nyoom nyoom cat on da move
Hey y’all! Sorry this is a bit late; I have been moving to Chicago!
That’s right; this cat is now (more or less) a formal resident of the Windy City, and will be for a while until I figure a couple more things out. I might stay, I might not, but while I’m here, I’ll be doing my best to make the most of my time.
With that stated, the move (and going back to working full-time in the culinary field) has kind of taken a lot out of me the past few months. I’ve managed to get a few things knocked in, however, and I’ve been stacking things up to knock even more things in.
So, without further ado, here’s a quick recap of some of the…
Things I’ve Been Up To
Photos I’ve Taken
...is mister teddy home?
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In between shifts at the restaurant I’ve been workin’ at, I’ve been doing quite a bit of street photography here in Chicago. I’ll most likely be posting these up on the Photo Roll section of this blog here in ten-image bursts (and, in fact, I’ve uploaded at least one of them here already) to keep them manageable for me and easily digestible for you all.
I’ll be posting the next two rolls from this series in the coming weeks. In the meantime, here to the right is one of my personal favorites from the spring; a portrait of the inflatable bear mascot on top of Teddy’s Ice Cream. -
I ended up in the press pool with my camera for the No Kings protest here in Chicago, and posted quite a few of the photos over on Mastodon and on a thread over on Bsky.
Ideally, I’ll be doing some more freelance photographic work here in Chicago in the coming months; with that in mind, if you work for a CHI-based outlet and happen to need a stringer, or just want a photographer to bring along for your next project, email me! I’d love to work with you.
BABY GOOSIES BABY GOOSIES BABY GOOSIES.
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I’ve also occasionally found the time to snap some shutters during the few days I’ve been back in Moline as well. I’ll be posting those in the Photo Roll section as well here in the coming months.
The photos I snapped in the QC were mostly flower shots to test out my new Olympus M.Zuiko Digital ED 25mm f/1.8, as well as a few photos of landscapes and such. I am, however, pleased to announce that I did manage to sneak in some time to snap The Ones Everyone Wants To See: this year’s baby geese photos!
…Well, only a few of them this year, anyways…sadly, I only ended up in Moline for about a single weekend during the nesting period, so I only managed to snap a few shots this year. But that doesn’t undercut just how cute these lil goobers are, and I can’t wait to show ’em to you. -
And finally, in the most Important News Event Of The Summer, Captured By The Photographic Lens Of Yours Truly: Polly went to Budacki’s for the first time just a few weeks ago. Truly, a highlights of my photographic career.
Pictures I’ve Drawn
The historical write-ups can get a bit darker than the lighter tone I've had up to this point, but it sure beats looking at how dark a lot of the news has gotten as of late.
Clippings is still working through the past century of trans history in our Clippings Scrapbook series of comics.We’ve had quite a bit of ground to cover these past few months. In order:
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In April, we took a look at trans trailblazer, British jurist and legal scholar, and early-twentieth-century feminist luminary Irene Clyde, as well as her early gender-queer publication Urania and the feminist, genderless utopia she wrote of and dreamed of becoming a reality a full century before the UK Supreme Court bothered to take on For Women Scotland Ltd. v The Scottish Ministers.
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We followed that up with more trans publishing history in May, with our look back at the complicated legacy of Virginia Pierce, early cross-dressing societies in the twentieth century, the Comstock Act, and the importance of queer publications such as Dallas Denny’s Chrysalis Quarterly and Pierce’s own Transvestia.
This particular strip has the dubious honor of being the only Clippings strip–and, more likely than not, the only piece of comic art crafted by my hands–to be drawn more or less entirely digitally.
The vast majority of Tabula Rosetta was drawn with one of these little guys right here, in the back of Econoline vans and in coffee shops and diners in Missouri and across the East Coast. If you're going to build a black-and-white kit for comic art, this should be your first port of call.
The text was still typed out and pasted-up on bristol courtesy of my beloved Brother WP-3550 Wilma, mind you, but due to me being back and forth between Moline and Chicago I didn’t have the luxury of a drawing board to lug around with me into the coffee shops I was doing work-on-the-go in.
So, against my better judgement and good taste, I had to knock in the entire thing from start to finish on my Thinkpad and backup tablet.1 And yes, I hated every second of it. (This isn’t idle Luddite nonsense, mind; I genuinely do not like how digital drawing feels.)
- And most recently for Pride Month in June, we took a look back onto the Christopher Street Liberation Day protests that followed Stonewall, and the mysterious death of trans icon Marsha P. Johnson.
On another process-related tangent that doesn’t involve me wanting to engage in some good old-fashioned backwoods methods of Dealing With The Modern World, this strip saw the return of my old workhorse, the Pentel Pocket Brush Pen.
I’ve had this particular beast set aside for a good while now–honestly, close to a couple years at this point–as I’ve been mostly doing traditional brush inking and haven’t needed a portable solution. However, after breaking it out here in the new studio for this particular comic, I’ve fallen right back in love with the brutal linework this thing’s capable of.
