Zines

Zines are self published small works. I enjoy making them and collecting them. Zines have a long and nerdy history and often feel very personal. I doubt anyone got rich by selling zines but that’s part of the appeal. I’ve bought zines from artists I admire when I couldn’t afford their other work, buying these is also a form of art collecting since you are getting short runs and experimental pieces.

Some zines are available for purchase on my shop.

Opossum and Magpie

This is a pop-up zine that tells a visual story between two characters. An opossum and a yellow billed magpie. I tried to choose theme’s related to California for the spreads and the yellow billed magpie is native to the state. This zine is printed on an inkjet printer, then cut and scored using a Cricut digital cutter, and then assembled by hand. The video below shows the assembly process.

I documented the design and making of this particular zine on my Patreon in 11 consecutive posts starting with Movable Zine, Part 1.

Imaginary Furniture

I documented the creation of this zine on my Patreon account in the following individual posts:

It’s a collection of drawings I did digitally using the popular Procreate app on an iPad. I enjoyed working with more color and patterns and was really happy with the printing quality I achieved.

Here is a video walkthrough:

Like the river

I drew this short wordless story one panel at the time very much like The Portal. The tool used was also the app procreate on an iPad with an apple pencil. I wanted to do a black and white story that would be easy to reproduce. I failed on that account as I discovered when I tried to print all those charcoal and pencil textures. They all seem to come out a little bit different depending on the printer used and the contrast is a bit finicky.

Here is the entire story, it's not as nice as a printed copy but at least you can check it out. 

I’ve mentioned elsewhere that this is a story about loss with a positive twist at the end. When I drew it I was thinking a lot about this feeling I get sometimes when I’m with my cat, I truly love this creature but I will most likely live longer than him. Knowing that he’s going to die makes me sad in one sense, but grateful at the same time because he’s here now. I suppose it’s a form of memento mori and I’m hoping to derive a sort of stoic meditation out of it.

But in my story the 4 legged character (a stand in for my cat) brings our hero to a cave where he or she comes to some sort of realization, then returns, happily to the waters where he came from. So in that way I wanted to think of that departure as a healthy form of letting go.

Overgrown Legend

I joined the Inktober challenge in 2019 and made 31 drawings during the month of October. One complete drawing per day. Almost all of them were done on paper using actual ink. I went old-school with this one and inked the drawings with a dip pen. As the month of drawings progressed a sort of narrative started to emerge as I kept on drawing some of the same characters in different situations. When it came to organizing the pages of the zine I followed the narrative and not the order in which they were drawn. Keen viewers can see some heavy influence from Theo Ellsworth, I love his work and we have been collaborating on another zine and a lot similar ideas migrated here.

There are a total of 28 black and white pages, with 3 more drawings on the cover, and the size is 5 1/2 by 8 1/2 inches. The title “Overgrown Legend” comes from the Inktober prompts from days 14 and 15.

The Portal

I had been doing colored pencil illustrations for a while and I really enjoyed the look. Also, I wanted to explore some narrative with my drawings so this is an early experiment in starting a story and letting it flow and wander wherever it wanted. Perhaps that’s not the best way to construct a solid story but I liked the end result. Although this one is inspired by some colored pencil drawings I did it entirely digitally using the procreate app on an iPad. This process also made it somewhat easier to deal with reproduction. A total of 10 pages in full color (with a limited palette) and half letter size ( 4.25 by 5.5 inches).

We are ready to accept that life is weird

This one is a 44 page collection of drawings. I worked on these drawings for about two years, often in the mornings. I let my pen wander and some pieces reflect the hazy nature of this time. Some are tighter illustrations that I worked over several days reflecting on the weird and whimsical nature of life.

The covers are in color but the inside pages are in black and white, reproduced on a copy machine in true zine fashion .