sucker for unexpected food combinations.

All right look, this isn't a post with illustrations or comics because I'm actually gonna ask a question that I've been wondering about a lot lately. This might be a little long so I apologize in advance.

Right, so, I live in Vancouver. I've lived here for four years. It's nice and all but it's super fucking expensive and soon the Olympics will be here and that will bug the shit out of me, and all the sudden weather changes occasionally give me migraines (not cool!), and frankly I'm just getting tired of seeing the same skyline with the same buildings every day. I love the ocean and the mountains but I'm pretty burned out on Vancouver. It was wonderful and big and new when I moved here, and now it's gray and kind of depressing most of the time.

I am thinking of moving to Montreal or Toronto or Seattle. Not RIGHT NOW, as RIGHT NOW I have a job and whatnot, but sometime before 2010 - I want to save up some money first and stuff.

Montreal seems like my kind of town - stuff is affordable and they put maple syrup on everything and everything seems more tragic and romantic in French, plus I have some friends there, but there is the major drawback that my French is pretty laughable. That's what I get for living most of my life in the Westernmost province of Canada.

I don't hate Toronto (oh man Vancouverites don't beat me up) and neat stuff seems to always happen there first, but it's pretty intimidating and probably no less expensive than Vancouver. Still I feel like I should try living there at some point just because I'm Canadian or something. I'm just afraid of the look on peoples' faces there when they found out where I'm from.

Seattle is pretty, and it has the ocean and the mountains, which I see every day and I know I would miss terribly anywhere but the West coast, and also there are a bunch of awesome people there who I adore. But there's the slight complication that I'm a Canadian citizen.

So, Internet.

Do any of you live in these places? Are they good places to live? What are the rewards and drawbacks that I am missing?

Sometimes when I have a little bit of extra time I write stupid comic strips in my head. (Mostly they're pretty dumb, because I have the sense of humor of a twelve year old, so I don't scan them or show them around.)

Lately all my strips have centered around Kid Robot. They are mostly about Kid Robot having difficulty relating to humans, because he has no hormones or emotions (save for vague confusion) and even if he did he would not be able to express them, being a robot and all.



They're usually pretty quick and dirty, but easy, and fun. I'm thinking about doing more of them and making it some kind of regular thing? I have grown pretty fond of Kid Robot. I'm not sure what sort of direction I should take him in or anything, though - not to mention that cartoons about robots are not the most original thing in the world.

There's a meme going around where you draw your teenage self. Man this is kind of embarrassing for me, as my teenage self was a ridiculous bucket of angst and neurosis... Oh wait, that's exactly what I'm like now.

Officially it's only been a few years since I stopped being a teenager, which makes it even more silly of me to be doing this meme. So I drew myself at about fourteen - still technically a teen, but a bit longer ago.

Anyway, ( here it is. )

( I suppose that is what I get for this. )

Agh I did that all today and I got NOTHING else done, in spite of the fact that I start a new job on Tuesday and I have a MILLION things to do before then. Failday is fail. Feel free to punish me with cat macros. Unless of course you just don't care! I mean, I wouldn't care if I weren't me.

I feel I should mention that there's a comic group starting at the Purple Thistle. It's something my friend Pif and I have been planning and looking forward to for a while, so if you're in Vancouver or thereabouts and you want to hang out with other comic artists then hey, you should check it out.

Okay look I'm really bad at talking stuff up, so I'm just going to quote directly from the flier:

Wait, what's going on here?

Thursday afternoons at 4:30, the Purple Thistle is hosting and informal group where comic artists can come together to work/practice/gossip. It's an opportunity to meet new people, get motivated in a comics-centric environment, learn some new skills and maybe teach some as well. At 7 there's free life drawing classes that are open to anyone.

Can anyone join in?

Yes. It's open to all ages, skill levels and styles. Like some utopian vision of the autobiographical comics people coexisting in perfect harmony with the fights 'n tights people. Like if Martin Luther King was really lazy and unambitious and willing to settle for just about anything.

Okay, I'm sold. Where do I sign up?

You don't. The Purple Thistle is open to drop-ins weekday afternoons and evenings, so feel free to just come by. There's no commitment necessary.



So, there you go. The Purple Thistle is at 180-975 Vernon Drive, just off Venebles. It is on the second floor of a giant greenish building, you can't miss it. I know people always say you can't miss it but hopefully in this case it's actually true. I dunno, I can't speak to the observational powers of all of you guys.

