everydaypants.com

everydaypants — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 23:00:04 +0000

Registration for the Chicago Zine Fest is open now! We’re pretty excited about the two days we’ve planned and with the response we’ve had so far from people who are finding out about the fest.

(poster art by miss sara drake! sponsored by quimby’s bookstore, renegade handmade + renegade craft fair, co-prosperity sphere, and the columbia college fiction department)

if you make a zine, you should come table! it will be a lot of fun. go to www.chicagozinefest.org to sign up!

if you can’t come table but you make a zine, consider submitting work to the art show. it’s an open-call for any kind of art from people who make zines. you don’t have to be tabling to participate!

if you don’t make a zine but like zines, come to the fest! you can find lots of zine to purchase, see a rad art show, hear some talented zinesters read from their zines, and watch the gadabout film fest. all within two days. phew.

it’s going to be great. tell your friends.

Mural

everydaypants — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 04:51:42 +0000

In December, my nanny family hired me to help them with a mural they had been planning for Rishi’s (the boy I nanny for) new big boy room. I had previously helped them paint a One Fish, Two Fish mural in Rishi’s bathroom and it was a lot of fun, very simple. His big boy room was to be a lot more extensive! The mom designed it all from the book, and loosely sketched it out using a projector she had borrowed from the school she works in and I got to work blocking it all in. It took a couple weeks over many hours of work and it was finally done! Rishi’s mom helped with some of the outlining as well and she did a great job.

Here’s the original bathroom painting I did. just simple waves in the style of the shower curtain:

Rishi in his bathroom:

For Rishi’s new bedroom, they continued the Dr. Seuss theme and chose scenes from Oh, The Places You’ll Go! Here’s a shot of most of it, that bed is just a guest bed that’s in there for now. Rishi hasn’t switched rooms yet:

bad photo

for the part by the door, they’re going to paint on numbers and turn it into a growth chart that Rishi can mark his height on as he gets bigger.

christmas commissions

everydaypants — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 00:33:25 +0000

I was recently given the opportunity to do a fun drawing for a Christmas present. When I was interviewing for my nanny position this fall, I met a lot of great families and always showed them my website since my work is kid-friendly. Around Christmas, one of the father’s I had interviewed with months ago contacted me out of the blue hiring me to make a custom drawing as a Christmas present for his family! It was for his daughter and he just knew he wanted me to make an illustration and include various events that happened throughout her year. So I decided to illustrate it all into a little scene, a literal path for the metaphorical path she had taken that year.

Here’s what I came up with.

Details

a little fun commission

everydaypants — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 01:07:19 +0000

My friend Jess, a very supportive zine reader, recently commissioned me to do a fun little project. I love doing work for Jess! This isn’t the first thing she’s commissioned me for and she always has fun quirky ideas that let me use my drawing style exactly the way it is. Her and her partner Jeff recently moved so she asked me to draw her and Jeff on a tandem bike, pulling their luggage and their little chihuahua, Tortilla! She’ll be using the drawing for change of address cards she’ll be sending out. I finished it a few weeks ago, thankfully, because then I got a rush of little jobs at my door that have kept me busy since.

Weekly (?) comic trade

everydaypants — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 02:25:46 +0000

Well, it looks like I spread myself way too thin for the month of December. Weekly comic trade has grinded to a halt.

On my plate, I currently have:

-a mural for my nanny family

-a commissioned illustration for a christmas present

-painting, decorating and moving in to my new apartment

-graphic novel work

-planning the chicago zine fest with my friends

-volunteer shifts at a non-profit bookstore

the good part is knowing i’ll get it all done. the bad part is that i have to be working every waking moment of my days! at least for the next week or so until one or two of those bullet points are behind me. i’m making a lot of headway, so i’m not worried.

here is the final comic trade that Matthew and I did before we got busy. I forgot to post it here. It was done a few weeks ago.

MATTHEW’s:

MINE:

Up and Away Treehouses

everydaypants — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 22:29:10 +0000

Last month I did some illustration work for my friend Roger. He recently started an entrepreneurial venture, a custom treehouse building business. He’ll be using environmentally friendly techniques, and is also planning on donating a portion of his proceeds to Habitat for Humanity! I met Roger when he moved a few houses down from me in Baltimore. A few months after moving in, he left to participate in Bike and Build, a program where people bike across the entire country, building houses for Habitat along the way.

Here’s the illustration I did for his website. In the end, they ended up altering some colors because the Board wanted something brighter. You can see it on his site at http://www.upandawaytreehouses.com. Click on the image to view a larger version!

From his mission statement:

“Up and Away Treehouses is a new environmentally conscious company specializing in the design and construction of custom treehouses and residential playgrounds. We guarantee our designs to be safe, unique, well built and long lasting. We are currently located in Baltimore, MD.”

“We love treehouses!

We love playing in them, relaxing in them, building in them, or just simply being in them.

At Up and Away Treehouses, we believe that in these days of video games, structured learning, scheduled recess and plastic playgrounds, we need outdoor spaces that provoke our imagination, show us nature, let us play, and encourage us to climb out of our routines to find ourselves truly up and away.

