Here’s the last Animals for Animals painting that went up for public sale – a fruit bat!  A tip of the hat to Jenn, who suggested the concertina.

Thanks to everybody who purchased one of the animals this month; thanks to you I’ll be able to donate at least $550 to Heifer International (I had to raise a bit past that to cover all the transaction fees from Paypal, Etsy, and my postage service).

As soon as the deposit clears, I will be donating the money to Heifer for a Knitting Basket, which represents two llamas and two sheep, and a Hope Basket, which will go towards some rabbits and chickens.

You’ll also be seeing an owl and a dormouse posted here soon (if the people who asked for them are okay with the world getting to see them once they’re finished!).

If you’d like more information on Heifer International, they’ve got a great website, and their print catalogue is the only charity publication that elicits smiles from me when it turns up in the mail.

Page 164 of Family Man, now online!

A little bit late, but better than never!  It’s rather hard to draw Ariana smiling.

I’ve had A Trying Week between some runaway freelance work and putting all the orders I can into the mail before Christmas hits.  Tomorrow’s probably your last day to order something from me and have it turn up in time (barring USPS complication, mind you), so go nuts.

Thanks all of you who’ve bought something from me!  That money goes directly into the Keep Dylan From Starving fund these days, and it’s a pleasure to send nonsense out into the world.

The penultimate Animals for Animals watercolor!  Next I’ll do a bat, and then I have one or two that have been specifically commissioned (I’m workin’ on em gang, don’t worry!) and won’t be for sale.

FOR SALE NOW AT ETSY.

…why, what else did you think hens would read?  Tolstoy?  I doubt it.

This piece does double-duty as part of 12 Days of Periscope Christmas over at ComicsAlliance.  Thanks to Laura Hudson for coming up with the brilliant notion of hiring us all on to illustrate the classic carol all comic-book style.

Joy, shipmate, Joy!
(Pleas’d to my soul at death I cry,)
Our life is closed, our life begins,
The long, long anchorage we leave,
The ship is clear at last, she leaps!
She swiftly courses from the shore,
Joy, shipmate, joy.

Walt Whitman
photo by Davie;

——

In the contemporary Methodist tradition, the third Sunday in Advent is the week of Joy.  Advent used to be a much starker time, focusing on the end of the world and the coming day of reckoning, rather than anticipation of the arrival of an infant Christ.  I was struggling with, for this week’s poem, whether to trend towards the Joy or the End.

But why choose, when you can just have Walt Whitman?  (Next year: Emily Dickinson.)

Today’s Animals for Animals:  musical bees!  Once I had the Morning Glory Victrola idea I couldn’t help myself, even though I know that fewer people are obsessed with cute insects. Up for sale at Etsy.

Bees are the second animal I’ve painted that Heifer International actually deals with (although granted, not bumblebees like these)!  Apiaries are apparently an amazing income supplement in rural communities, and with honeybees on the wane, encouraging cultivation is more important than ever.

Wednesday’s animal was: Gaming Rats.

I realized after painting it that it’s a chillingly accurate psychological portrait of my family’s game nights.  My dad is a tender-hearted pacifist who refuses to adopt the ruthless capitalist strategy necessary to win at Monopoly.  Whereas my mom is a heartless predator, and I’m her cheerful apprentice.

I’m knocking at the door of my $500 goal!  Yay!

Page 163 of Family Man now online!

(permalink)

Oh, little Ariana.  You are going to be making that face a whole bunch more as time goes on. And so will I if I have to draw too many more pages of grass.  (I’m kidding, it’s actually kind of a relief to do something loose; it’s just a pain to ink all those blades.)

And hey check it out, kids, if you order a copy of Bite Me! between now and Christmas you get a free drawing inside.  If you order the fancy package that already includes a drawing, well!  In addition to a drawing of one of the main characters you ALSO will get the complimentary addition of a chicken looking on at them.  I know how to bring it.

Today’s Animals for Animals original watercolor fundraiser is a Knitting Hedgehog!