Anyway drop by, it's gonna be fun. Pif is running the group and I'm sort of along for the ride, so most of the time we'll both be there (I can't say I'll be there every week, because I'm starting a new job on the 15th, but I will be there as often as I can.)

Ha HA I bet you guys are thinking there will be some drawings or something to make this text post less boring. But you are WRONG. (Next time, I promise.)

A few people asked for this comic that I did about Quakerism (really it's more about Quakerism and my own peculiar lack of spirituality). Now, I am hesitant about posting this for a number of reasons, the main two being:

1. It is kind of a personal thing, very much an "I FEEL..." kind of journal-ish comic. And those can be interesting and good, but -

2. I do not feel that this is particularly interesting. Or good. I'm not even proud of it artistically. It's just kind of something that grabbed me and I hammered out quickly, sacrificing quality hugely on a piece that I did not think would interest anyone anyway. (I'm not looking for people to reassure me that it's good here; I know I've done better, can do better, and I can live with that.)

HOWEVER THE MASSES (being three of you) DEMANDED IT SO HERE. With that warning, and the further warning that this is in NO WAY my best work PLEASE DON'T JUDGE ME, here are My Thoughts On Religion.

( TL;DR )

I went to a party last night at the Secret Location where there were girls and boys in their panties and also a lot of bluegrass music (it was a country themed party). I was feeling kind of down and antisocial so at one point I retired to a couch in the corner to sketch some of the other people there:



I tell you internet, I am a good time at parties.

I also drank beer and played foosball. Other people were mock-square dancing, but when you were forced to square dance (unironically, that is) in junior high school gym class for three years in a row even "subverting the gender-binary-enforcing, heteronormative nature of small town, white trash culture" feels more like being 14 and awkward again than it feels like empowering oneself.

... yeah, you know, I did this three-page comic thing I was going to post, but then I realized that a) it's pretty personal and b) it is about going to Quaker meetings when I was a kid, and nobody wants to read about Quaker meetings because Quaker meetings make for incredibly boring reading material. (For those of you who did not spend their formative years as a Quaker, before your parents decided they needed to "find themselves spiritually": Quaker services are entirely silent.) What possessed me to do a comic about gatherings during which not a word is spoken, I will never know.

HOWEVER, I am doing the artwork for a chapter of a webcomic written by Tony Smith! It is a lot of fun. The webcomic is called Queeroes and it is over HERE (you should go read it, it's pretty neat!) and the chapter I'm illustrating starts on the 4th of April.

Actually I still am drawing stuff! Just, I've been swamped with other thing like various crises and I haven't had much time to keep up with this journal.

(IF you are interested in the details of my super-boring life, by the way, my non-art journal is over at angrylemur. I'm timid as hell and will pretty much add anyone who adds me. But mostly it's rambling about stuff that catches my fancy, and agonizing about whether or not I should go back to school, and occasionally collecting my thoughts on living with OCD. So if you are not interested at all that is cool too. I wouldn't be interested if I were you.)

Anyway a lot of the stuff I've been working on isn't that interesting. Sometimes people pay me to draw stuff for their websites or their magazines, or make t-shirts for their bands, or they buy my zines and that makes me happy, so keeping up with that work is my top priority. And in between that I have real life which is craaaaaazy lately, but in between THAT I have been reading a lot of old Will Eisner stuff lately (mostly thanks to vance_lightning) which is amazing and has me itching to get back to comics.

SO. I still have The Greatest Meme to finish (I've actually written all of these strips, it's just a matter of drawing them now), don't think I've forgotten that. I actually have had a BLAST writing these when I've had the time and headspace and totally want to do more, if I could actually finish them in a timely manner. BUT FOR NOW here's something I drew while I was riding a bus from Seattle to Vancouver recently.







I am hosting these on Imageshack because I haven't quite figured out Flickr yet and Photobucket is down. Imageshack kind of bugs me but what are you gonna do. Click the thumbnails for the actual larger pages.

Here are some quickies I drew at life drawing this evening! The model was pretty good but she had this really surly expression for the whole thing, like it was the last place she wanted to be.

EDIT: Okay, so now there is only one page of doodles because apparently one naked lady is against Photobucket's terms of service, but TWO naked ladies are not. SO UM WHAT ARE SOME OTHER IMAGE HOSTING SITES YOU GUYS LIKE? :D? Since you know I'm not fond of having my pictures randomly deleted.

