Here’s a really nice one Cayleigh made for me.

Fairbanks is cold. The COYA Steering Committee Meeting is going well and I can’t talk too much about the delegate selection process until later this week but I know most of the Juneau delegates pretty well and I think it’s going to be a phenomenal group.

I was slightly disheartened by attendance at the Forum of Young Alaskans in October. It wasn’t horrible but it could have been better. The smaller pool of applicants for COYA was another boot to the junk after having put so much time into visiting classrooms and organizations. I thought that during such a lively election cycle people might take a little more interest… wrongo.

This weekend has eradicated all that drag and I’m feeling good about the process again. The conference delegates are going to be strong and we may have some concrete goals developing for how to continue the project.

The comic this week is for Lee and Zaz. Lee is my roommate and fellow steering committee member, he’s a great guy and Zaz is his sassy not-girlfriend who cracks me up. It was fun getting to know them both better this trip.

• Comic - Cold Snap

Missing the flight gave me a few extra hours to dig into my project for art class. I have a lot of travel ahead of me so I’ll probably end up failing the class based on my attendance but I really like the project and intend to complete it on the road.

It’s a story of a boy and his mother living in a city which has been half-submerged by a rising ocean. It’s told on seven 12″ x 12″ panels and I was originally going to try for a pen and ink look with some light water colors but I think it may change as I proceed.

A couple of the scenes have involved tricky perspective grids. I might be over complicating the process but when I tried to eyeball it I ran into problems with where to plant buildings and how to determine the water level so I busted out my copy of “Perspective! for Comic Book Artists” by David Chelsea.

“Perspective!” is a great visual reference and it’s really helped me get a grip on creating a more realistic space to draw within. The image above probably looks like something from a Tron game to the untrained eye but I see a flooded city fading into the horizon and a tiny row boat drifting over the rooftops.

Yesterday was the old man’s 59th birthday and his snowy beard was full of grins and chocolate cake.

Dad’s been getting crafty in his old age. I jumped in the car with him a few weeks back and he proudly announced that he’d just finished crocheting a hat. I’ve known him my entire life and he can still surprise me with a lumpy little hat as proof of his efforts.

He’s also knocked together a cluttered painting nook in the basement of his house where he’s imagined some beautiful landscapes, a handful of portraits, some whimsical jellyfish and a babe on a piano.

• Comic - Big Mike

It’s because of my dad’s unwavering support and encouragement that I don’t ever do anything that makes much sense. He’s given me license to be happy.

So, I haven’t seen Sarah in forever, right? Cause it’s been awhile. So Sarah was already down south in Indiana and since it’s so close and since we were clearly both Obama supporters, how fun would it be to combine a visit with this most historic election. It just seemed like a really good excuse to get her to come up. So she steals Belton’s Suburban, drives up, but even after she changed her ticket on Alaska Airlines and paid the fee and everything, getting into the event seemed impossible. The overflow that we were looking forward to, the non-ticketed “reject” party that we were going to get into wasn’t even going to happen, so we were all figuring we’d have fun anyway. So we had vaguely discussed driving down to Ft. Wayne and canvassing, even though Sarah spent all day driving up from Indy. But they would give us one ticket if we did. But of course they were leaving at 4:00 in the morning, and 4:00 in the morning? Seriously? So we slept in. So at 10:00 that morning, we wake up and go to the thrift store to get some t-shirts. Instead of convincing voters to do their civic duty and do what’s best for the country, we spent the ENTIRE day eating Swedish cookies from a bakery, planning how to swindle as many free cups of coffee out of Starbucks as possible, laughing at how we had gotten out of volunteering, and ironing on fuzzy letters, whilst screaming at Brian Williams on TV and foolishly drinking wine on an empty stomach. So we make these beautiful handmade, handstitched t-shirts, it’s 6:30, the east coast’s polls have been closed for a bit. Brian Williams is matter-of-factly telling us that PA may or may not go for Obama. So we decided to get going downtown to meet Matt and see if we could get into the overflow, or if we would have to hang out with a bunch of drunk people in a bar. So we’re there, and while taking an extra 10 minutes to plug in Aurora’s Creative Labs Zen V MP3 player, compulsively checking email, Barack Obama comes through.