What a sweet little fellow.  Maybe he’s knitting a full-body scarf for a weasel friend.

For sale on Etsy!

Today’s Heifer International fundraising painting-for-sale:  a Connected Otter!

It’s not a MacBook.  It’s a ShellBook!  (that’s why it works underwater.)  This otter understands that in today’s wired world, being down on the river bottom eating a fish is no excuse for being out of touch.

Behold!  Another day, another fundraising critter for Heifer International.  These things keep selling immediately!  (If you want a good leap on one then I recommended hanging around my Twitter account between 11 and 3 Pacific.)

I love this one so much, guys.  Witness ye the Leggy Llama.

Also already sold!  I think I’ll start noodging the price up a little bit, since folks seem to be very enthusiastic about both the paintings and the beneficiary.

After I raise $500 I will produce prints so that those of you without much spending money can contribute, too!

Here’s today’s (already sold) painting for my Animals for Animals fundraiser on behalf of Heifer International:  a Possessive Raven!

Turn-offs:  sharing.  Turn-ons:  shiny things.  This one was pretty fun to do – painting in those crazy oil-spill highlights that ravens have in their feathers.  This one was sold for $50, since it took me a bit longer and has lots of colors.

Total raised so far:  $130, which is enough to buy a whole llama or goat!  Two of my favorite ungulates of all time!

I did a raven because so many people suggested it, so if there’s a critter you’d like to see me depict next, post a comment.

Page 162 of Family Man now online!

(permalink)

And now we’re back to full story pages; a piece from the past.  Woo, even a few weeks off and I feel rusty!  Soon enough we’ll get back into the present day (well, present day circa September, 1768…) and see what Luther’s up to.

Meanwhile, in case you missed it this past weekend, Erika Moen and I, under the supervision of Bill Mudron and Katie Lane, recorded two solid hours of talk about comics, working as a freelancer, and several other topics beside!  I’m editing the podcast version, but you can also view the video Ustream version right here on Erika’s channel. Plenty of questions answered about Family Man!

If you check in here but once a week, please also make sure to keep an eye on this journal or my Twitter feed as I sell off original watercolors (every day possible this month!) to raise money for Heifer International.

And lastly, on the afternoon of the 5th I’ll be at the Legends of Webcomics open house here in Portland with Meredith Gran, Aaron Diaz, that jerk Erika again, and Luke Mahan, selling all sorts of fun and exciting things and, surely, being delightful.  Details here!

Today’s Heifer International fundraising watercolor is a literary hare!

Writing her memoirs, no doubt!  An entire chapter is dedicated to yesterday’s fox and what a doofus he is.  Also what sell-outs bunnies are.

This one sold instantly (wow dang), but there will be more on the way this week!  If you have a request for a particularly fun animal you’d like to see me do, post it in comments and I’ll throw it into the hat.

And, just to start keeping records, Animals For Animals has now raised $80.  That’s enough for four rabbits or half of a llama!

People have started asking if I’ll produce prints of the animals for sale.  The answer is yes, but I want to encourage sales of originals before I start selling reproductions (although I would like for proceeds from print sales to go to Heifer as well).

Stay tuned!

Every year I try to make a Christmas donation to my favorite charity – Heifer International, a wonderful organization that purchases animals (from bees to buffalo)as well as veterinary care and training  for impoverished families the world over.  (Read more on their site.)

This year it’s a bit harder for me to donate than usual, since I’ve made the transition to being a self-supporting artist.  Many of the friends with whom I used to go in on an animal purchase are in the same financial situation.

It seemed to me that this was an opportunity – for me to make things, for you to purchase something lasting, and for a family in the larger world to benefit from it!  For the month of December, I will be creating and then selling watercolor paintings of animals (as often as I can manage!).  When I finish, I’ll count up what’s been raised and then buy the most animal possible!

My offering today:  an enemy of many of the animals Heifer sponsors, a fox!  Little does he realize that his dastardly deeds will ultimately be doing good.