Treehouses allow us unfettered access to this place. From the lofted perspective of the trees, exhilaration and wonder guide us to pure and undomesticated territory. Take part in this unparalleled and inspirational freedom!”

If you’re in Baltimore area and know anyone who would be interested in a treehouse for their family, please spread the word.

Weekly Comic Trade

everydaypants — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 05:03:37 +0000

Here comes another weekly comic trade! I’m a little surprised I’ve managed to keep up, considering work on the graphic novel with Leslie. I’ve also been preparing for our upcoming trip to the Milwaukee zine fest, for which Matt, Leslie and I are compiling our comics into a zine! Putting together a zine is a lot of work, even when all the content is already made. You have to come up with a title, format, establish who will put in what, how many pages it will be, create a cover and intro, put it all in order, put it all together, and then make copies! We’ll be riding up to the zine fest this Saturday, along with our friend and talented comic artist, Neil.

You’ll see a post about the comic zine soon, and maybe I’ll even post a little image from the graphic novel. We haven’t quite decided yet how under wraps that whole thing will be, or if we’ll share snippets along the way. It’s going to be a long process.

On to the comics! I’ll let them speak for themselves this time.

MATTHEW’S:

MINE:

Weekly Comic Trade #6!

everydaypants — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 05:00:42 +0000

Hi again. We haven’t fallen off the wagon. Phew. We missed another week, but what can you do, right? I’ve been working hard doing prep work (character and setting designs) for a graphic novel I’m beginning to work on with my friend Leslie. Leslie wrote the story and I’ll be doing most of the illustration, with some help from her as well. Work on that will probably hinder my weekly comic making abilities and it will more than likely become a bi-weekly thing. But hopefully the outcome of a complete, cohesive graphic novel will make it all worth it in the end, many many months down the line! It’s exciting to begin work on such a big project, but also very daunting. Weekly comics will be a nice breather when I need to dig my brain out of the depths of the graphic novel story.

One other bit of news, Matt, Leslie and I are going to compile a comic zine with all of these comics, and Leslie’s daily comics (which can be found on her blog linked above). We wanted to make something to have specifically in time for the Milwaukee Zine Fest on November 14th. We’re all tabling with our zines so it will be fun to have something collaborative that we all put out together! I’m sure I’ll post about that once it’s ready, in case, for some crazy reason, you would like to own your very own personal copy.

Back to the task at hand, weekly comic trade! Mine is a short little guy semi-related to Halloween. It’s in response to another comic kid, Jake L., over at You Are Here. He made a daily comic called ‘Haunted’ and prompted: “Tell me about odd childhood hauntings or fears you had.” So I did.
Matt’s comic is self-explainatory! and very relatable, as per usual.

MATTHEW’S:

MINE:

Matt’s Zine

everydaypants — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 23:09:20 +0000

As I mentioned in my last post, Matt has been working hard on his zine. He just finished it! Aside from drawing, Matt’s forte is writing. He’s quite the poet. You should really considering checking out his zine if you want to read some sad, but hopeful poetry about living the punk life. I’m not a poetry person reason, let alone a poetry zine person, but I really like his.

from his blog:

’s right! I just finished the latest issue of my personal/poetry/sad-as-fuck zine Effigy! I thought this one was a bit more on the light side but two of my readers so far have described it as “sad, as usual.”

of this city, a vast unraveling.

I’m pretty jazzed on this one for a few reasons: ( a ) I’ve started giving myself a three month schedule with these, and this one I finished pretty close to on-schedule; ( b ) I’ve started drawing a lot more recently thanks to my friend Ramsey and my weekly comic trade, which means there’s a lot more of my awkward attempts at doodles in this one; ( c ) it always feels good to finish a project.

Aside from the three poems I’ve already posted from the issue on here, below is a sample of what you get this time around, called “Poem for Action.” For those loyal subscribers and close friends out there, yours should be coming in the mail or in person. If you want to order the issue, send 2-4 dollars to Matt Whispers 1743 N Mozart ST APT 1 Chicago, IL 60647.

Here’s what it looks like:

Poem for Action:

I hung a black flag from my porch

but I had never been through

battle, was no marcher. So I tried

to be a romantic, perched on the roof

of my house in Allston watching the town

in daylight. It was

too much for me.

Jamie’s hiking the

Himalayas right now. Toby’s in Florida

on tour. In Boston they’re probably

planning the night’s adventure w/

a case of malt liquor.

In Chicago

every day’s a battle to stand upright

so I’m here wandering Riverwest

where I spent most of February in

hiding trying not to be lost.

In

Chicago I try to find my place

among the mute buildings

and strips of old churches. At my

old place I used to climb onto

the neighbor’s roof and look east

toward the lakeshore.

At night I

could see all the high-rise condos

lit up, reaching towards the sky like

a monument to the flat sprawl

of this city, a vast unraveling.

Comic #5

everydaypants — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 22:02:37 +0000

A few days late again on a comic! There’s also no comic from Matthew this week. He was too busy working on his zine, which is really awesome. So that’s just as exciting anyway. I’ll be sure to post about that when he puts it out. Here’s my weekly comic. A shorter one this time.