Yes we can…go to the rally. Yes we can. Yes we do. Aurora has a ticket ready for 2 people. Two people, and yet we have three people. Jumping up and down and screaming ensued. But what about the third person? So we called Matt, gloated, rubbed it in, sang about it. After 15 minutes, a serious photo shoot, and I believe it was Kentucky later, Matt calls from his office. Can we all go together? Yes we can. Matt also has a ticket to the event! The news was reporting that these tickets were going for $5000! There were 70,000 tickets available and yet 9,000,000 people in Chicagoland. And through lottery, (not our civic duty), but through lottery, we were getting them. For those of you reading, you may have gotten a text from Sarah. She was very excited.

We head to the train with the radio in order to inform the passengers of the election coverage. We make friends with a man with a really ugly hat. He loves the Alaskan for Obama t-shirts, and the update, for Pennsylvania has just been called for Obama! The train, (at least the 4 of us), go wild. Everyone else seems a bit annoyed. The train ride is easy, the walk to the park is easy, we find the general ticketing area, Aurora confuses her boyfriend, Sarah has to save the day because Aurora doesn’t understand why saying “no, the other traffic light” is not producing results. Oddly enough, we run into Joe Hankey, who we knew 5 years ago in Juneau. He’s very kind, even though he barely remembers who we were. There was no pushing, no shoving, no complaining, only happy people, giggles, and cheers. We got in within 20 minutes, and the walk was over 1/2 a mile. It was 70,000 people walking 1/2 a mile, excitedly heading to Grant Park. The mood was celebratory, it was like New Years or a fair, or even Christmas Day, when everyone is pleasing and thank yous and smiles and waves. It was surreal.

So we’re there. We’re in the middle of it. Literally in the center. Look for us, we’re by the flags. (Those are Aurora’s directions.) And 70,000 people cheered when we won Ohio. And Virginia. And we cheered for everything, all together. The spirit was electric. And at 10:00, with three hours of polling left to go in Alaska, before California or any of the west coast states had been called, and he won. And it was deafening. And there were cheers, and screams, and our throats are sore today. Grant Park gave up on CNN after that and instead played music. All 70,000 of us singing, dancing, cheering, crying, hugging and waiting. Also, we are dying of thirst and our feet are killing us from standing for hours!

Barack Obama gives his most eloquent, beautiful, hopeful, tear-inducing speech, and we make our way home. Incredible.

I’m not saying girls are bad drivers.  Most are probably better than me, but I wouldn’t have a sticker like this on my vehicle with a big self-inflicted dent in the tailgate.  It’s like some guy saying, “silly girls, politics are for boys”, and then accidentally becoming a convicted felon.

This election may be shaping up to be an exception but voter turnout for presidential elections typically hovers around 50%-60%. People have fought and died for the right to vote… so why is turnout so low? Probably because the options are limited.

The choices are so whittled down by the time the election comes around that we’re stuck voting for one of two platforms that may not even reflect a candidate’s true opinion.

This year we’ll probably see a spike in turnout because both the Republican and Democrat tickets are more dynamic than in the past. They’re reaching people who have never cared or felt represented before. Both sides are also doing their part to scare the crap out of people, a tactic which seems to be a good motivator in getting people to the ballot box.

However the election unfolds, Alaska is going to be left reeling.

• Comic - Big Election Day

… and that, Ms. Borthwick, is why
I didn’t finish my math homework.

• Comic - Robot Zombies [Page 5 of 5]

These five mini pages are the most ambitious comic challenge I’ve undertaken. They aren’t much considering what others routinely accomplish in a week but I’m happy because it feels like I turned a corner or leveled up or got another heart container.

It wasn’t the best week of my life for time management but I managed to duck, dodge and repel all the rotten pumpkins life was chucking at me. I’m still painfully slow at drawing and painting but I can feel that the class I’ve been taking has helped. I got started by sketching a couple photo references and then filling in the line art with “paint.” It was much harder to paint this scene than the others because everything was more visible and less silhouetted. I still had to rely on some funky lighting tricks in the end to get the page elements feeling like they were part of the same scene.

Here’s a little glimpse into the process on today’s comic:

If anyone is interested I’ll probably collect these pages into a mini comic or small poster print sometime after I recover from my candy corn hangover.

Have a Happy Halloween!