This crafty fellow is on sale at Etsy for $40.  It is a lovely little painting, and I will guarantee arrival by mail to any part of the world in time for Christmas, and that it will be packaged fancy-like.

Chapter 3 of Family Man has begun!

…and there’s a new website!

Change your links, everybody!  Family Man now lives on one single website, and that’s http://www.lutherlevy.com.  It’ll update there every week, and all the notes and extra features you have come to love (or merely tolerate) live there with it, along with many new bells and whistles and an all-over shinyness.

And a new chapter is off and running, with yet more exciting bunny imagery.  Sorry, bunnies of the world; it’s nothing personal.

Happy Thanksgiving to all those of you in the U.S. of A!  Now go play.

Finishing the website and putting together a book pitch have delayed me for another week.  But that’s okay, because it gives me the opportunity to make some long overdue fan-art for the best ever webcomic set in Ancient Rome: SPQR Blues by Klio!

Yessir, that’s Vesuvius in the background.  The volcano is to SPQR Blues what werewolves are to Family Man:  you never know when it’s going to kick in.

SPQR Blues, beyond being a great ensemble soap opera, is also one of those rare works of historical fiction that make the time and place it depicts feel both cozily familiar…and completely foreign.

Klio’s delicate and conservative linework can be consumed in large doses with no dangerous side effects, and the obstacles and heartbreaks of daily life in a complicated society make for very tasty reading as well.

There’s an immense archive available for your reading pleasure, so shoo!  Go read!

Nostalgia.

Remember the 1340’s? We were doing a dance called the Catapult.
You always wore brown, the color craze of the decade,
and I was draped in one of those capes that were popular,
the ones with unicorns and pomegranates in needlework.
Everyone would pause for beer and onions in the afternoon,
and at night we would play a game called “Find the Cow.”
Everything was hand-lettered then, not like today.

Where has the summer of 1572 gone? Brocade and sonnet
marathons were the rage. We used to dress up in the flags
of rival baronies and conquer one another in cold rooms of stone.
Out on the dance floor we were all doing the Struggle
while your sister practiced the Daphne all alone in her room.
We borrowed the jargon of farriers for our slang.
These days language seems transparent, a badly broken code.

The 1790’s will never come again. Childhood was big.
People would take walks to the very tops of hills
and write down what they saw in their journals without speaking.
Our collars were high and our hats were extremely soft.
We would surprise each other with alphabets made of twigs.
It was a wonderful time to be alive, or even dead.

I am very fond of the period between 1815 and 1821.
Europe trembled while we sat still for our portraits.
And I would love to return to 1901 if only for a moment,
time enough to wind up a music box and do a few dance steps,
or shoot me back to 1922 or 1941, or at least let me
recapture the serenity of last month when we picked
berries and glided through afternoons in a canoe.

Even this morning would be an improvement over the present.
I was in the garden then, surrounded by the hum of bees
and the Latin names of flowers, watching the early light
flash off the slanted windows of the greenhouse
and silver the limbs on the rows of dark hemlocks.

As usual, I was thinking about the moments of the past,
letting my memory rush over them like water
rushing over the stones on the bottom of a stream.
I was even thinking a little about the future, that place
where people are doing a dance we cannot imagine,
a dance whose name we can only guess.

Billy Collins
photograph by (Eric)

Soon we’ll back to regular updates and I’ll roll out the new website, but in the meantime, here’s our third week of art devoted to some of my favorite comics online.  This week we move away from longform narrative comics and head for strip land, with Arthur (duck) and Flaco (lizard) from Dave Kellett’s Sheldon.

There are many strips online that I enjoy deeply, but Sheldon is the only one that makes me feel like I’m a little kid again, pressing my nose with delight against the daily newsprint funnies while I wolf down a bowl of Rice Chex before school.  Calvin & Hobbes was a strip at the time which, even if I didn’t get every joke, was so exuberant that I loved every panel.  I think 9 year-old me would’ve felt the same way about Sheldon.

