Painting Posture

Weekend wrap-up and welcome zinesters

Zinefest was a wonderful time filled with tons of cool people and creative inspiration. Everyone there was looking for zines, comics, and books. The environment was great and buzzing for the entire six hours of the show.

A big thank you to those of you who stopped by and signed up for this newsletter. Welcome! Feel free to check out all the previous posts.

This week has been a blur and drawing/writing comics has been minimal. I feel like the end of the year brings about a bunch of loose ends that need to be tied up before 2025 hits. Some of those loose ends are comic stories, but my mind keeps veering off and focusing on other things, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

At this point, I have about half of the new sci-fi comic drawn and painted, and I’m still planning out the final issue for The World Is a Funny Page. I’m hoping that as things wind down in December, I can kick production back up after a decent re-charge. I’m still working on things right now, but it’s really hard to get a consistent schedule.

Question for subscribers, I’ve been debating how much I should send in these newsletters regarding the new projects that I’m working on, i.e. in process and finished pages for new comics. On one hand, I do want to show you all new progress that I’m excited about, but on the other hand, there are many spoilers throughout, and lots of especially cool moments that would be best read in the full books. Even if some of the pages are unlettered, the imagery would show a lot. I’m undecided on it! How do you feel on this? I’ve created the poll below. Do you want to see full pages before they are in the comic, or are spoilers a no-no? If you have any other suggestions for sharing, please feel free to put them in the comments.

Light Rain

After a long week, I winded down with some watercolor sketching. It felt great to sit down with a blank pad and a pan of colors. I sat in my back yard while rain drizzled down like a live soundtrack to my Sunday morning. It was almost as if my body was telling me to recalibrate – forget everything that’s going on in life right now and let your hand and brush do the talking, even if it’s just for an hour or two.

Maybe someday these sketches will get into a printed sketchbook, zine, or story. I have a ton of sketches like these laying around the studio. There are many possibilities in what they could be used for. Comics, illustrated prose, poems, collaging, backgrounds, the list goes on. A kernel of an idea popped up in my head last night. I kinda like it…

Shadows, Moon, Grass

I met Julie DeVries a couple years ago at one of the many shows that I was tabling at. We instantly connected when talking about painting and the more painterly side of comics. Julie is a fantastic painter who specializes in nature pieces. She made her first zines and tabled at Zinefest last weekend. I just had to pick them up as I’m a huge fan of her work. These booklets are beautiful!

In talking with Julie, she mentioned that she is working on a autobiographical comic that will be in a cartoony style. Cannot wait to see this! If you like lovely art, and would like to keep up with her work, make sure to give Julie a follow on Instagram @julie_devries.

I might be tied up for the holiday next week, but I should have time to send a newsletter. Have a great day!

Thanks for your time,

Nico