these frames are hiding places

Woolf

Mita — Sun, 07 Apr 2013 19:21:15 +0000

I’ve almost finished assembling the cast of characters that Tree Girl will encounter in the woods: Woolf (seen below), King Yeti, Lumbering Jack, and a few others. Woolf is not a big bad wolf, but, as the “wool” of his name may suggest, a sheep in wolf’s clothing (probably people think more of Virginia Woolf …). Make no mistake; sheepish as he is on the inside, he does pose a threat.

Here he is, with TG, in process:

Tree Girl completed (the “non” on her neck was coincidental, but perhaps is fitting):
Body. The grey comes from a photograph that accompanied an article about North Korea.

Tracing paper for the arms and tail:Coming together:

And here is an exercise in the importance of eyebrows. Without a telling eyebrow, Woolf looks like an eager puppy!With the addition of the eyebrow, he’s turned sinister. I like how well the lowercase L worked.
Finished piece:

And now I’m off to prepare stuff for printing. I’ll be tabling at Stumptown at the end of the month! Excited.

Storyboarding

Mita — Sun, 10 Mar 2013 07:33:43 +0000

About a year before she died, my mom went through the boxes and boxes of photos we had collected over the years and began organizing them into photo albums. She made one album in particular for me. It collects photos from throughout my childhood—though now and again you’ll find a random photo of her alone as well. She captioned each one—names, dates, locations, etc. (though what information she chose to include is not consistent—and some of the years listed, I think, are incorrect).

These photos and handwritten captions are the basis of the section I’m working on right now. At the good suggestion of Paula Knight, I’ve decided to slow down my process. I’ve been struggling with completing pages and then not being quite happy with what the “finished” page looks like (a panel will seem to be missing—or an image will read differently than it did in my head). Although I do take notes and have sketched the images before beginning “construction” of a page, these templates aren’t as elaborate as they could be. Paula suggested that before moving to the art (which is time-consuming and so a little heartbreaking when a page doesn’t hold together right), it might be a good idea to storyboard big “chunks” of the narrative. I agree. Too, I think I’m at the stage where I need to see what the “big picture” will look like.

And so today I worked on some of the transition pages—pages that will connect the tree girl narrative to the “conversations with my mother” narrative—that are based upon the photos and captions included in the album my mom had made for me. I’m not mimicking her handwriting as well as I’d like to—reminds me a little bit of how I not-so-successfully attempted to write notes in her handwriting in order to get out of P.E. class when I was in the sixth grade (I was totally busted!!!). But these are just storyboards and I may go through at a later stage and scan the actual captions and add her writing to the images digitally. There is something haunting about seeing the words that she wrote (a couple weeks before her death, she sat with me and, with pen in shaky hand, relabeled all of her pill bottles). Her handwriting is very curvy and swoopy—kind of like the line that I’m using to represent her.

Here are a few of the sketches. Still working on the lines and the writing—and I’m planning on cutting the frames out of craft paper to create a layered effect.

Morphing

Mita — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 07:04:58 +0000

Here is a page from a section I’ve been working on which, for now, I’m calling “morphine”—a section that will recount some of the uglier moments from the night my mom died.

Wishing I could have a month to devote to nothing but writing and storyboarding. As it is, finding an hour here and there has been, well, not ideal It’s been taking me about a month to produce a scant number of pages. When they’re done, I look at them and think, “That’s not right.” That’s not true for all of them, of course. And the whole story is coming together in my head so much more clearly than just a couple months ago. Still, I need to find a way to devote more time to it. I want what’s in my head to be on the page!! It’ll happen.

Plus, exciting things afoot. A new issue of Ivy coming soon. AND I’ll be going to CAKE in June!

Deer

Mita — Sat, 12 Jan 2013 03:05:21 +0000

A very good use of broken branches:

Dear deer’s body made up of pieces from this make-up ad:

Hooves and antlers (that is, one and one quarter antler) came from another Armani ad on the reverse. Thank you stupid Armani for the very pretty-colored paper.

Kite flying

Mita — Sun, 30 Dec 2012 06:42:56 +0000

A page from the tree girl project wherein tree girl finds uses for the branches growing from her chest. It is not terribly painful when she snaps off the branches.

Happy winter …

Mita — Fri, 14 Dec 2012 06:57:24 +0000

from Redcat and Splat!

Page in progress

Mita — Wed, 05 Dec 2012 17:35:21 +0000

Thought it might be fun to show how this page went from drawing to finished collage.

Progress

Mita — Sun, 11 Nov 2012 07:19:55 +0000

Inspired by Short Run, I’ve made some progress on a page I’ve been working on for the last several weeks:

While tabling, I learned that people like cats in their comics. ”More cats!” they said. Okay! Hoping to finish the last panel on this page this upcoming week.

Short Run

Mita — Fri, 02 Nov 2012 18:19:47 +0000

I will be tabling at Short Run Small Press Fest this Saturday—10:30-5:30 at The Vera Project in Seattle. If you’re in the area, I would love to see you there.

I’ve made a couple of new teeny books that I will be selling—little stories that erupted in the quieter hours when the body is slow but the mind is swimming.

Also making its debut at Short Run is IVY, a collaborative zine with MK Czerwiec. If you can’t make it, you can purchase issue one of Ivy here and read about it here.

Hope you can make it!

Five Years

Mita — Sun, 07 Oct 2012 06:49:44 +0000

I’ve spent the last few weeks working on this:

Based in the “real” but concentrated in the telling. All images made using a scalpel. ”Hospital blue” made from soaking blue tissue in tea (the scans don’t show the yellowing too well). Tea is good for so much!

Hard time of year, no doubt … but making this small story was good for me. Made me confront the difference between not forgetting and holding on too tightly. And, weirdly, I had a lot of fun with it.