Whoah, I’ve already sold out of all my copies of Smut Peddler! Don’t worry guys, I’m ordering more, but I don’t know when they’ll get here.

In the meeeeeantime, I’m also selling the original seven pages from Leia Weathington’s and my Smut Peddler story, Easy.

These are the original, inked pages without the digital gray toning that Leia provided for the book.

I drew these pages digitally and then printed out my sketchy linework onto 9″ x 14″ Bristol board in a very light blue ink for the artwork and black ink for the border panels and text.

The figures and backgrounds I inked by hand with my Windsor and Newton Series 7 #2 brush and Windsor and Newton Black Indian ink, with tiny details and hatchwork done by Faber Castell PITT pens.

There’s also light pencils marks, both blue and grey, in places where I re-thought how I wanted to draw things after I’d printed out my bluelines.

In places where I botched my inking, I used Pro White ink to make corrections.

Personally, I love seeing original pages from other cartoonists– seeing how the final version varies from the actual art is so interesting to me.

There ya go, perverts! If you’d like to own any of these pages, you can find them on my Etsy. –Oh! And if you buy two or more pages, I’ll refund you $25 from your payment.

PS, this post is NSFW.

Last year Lei Weathington and I teamed up to create Easy, an illicit seven page contribution to the pornographic comic anthology Smut Peddler (You can read a preview of our story here)

Until January 11th, I’m offering free sketches with every purchase!

Here’s some of the sketches I’ve drawn so far.

Also for your enjoyment, this outtake with Ron Randall silently expressing his opinion of me reading porn in Periscope Studio.

You too can receive looks like this! Just read Smut Peddler in public and let the entertainment roll in.
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EDIT: LOOK WHAT MY HUSBAND MADE

Matthew and me working away in our home studio on a Sunday, making progress on commissions and freelance stuff.

In my process post about creating the Jiz Lee portrait, I showed you guys how I totally ruined the image initially and then had Matthew come in and make it presentable. He has a great eye for colors, layout, and overall making an appealing picture.

I’ve once again roped him into making an appearance (of sorts) on my blog by breaking down exactly how he took on fixing that picture. If you’re into that kinda thing, here you go!

Hi, I’m Matthew. I made this picture better in about an hour, and this is how I did it. (All of this was in Photoshop).

-Firstly I had to reduce the file size; it was crushing our computers to work on it. Removing all of Erika’s superfluous layers and using the crop tool set to ‘delete’ rather than ‘hide’ I was able to get the image down to working size.

-Next step was to see what I liked about the picture and use it as a starting point. I enjoyed the reds of the banners and most of the line work.

-I started by separating out the background line work from the pattern. It’s a good pattern, but very detailed and distracting for an already busy picture. This took a bit of time, but can be summed up quickly; desaturate, tweak levels (so lines are black and background white), use channels to select line work, make new layer with selection, delete old layer, and then fix oddities by hand. (tip, if you have a layer like this [line work and transparent], add a thick stroke to the layer in a terrible color; it’ll blow up and show you any pixels/places where there is dirt or any noise that isn’t part of the line work, so you can delete that stuff out [remove stroke when done])

Interjection from Erika: He also replaced the original background paper with another from my collection. I keep my paper collection hung on the walls of our home studio, where Matthew works every day and I use when I’m not well enough to go to Periscope Studio. Normally I use these for actually collaging, but I’ve finally started to turn them digital to use in projects like this.

-I decided that I didn’t like the border/window at this point, so deleted it and built a new one out of shapes (0 fill with strokes), to keep the file size low (shapes are vectored art; this is easy on your computer’s brain).

-Time to think about color. I liked royal blue to match the red; wanted to make Jiz pop out.

-Made background royal blue, added in new texture; reduced in opacity so it was still there but not distracting.

-Tweaked Jiz’s placements and stance; wanted them more up right, and taking up more space.

-Added white strokes to things to again help them pop; black line work over dark blue doesn’t appeal to me.

-Added gradients to the banners (20% opacity set to overlay [black and white gradients]) to give them some depth. In hind sight this should have been a lower opacity.

-Added a similar gradient to Jiz (bodies are naturally darker on the bottom and lighter on the top)

-And another gradient to the background to give it depth and a pseudo horizon.

-Picture’s almost done; brought in a texture overlay to replace Erika’s (her’s was too strong for my liking). Mine is a tiling image of water color paper roughly 50% grey, so when its set to overlay the whites and darks (that go over or under 50% grey) show up. I set this to maybe 30% opacity; just enough to give the picture natural noise.

-Final tweaks were done in curve editor; small tweaks until I was happy.

So yeah! That’s how he did it! Isn’t he the best? He’s the best.

(Photo by Joshin Yamaha from 2007)

Oh my gosh, I’m beyond excited that I got to team up with amazing porn star, Jiz Lee! They contacted me about creating their holiday card for Karma Pervs, their erotic art philanthropy charity that raises funds for non-profit organizations in their community.

Jiz had enjoyed my Saints of Sex Toys series and was looking for a portrait of them that would also portray sex positivity as saintly.

First up, I practiced sketching their face, just to get a feel for how I would portray them in the final product.

Next up: THUMBNAILS! These are super rough sketches just to get an idea of placement and mood and figure out what direction we would want to take this piece in. Jiz hoped that we could work in fisting, if possible, so I looked to incorporate that with the traditional heavenly rays emanating behind a saintly figure that you see in so many classical religious paintings.