( Cut for boobs. )

Job hunting, laundry, etc. Boring stuff mostly. But also comics and things. I have a bunch of pages finished and a whooole bunch more unfinished for a thing? Maybe a graphic novel? Maybe something else? I don't know, it kind of started out as one thing and meshed with another thing and turned into a totally different thing.

Anyway there is a scene with a bit of lesbian sex in it, so I thought I would share that with you now, although nothing is finished really so I don't feel right sharing all of what I've done so far. It's been a shitty month for me and for a bunch of my friends and I figured we could all use a little lesbian sex! Right? Right.

( The day you walked away/I didn't see it coming/you blew the doors wide open/and everybody ran )

And here is an illustration for a kids' short story I wrote that nothing will likely come of:

But I should mention that there is a comic thing going on in Vancouver today! It is at the Jem Gallery on Broadway and it is called Inkstuds and if you can you should totally check it out! There is an expo-type deal going on today from one to five pm. Colin Upton (granddaddy of the Vancouver comics scene) and Robin Bougie (of the fascinatingly sleazy-but-brilliant Cinema Sewer) will be there, among other local legends like Steve Rolston (Queen And Country, One Bad Day, Pounded) a personal hero of mine, Pia Guerra (of Y: The Last Man fame) - and many, many other talented people as well!

SO if you are in Vancouver (or nearbyish) and you are wondering what to do today, there, I just gave you something to do!

No no there is no need to thank me.

Man, this took a while. Hush was a pretty epic story but I think I managed to get it down to one page.



( Harvey: Yep, I'm totally sane. Gordon: Seriously, Harvey, no one cares. )

Not part of the 20 comics meme, but something I've had done for a little while and just came across as I was cleaning old shit out of my hard drive.

A while back a friend of mine posed the question of what a gothic ska band would be like. The concept he came up with was a band called The Gloomtones, which obviously is brilliant so I made a poster for this band. This played right into my love of incongruous subjects coming together (goth and ska, for example) and also my fondness for making posters. I've got a number of half-finished posters for other such fictional bands (most as suggested by Chris Bird) and someday I swear they will all be part of a huge gallery installation.

Okay so maybe not, but they are still fun to do.

( Clicky click )

Anyway I have contacted a few people about this already but if anyone who requested a comic from me wants me to mail them the original when it's done, please send me your mailing address (disgruntledlemur at gmail dot com) so I can do that. If you don't want to give your mailing address out to some random girl on the internet, that is okay, too, of course, I'll be posting all the comics here anyway.

EDIT: Curse you Photobucket! Um I swear you will be able to see this soon? :D? Yes I win!

beatonna started it.

joshpm, benrosen, kingthunder and commonname have all picked it up and put their various spins on it. EDIT: More awesome people have joined in! strammermax, rtastronauts, tedprior and tiny_monster. YES. AND MORE! piratecore! eschewv! passive_mission! timdenee, who I somehow managed to overlook earlier!

I don't know much about anything other than comics and books, and even there my knowledge is dubious. But I will do this, too, because who loves comics that make fun of comics? Everyone! This plan is flawless!

So twenty subjects for short comics about comics, give me them and I will do them over the next while, GO NOW. Subjects can be characters, creators, "condensed versions" of comics you liked, whatever. If I get a lot of requests (I am not anticipating this but you never know) I will limit it to one per customer until I get twenty. Otherwise go nuts!

And while you're at it check out those other people, they did it first and I am just jumping on their bandwagon of awesome.

Edit: okay I am starting to get requests! Yay!

1. Andy Capp
2. Hush: the Readers' Digest version
3. Dick Tracy
4. Garfield
5. The ridiculousness of Sandman fans (disclaimer: both I and the person who suggested this are Sandman fans.)
6. Juggernaut
7. Harvey and Gilda Dent
8. Hawkman
9. Maus
10. Chris Ware
11. Aquaman
12. Kate Beaton's comics
13. Krazy Kat
14. Calvin and Hobbes
15. Joe Quesada versus the Spider-Fans
16. Heathcliff
17. Nightcrawler and/or Harley Quinn
18. Scott Pilgrim
19. Lynda Barry
20. Popeye vs. Batman

This list will hopefully get longer, but I max out at twenty, for serious. Holy shit, I actually got twenty. Thank you you guys you're all awesome! I wish I could take more but I think this is going to keep me busy for a while.