Yep, it’s time to show you bits from my storyboard book!

For Thank You, NASA and WeirdBaby, I do a quickly-sketched storyboard to hammer out the pacing and dialog. Sometimes the sketch so perfectly encapsulates what I want for the final drawing that I am loathe to recreate it. For example:

I totally nailed the weight of the body in the first panel, and the bend in both of their elbows. It probably doesn’t help that I am reading Alec: “The Years Have Pants” right now, because I have no hope of achieving Eddie Campbell’s deceptively messy precision. As it turned out, my final drawing came out fairly well, but…

Here’s another one:

This one is just plain better than the final page. In fact, I think my next comic project will be in pencil.

Here’s a few more bits that I’m proud of:

Pimiento cheese is fairly common in the South, where you can find it as a dip or as a sandwich filling. It was introduced to me – in the coldest reaches of Chicago – by Sara a few years ago.

First, you will need a few simple ingredients (you can click all of these for a bigger version):

1 lb of the sharpest cheddar you can find

1 4oz jar of diced pimientos, drained

1/2 cup mayonnaise

salt and pepper to taste

These things are pimientos:

You’re probably used to seeing them stuffed inside the olives in your martini. Very fancy. You may have also seen them in the grocery store next to things like artichoke hearts, canned mushrooms and olives. They are a remarkably common fixture at the store.

If you, like many young people today, are a “food person,” then you might like to grow your own pimientos. Keep in mind that this will increase the preparation time from 10 minutes to several months. Also, it’s hard to justify removing the seeds from several dozen of these things in the name of tasty snacks.

Preparation.

First, grate your cheese into a medium-sized mixing bowl.

Next, drain your pimientos. They don’t need to be bone-dry, just pour out the water and dump the pimientos into the bowl.

Add the mayo.

Simple, so far, eh? Now, here’s the hard part. Stir that stuff up. Stir it like a Polaroid picture. I mean really mash it up.

Next, take a break. Do some hand, wrist and forearm exercises so you don’t get the Carpal Tunnel.

Add some salt and pepper. You’re going to want to stir it up some more after that. Maybe you need a stand mixer for this.

By now, everything should be gooey and fairly consistent. You’re done. Stick it on a cracker.

Ahh, Southern elegance. Incidentally, that’s one of Sara’s screenprinted tea towels. Pretty, huh? Check out her Etsy shop. [EDIT- I am told that the tea towels are not in the shop yet. They will be very soon.]

Yum. Here’s to another year of WeirdBaby!

If you’re metadata savvy, you’ll see that these were taken on July 5th. I know, right? Our failure to make an overt display of patriotism on the designated day is a punishable offense in many states. I think our neighbors already assume that we are secret Islamofascist Communists.

To allay your fears, here is a hearwarmingly American picture of Americans enjoying American things: the orange glows of the sunset, a lighter and sodium oxide lamps.

Celebrating any national holiday late does have its benefits. The day after Easter, you get half-priced jelly beans (but no Creme Eggs – those things are long gone by then). The day after Halloween: candy corn discounts. After Christmas, you can get all the spray snow you want for a pittance. And after Arbor Day, free trees.

I’m not sure about that last one, but check out this discount bottle rocket:

Yep, fireworks are fun.

Safety is fun, as well. Make sure to follow all the instructions on the package.

This one’s name is Herbert. He doesn’t look much like a sandworm, but there you go. Your dog doesn’t look much like Humphrey Bogart, does he?

I have named this one Freddie, though I couldn’t say why.

I think this is called a Power Rangers grasshopper, due to the sporty sci-fi armor and bright color scheme.

This little fellow is all tuckered out after a long day of buzzing around. Look at his little ears! It’s bedtime for yellowjackets.

Either that, or they’ve just been soaked with a crap-ton of pesticide! Yeaaaaah!

Here we have an old-fashioned game of hide-and-seek. Unfortunately, our green friend has chosen a black background for his hiding place, and will soon be slaughtered.

Finally, as Phobos rises over Mars, Opportunity, the Mars Exploration Rover-B, makes its way towards Endeavour crater.

So I grabbed my camera and walked down to the pond while I waited for my water to boil.

I walked down the dock to the covered part at the end. Birds are nesting in the rafters at the moment, and there is a stunning amount of bird droppings underneath. I didn’t step all the way in.

No, that’s not bird poo on the railing there. I think.

By this point, the sun had risen a few inches. Temperature rising; fog burning off.

I went back inside, and Sara had finished making the tea for us. English Breakfast in the fog.

Sara and I took the john boat for a paddle around the pond, and found this:

Here’s a better look at the flower:

A little grasshopper (at least I think that’s what it was) tried to escape from the boat, so Sara fished it out of the water with her oar. He will be rehabilitated and introduced back into society.

Oh, and here’s some garlic that grows in the yard. Yum.

Seriously, man, what in the world is it?

WhatthehellIdon’tunderstand

This is a small, walled-in cemetery next to the house. The only grave I can see without getting inside is for an infant who died in 1832.

My little camera isn’t the best at low-light shooting, but if you don’t blow them up too big, you can ignore the noise. The shot above is a 1.3-second-long exposure. Shotgun is a bit lethargic in the heat, so there’s hardly any motion blur. You can see the cemetery behind him to the left.

You’re going to have to turn out the lights for this one. Taxidermy in the upstairs office, faint outline of the house against an indigo sky.

Here’s Sara and some cacti. Am I achieving a mood with this sequence? The mood should be: inspirational.

Finally, we were sitting on the front porch, when this happened:

I don’t think it has been as hot at night as it was that first night. I was crouching down, inching as close as I could toward the frog, and sweat was streaming down from my temples across my jaw. With my wet face I had the sudden impression that I had been crying, and struggling up from the floor was exhausting and tinged with desperation.