Kids Con 2018

Lilah and I headed down to Nashua on Sunday to roam around the Kids Con comic convention. She had her "Go Away So I Can Read" t-shirt I designed for her, and I had on my Lego Batgirl Earrings and my comic leggings:

Yes, my mom actually asked me if I planned to wear them out of the house! It's a Comic convention! Where ELSE would I wear them?!

It was chaotic and colorful and serious overwhelm - but SO fun!

I really prefer walking around and "networking" to standing behind a table all day. I had made some flyers to hand out - I'm trying to get a comic creators group started at my studio in Concord:

And we talked to a lot of really cool people! Many live in Massachusetts or New Jersey - so they probably won't join our club, but I kept all their biz cards (which are amazing too!):

I'd show you some photos of the comics, books, and prints that we bought - but they are already dispersed around the house!

If you want to hang out and talk to cartoonists - don't forget - this Saturday is the Non-fiction Comics Mini-Fest in Middlebury, VT.

New Packs of Tangle Cards!!

I'm so excited to announce that I actually got my act together long enough to create something new!

Joining it's older sibling - the AlphaTangled Tangle Cards - please welcome the freshly printed - Tangles of Kells Tangle Cards! Yeah!!

This new card pack includes 40 tangles from my book - The Tangles of Kells - with new artwork on the front of each card, and step outs for drawing each pattern on the back.

They are trading card sized (like baseball cards) and come in a handy, clear storage box.

Yes, Virginia - they will fit nicely into your Zentangle stocking.

 Yes, they can be purchased as a set - the cards and the matching book (click here).

And, Yes, you can use the Secret Coupon Code I mentioned at the end of the previous blog post!

Tangle Library APP Gets a Kells Update!

I get a lot of emails... but the funniest, most unexpected one I received this week started like this:

"Sorry for the delay, I was in rural Poland and didn't have internet."

And then, the good part:

"I've just released the app, it should be live in the next 12-24 hours."

Yeah! 

And, by the way, that message was from Ian, the developer of my Tangle Library App. When I sent him all the art, he was in France... I wonder where he was when he got internet back? He is on quite an adventure around the world. I am so glad that he is a geek and travels not only with his laptop, but the code for the APP!

This is actually a new In-app-purchase for the Tangle Library. I created a collection of 40 tangles and step-outs based on designs from my Inspiration Sketchbook - The Tangles of Kells.

You can get the Tangle Library APP on iTunes, HERE.

If you don't do i-anything (iPhone, iPod, iPad), you can get the books HERE.

If you already have the main APP, here is a video of how to get the new pack of tangles:

The video was done when there were only 2 choices, but it works the same. This is what the screen looks like with all the choices:

If you aren't seeing all the choices, be sure to "Update" the Tangle Library first and then try clicking the "Restore Previous Purchases".

Here are two more screenshots to get you excited!

There are some simpler tangles and some more challenging patterns too.

If you are having any trouble with the APP, have questions, or want to share what you have been using the APP for, be sure to visit the Tangle Library Facebook Page.

I really hope you like this new set of tangles! It was one of my big projects for the summer. The other big project is a Kickstarter campaign which should be live later today. I'll do another post soon and let you know all about that.

"My life is a dark, darkroom" with Clowns!

I have been cleaning up and re-organizing my studio these past few weeks. It's the only way to get at all those dust bunnies, but it also gives me the opportunity to rediscover forgotten (lost?) projects, and to remove the stuff that is no longer useful. While shuffling junk around, I unearthed a painting I did in art school (20 years ago!) It is actually my most-favorit-est oil painting I have ever done. I have been painting since I was a little kid. My grandmother was an artist and she'd make us paint still lifes of flowers. I loved my grandmother, and I love making art, but I hate oil painting and I hate still lifes! The irony of this painting that I "found" is that it is actually done on the BACK of a stretched canvas with, guess what? - a still life on the front. It's a still life of shapes with part of a still life/model on top of that. We tended to re-use canvases a lot. Not just because they were expensive, but because we had to stretch them ourselves and we were lazy! So, this clown face is on the back of a recycled canvas. I must not have expected to like it or want to keep it. And I'm pretty sure it wasn't for an assignment - those were done on the fronts.

What I am posting here is a photograph of a painting I did of a black and white photo that I took of a girl whose face I painted! Got it?

Click the image to see it larger

 In what seems like another life... I had a business, as a teenager, painting faces at local arts and crafts festivals. I also was studying Black and White photography and the Zone System with David Marr. We'd spend days making test strips to get the perfect whites and blacks and grays. I have some very "pretty" photos from those days. Needless to say, I rebelled. I set up my own darkroom at home and stopped timing anything! I would just "wing it". And that's the stuff that got into gallery shows, stolen from gallery shows(!) and even sold. I even did a series of photos exposed from microscope slides of gallbladders. They looked like faces. I know, can you believe it? And I sold one to Kodak! That's another story...

This was before Photoshop. I loved the magic of watching the images appear from a blank piece of paper. I felt like a wizard... powerful. But, I hated sitting in the dark for days on end. And complete darkness (to develop the film) did yucky things with my depression-troll. When I dropped out of SVA, I gave up photography.

Meanwhile, back in my half-clean studio...
I decided to put the clown picture up near my computer, but the raw, ragged canvas edges looked really bad. Distracting. So I trimmed them the best I could and painted them black! What a difference, eh?

Now I stare at her face while I am thinking and I look into her eyes. I am amazed at how much depth there is there. I love the details. What floors me is that I painted this way in my teens. I loved to take photos so I could paint and draw from them. And yet, I studied photography, then illustration in art school... and it took me another 15 years to UN-LEARN all the crap from school... so I could start painting this way again!

I finally did something with the original photograph - I made some postcards. So if you love this image as much as I do, you can get some cards for yourself at my Etsy shop. I hope to post some more in the near future too. I'd love to know what you think!

PS Title comes from the movie "Beetlejuice"