Wednesday, April 19, 2023




 Finalized this today, a bit of work done instead of just playing video games, which happens. The top one is the logo used on the audio files and the one that shows up on podcast apps. The middle one is the special one I had to throw together because of course FaceBook has its own criteria and is VERY out of date when it comes to editing tools for things like that. The last one is the new banner for the website. I am NOT a graphic designer, as can be seen by the evidence above. That being said, I think they work and have a kind of circus or carnival feel to them and feel a good deal more solid than the old ones. In other words: they'll do.

Thursday, April 13, 2023


 Thanks to a day away and a suggestion from Vince, I changed some of the background colors here. I think de-emphasizing the sprocket holes and the text helps things out a good deal. Thanks, Vince! Still thinking about this, though.

Tuesday, April 11, 2023


 A little side project is redesigning the logo for our podcast, "Max, Mike; Movies." The old one was...adequate but not really special. I'm trying to make this one a little more interesting, a little better. That being said, I am NOT a graphic designer and that is a totally different set of skills than cartoonist or fine artist. I've already made an adjustment past this and I think I'm close but I might want to work more on the lettering. There's no rush. I like the faces, it's the rest of it that I'm not sure about.

Sunday, April 09, 2023


 Turns out there wasn't that much more to do, so I got this page done after doing the weekly sound editing on the podcast. Silas #1 will be back next page to continue his half of the duet.

Saturday, April 08, 2023


 Long day at work, so not much done with this. But it's still progress...

Thursday, April 06, 2023


 And, with a little luck and pushing, I managed to get a good deal of page 151 done tonight as well. There's a haphazard look to this that I'm really liking. None of the vectorization has been done yet, and it will simplify things a bit. Who needs panels?


 City Silent page 150. This one came together both quickly and well, I think. Sure, the words just came out of the can that way, no assembly required. Did a very minor tweak to the figure before moving on. This one wasn't nearly as complicated as the previous and will likely stay darker in palette than the A song on this track.


Also redid the Silas in the lower right as I said I would. This means that the word 'never' is repeated which I'm ok with. It had too much weight in this page to take it out and I think the meter, such as it is, would have been lost on the page above if it had been missing from there as originally planned. Minor issues which are easy to take care of because of how I work. I would really have hated having to redraw an entire page for that.

According to FaceBook, yesterday marked the two year anniversary of me saying that I was done with comics, that I wasn't going to make any more, wasn't even going to finish City Silent. I'd forgotten I'd even posted that, never mind thought it. Well, we see where that went. Just a momentary bit of depression, I guess. And I'm glad that it didn't work out that way. I think none of Act 2 would have happened and I think it's the strongest work in the comic, especially some of the pages with the mice and some with Digby. I'm still interested in portraits, which is where I was going to spend my time, but I can split my attention. Just means I'm slow. So be it. I will see this comic through to its end.

Tuesday, April 04, 2023


 One last one for the day. Wanted to get a head start on the next page, so drew Silas painting which will take up most of the page. This also means that I'll be redrawing the head in the lower right corner of the last page, not least of which because it really didn't work. My partner told me so and he was right. This was fun to draw and ink.


 Got page 149 done. Things worked out well. The flow of reading came out in the repositioning and resizing of the characters, direction helped by the perspective of the paintings. It's a bit busy but that's graffiti for you. The first word of the second track, "never," as it turns out by accident, is also a response to the end of the refrain of the first track here. Things really just fell into place with this though there are a LOT of elements.

I also made a few changes to page 148, mostly in the colors and the addition of the same windows in the background that I added to page 149. The new version has been switched out on Flickr as well. I'll leave the original on tumblr and Instagram because why bother? This is the new version:

The ONLY thing that's bugging me is that the top figure in both pages are in similar positions. So I might have to do something about that. Grr.



 It's been a bit and things have progressed rather piecemeal, which is how I work. This page is coming along though I did some alterations to the two images I made in Silas' style. I also angled them a lot more like the background graffiti, giving them a more dynamic feel. I need to color Silas and change the colors on the art. There's also one more Silas to go for the lower right and he'll be in a different style as he's the second part of the duet. As a background element, and as a way to tie this back to the first track of the act, I pulled the skyscraper windows from page 90 and added them to the way back. I'll need to go and add them to the previous page as well. Things progress. There's also this:



It's a secret project, a present for a friend's birthday. I had a gift certificate to Blick's. I don't really do much with real media any more but I have wanted to do some painting. So I ordered a few things including some very nice cradled board for paintings. This is Belle, their great dane and probably the sweetest dog in the world. I see her at sunday dinner. I am not a dog person but she's an exception. So this is an initial sketch for an actual painting on board I'll want to have ready by June. I have to learn how to gesso the board and get it ready. Then, I'll transfer an enlarged sketch and paint the thing. It's been a couple years since I did anything with real paint and it's time. I hope it turns out well. I'm looking forward to it.