As it is, 26 year-old me happily returns to Sheldon every day, snerking at the obscure “grown-up” or pop culture jokes and quietly enjoying the sheer silliness of it all.

Dave Kellett is also a bonafide funnybook scholar and a stand-up fella.  Bless the internet for bringing him to us in this day and age!

My maternal grandfather died a couple of years ago.

We were very fond of each other – he took me to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival (a full day and a half drive) from 7th grade through my high school graduation, a gift of immeasurable impact.  He was a bright, curious, caring, and endlessly enthusiastic man. He reacted with genuine joy whenever his didactic little granddaughter held forth on erudite topics.  I still remember his delight upon hearing me tear apart the production of Romeo and Juliet that was one of the first productions we saw together at OSF.

I didn’t ask for anything of his after he passed away; my mother knowingly brought me a few things that meant a lot, but all in all my memories were the most vivid token of our relationship.  Recently, however, his last wife sent my mother a number of his old files.  Including one entire manila folder full of every letter and picture and document I had ever sent him, or that my parents had sent him relating to me.

So I’ve rediscovered verything from short stories I wrote in second grade to novellas I wrote in middle school to graduation notices and e-mails and silly cards.  I haven’t quite had the strength to go through all of it yet, but one thing I did find:  the poem below.  I remember this odd, apocalyptic little poem quite well but had no record of it myself, so knowing that he had it all along is very touching.

And, now that he’s gone, the poem – being as its topic is a girl with a fondness for the departed – takes on a sweet poignance.

Anyway. Here it is.

Annie stayed.

Annie McSalva stood that day
but no one was there to enjoy her stay
only the ghosts had not gone away

Annie remained for the ghosts.

Annie McSalva walked down the streets
her feet tapping sidewalk to various beats
She looked in the theatres, all empty seats

Annie played Hamlet for ghosts.

Annie McSalva read all the books
out loud, in the library, and none gave sharp looks
the ghosts listened well in their crannies and nooks

Annie read on for the ghosts.

Annie McSalva swam in the pond
that led to the gutters and sewers beyond
but nobody stayed to drink that which was fond

to Annie, who swam with the ghosts.

Annie McSalva lay in the sun
and thought that the world had only begun
but the ghosts whispered back that it almost was done

Annie survived with the ghosts.

photo by Nocturnal Bob

Hey hey hey, guess what I got sixteen boxes of in the mail today?  If you guessed it was sixteen boxes of the second printing of Bite Me!, then you win!

As an extra “thank you” to everybody who ordered while the book was reprinting, trusting all the while that I was not going to run off to Cabo with their hard-earned $15, I’m including a nifty print I whipped up just for the occasion.  I promised “Claire and Lucien bein’ silly”, and lo, hopefully this qualifies:

Oh, those crazy kids.  Two peas in a pod, really.  A dead, bloodsucking pod.

It will be a delightful 6×10.5 inches so I can slip it into your book order all handy-like.  If I have any left over, I’ll put the extras online next week for those who might be interested.

Another week, another drawing of somebody else’s character!  Continuing with the unintentional theme of “naked green ladies”, this week it’s Angora from The Meek, by Der-shing Helmer.

Sadly I drew this sucker on Bristol, and had to use my four remaining Colerase pencils – or else I would’ve watercolored again.

I’ve been gawking at The Meek since shortly after it started up, so it was a pleasant surprise to turn up at APE and see actual print copies of the first chunk!

The Meek is one of the few comics that manages to be densely, lushly illustrated… and lively.  Too often an artist will lavish all their time on the coloring or the stylish character design…and forget to inject life through gesture and interaction or, you know, writing.  The result is eye candy that I get bored with about ten pages in.

But Der-shing has been knocking it out of the park for several dozen pages now.  I can’t wait to see where she’s going and how these delightful, elastic characters are going to smack into each other.

Also?  I adore how she draws Angora’s boobs.