Jiz liked the first piece best, but wanted a more assertive stance and to make it a bit more birth-of-venus-y with them rising up out of their own fisted vagina (wow, now there is a sentence I did not expect to be writing). They also asked me to replace the held dildo to instead be their hand in the fisting position with a latex glove on (to support safer sex practices), which I think is a great touch. Jiz has written some great articles about the commonly misunderstood act of fisting, you should totally read about it!

I printed out each of the image’s elements separately so that I could trace them onto watercolor paper and paint them with traditional media.

Then it came time to piece everything together in Photoshop.

And I ruined it.

Oh god, should I even show you guys this?

Uhg — just remember, IT GETS BETTER.

I know, I know, I know. I can barely look at it either.

So I did what I do every time I’m banging my head against a drawing I’m working on (by which I mean ruining)— I begged my devastatingly handsome husband Matthew to fix it for me.

And he did!

Isn’t he the best?

He is.

The yellowy-gold of the halos and the decorative wallpapers in both versions (the horrible one I did and the gorgeous one Matt did) are scans of papers from my Fancy Paper Collection (You can see a portion of my collection hanging on the wall in this picture. Actually, that middle purple/blue paper is the one used in the fixed portrait of Jiz!)

So, yeah! That is how I made this portrait of Jiz.

If you would like a copy of it for yourself, sign up for Jiz’s Karma Pervs or, until January 11th, I’ll include a free copy with every order of Smut Peddler (while supplies last). –Sorry, I’ve already run out!

In December I “went on a trip” for two weeks that I couldn’t tell anyone about because, uh, I was in Seattle being filmed as a contestant on Penny Arcade’s reality TV game show, Strip Search.

So yeah! That is my big news. Episodes are expected to start running in the first quarter of this year, so I’m guessing sometime around March-ish? But hey, don’t hold me to that.

It was an absolutely amazing experience, not least of all because they gave me this commemorative pin!

And also I got to compete and bond with eleven amazing cartoonists that I’m proud to call my friends. Tavis Maiden, Nick Trujillo, Lexxy Douglass, Mackenzie Schubert, Maki Naro, Abby Howard, Ty Halley, Katie Rice, Monica Ray, Amy T. Falcone, and Alex Hobbs — thank you for teaching me how to love again.

You… you guys probably already gathered that I love drawing octopuses, right? Right.

IT’S NOT A FETISH. Not… not really.

(ahem)

Last time Joanna, my screenprinting buddy, and I met up she had talked about wanting to create a single page 2013 calendar and graciously shared her year-at-a-glance layout with me.

The original plan was for her to letterpress the dates and then we’d each screenprint our own design on top in a 4″ x 5″ space, so I designed the above octopus to fit within those parameters. (Sorry about the quality and cropping, I still gotta scan in the original)

But then troubles arose with the letterpressing part and it turned out the dates would also have to be screenprinted afterall– so I figured why not just start over with my whole design and really incorporate both the dates and drawing together? WHICH I DID.

At first I was going to leave the middle area of the drawing blank, since it wouldn’t be showing up in the final print anyway, but then I was like WUT NO I WANNA DRAW ALL THEM SUCKERS so I did.

Even though they totally got covered in the final design.

(You can totally buy this original inked drawing, by the way. I’m just sayin’)

BAM, full integration.

Next up I headed over to Joanna’s house and we made screenprinting maaaaaaagic.

I’m so stoked with how this came out!
Even the teeny tiny text came out crisp and clear!

Gaze upon my latest creation!

THE DEETS:
These prints are 9.5″ x 14″, hand screenprinted with magenta ink onto Arches 250gm paper (100% cotton, acid-free, mold-made in France with deckled edges) and are a limited edition of 24 copies. They are totally available for sale! Just for you! Don’t tell anyone else.

For funsies, I printed in silver ink on three pieces of indigo paper and three maroon. They look good when the light is hitting them squarely, but in regular lighting they’re a bit hard to read, so I’m not planning on selling them.

So yeah! I’m super stoked with how these guys came out and I hope you like ‘em.

Celebrate the year of the octopus on your wall!

In November I released my limited edition of 19 copies I Stand With Planned Parenthood screenprints that include a custom portrait to show off just who it is that’s standing with PP.

14 sold that first month, allowing me to donate $630.
This second month I sold the final five copies, raising and today donating $225.
That means my commissioners and I raised and donated $855!

BUT, Planned Parenthood has a special dollar-for-dollar donor matching marathon going on until December 31st, which means that final $225 is now worth $450!

So that means Planned Parenthood actually received $1,080 from our $855 fundraiser!!!!

Thank you, folks, for teaming up with me to support an absolutely fundamental medical resource to Americans. I’m hard at work completing the portraits and they will be shipping out the door this January.

I heartily encourage everyone to donate to Planned Parenthood before the end of this month, doubling your donation!

TOMORROW I’ll be signing at Cosmic Monkey Comics from 12-2pm!

Cosmic Monkey Comics Signing December 22, 12 – 2pm Cosmic Monkey Comics 5335 Northeast Sandy Blvd Portland, OR 97213

Hope to see you there :)

(Photo from my 2010 signing at Orbital Comics in London, England)

Look at this gorgeous new website! How great is it? ANSWER: SO GREAT.

All my thanks and gratitude go to Kate McMillan of Outbox Online Design Studio, who was a pleasure to work with and is a website-making genius.

Now, you may notice that I still have a lot of work to do regarding adding back the original descriptions to each of my old art and comics entries, as well as, y’know, actually getting my new work added to all the appropriate galleries. In the coming weeks, I will tackle these challenges!

But in the meantime, er, please pardon my dust?

Wheeeeeeeeeee!!