Seeing as I’m planning on doing some more sketchbook comics now that I’m in a city with Things To See and Places To Go, I’ll probably be bringing it along with me in my travel kit and working it right back into my workflow. My biggest gripe with the thing has always been its tendency to leak ink when it’s hot out, though, so I may eventually regret that decision…
That’s all of the Clippings strips for the past few months! That isn’t all I’ve been drawing, though. In fact, I’ve managed to close out the commission slots I had opened last time, and at this moment I’m focused on working on some long-term contracts I haven’t quite been able to close out just yet. Hopefully I’ll have more information on where you can check out the work I’ve been doing on those pieces soon!
my Illustrious Personal Cardio Trainer
Other Stuff I’ve Been Up To
Mostly working on getting this move done and dusted, honestly. I have, however, been working fairly heavily in the gym.
This isn’t exactly new for me; I’ve a fairly long history of pushing myself physically, especially when I’m trying to keep sober2. What is new is that, since the beginning of this year, I’ve been training for a 5k.
It is worth noting that I’ve historically despised cardio, and my half-year of hitting the treadmill has not changed this opinion in the slightest. I’ve always been a “pick heavy stone up and make bad thoughts quiet” cave-cat type. But I will say: if you already hit the gym fairly regularly, and want an easy hack to get a bit more feminine? Buy some trainers and start pounding treadmill. 30 minutes, three times a week. Shit works wonders, dawg.
I don’t expect to make any event runs this year, and it’s fair odds that by next year there’ll be even more pushback on trans people doing fucking anything in public, much less sports. But hey, it’s something to shoot for, and I got dresses to fit into as it stands so I was already headin’ that way anyways. Might as well join the throng of marathoners and see how high I can place.
Besides, I have a fantastic coach. Her name is Polyhymnia, and you’ve probably seen a photo or two of her around. Lot of dog parks here in Chicago, so I’ll always have a trainin’ partner.
What’s Up Next
that's a lotta Clippins we got there. be a shame if somebody....made alil zine out of em
“Clippings: Year One”! (New Book!)
I was really, really hoping to have this in print in time for this year’s Ignatz nomination release window, but unfortunately I was a bit preoccupied shoving all my stuff in a four-door sedan and driving it three hundred miles to the east.
However, the plan is to have it in on the next best time window: whenever I can make it happen, which, as of this moment, should be mid-August at the absolute latest.
Clippings: Year One will have every single published Clippings strip,, a full source index, and at least a few additional comics (specifically, a monthly-news style Clippings to fill the gaps in the news cycle we missed when I first started doing the Clippings Scrapbook format) as well.
I’ll be running it off here in the studio and limiting it to 25 copies for the first run. If we sell out, I’ll print more. Easy enough arrangement.
Speaking of koff arrangements….
New Photo Zines As Well? Maybe!
been runnin those toner carts dry to make zines for u
In fact, probably more than “maybe”. I have a…let’s say pact between my cat ass and the sentient eldritch being behind Grinning Kitten Press3, to assemble and compile my protest street photography into a photo zine or two. And, that’s what I’ve been working through.
I’ve admittedly never been terribly creative at names for non-major works (see also the fantastically titled autobio comic compilation Portraits 1, the truly ingeniously named process zine Process 1, or the oh-so-eloquent Tour Exclusive Tape $YEAR series of Ophelia Drowning demo tapes that I made to promote the band during tours and at shows), and I cannot encourage you all enough to temper your expectations here.
Regardless of titular creativity, Protests 1 should be nearing completion around the close of September this year, heavens willing and hell permitting.
I’m not sure on run size–that’s for the beings outside of heaven and hell to sort through. If you’d like to keep tabs on their whims, the Grinning Kitten Mastodon page would be the place to keep an eye on.
Original Art On The BLACKWORK Store? Yeah not anymore
Yeah, you missed the train on that one buddy.
The BLACKWORK store is still open, but my usual policy of “I do not sell my originals, only donate them to museums or archives” is back in effect.
We did manage to move the Medusa piece I drew for the Strange And Unusual Sounds zine into a loving home, though. I don’t think it’ll turn the client who purchased it to stone; if you happen to be that client and you can somehow manage to will your granite hands into formations suitable for typing, probably email me. Or an exorcist. Actually, just email the exorcist.
As for the rest of you, I’m not entirely sure if or when I’ll put more original artworks (some of which may not even be cursed!) up for grabs, but if I ever decide to, this blog will most likely be the first place I’ll write about it.
New Cinderella Suicide Demo Progress? Actually Yes, Somehow, But It’s Limping Along
So, alright. I know full well that I’ve been stuck on track one of the upcoming demo for months now. Why, you ask? Well, I’m going to be honest with you, and while I know this is not the kind of statement that usually gets taken as “honesty”, I’m just gonna do it.
i love this software to death. i also hate it with a fiery passion and spend half my time using it wanting to Sparta-kick it into the circles of hell. so, y'know, normal kinda relationship creatives have with creative software
I’m gonna blame the software and I’m gonna blame the controller.
LMMS 1.3 has weird rules about what you can and cannot undo while in the song editor, and most of them are memory-limited. The more memory an action takes, the less likely the undo buffer will accommodate it.
What this means is that, while you can hit ctrl-z and undo a missed note placement or an accidental delete, you cannot do something like “undo cloning everything in the song editor to four bars later when you were trying to move it four bars to the right on the timeline, which results in a jumbled mess of sound because you’ve functionally copied and pasted the whole song on top of itself and now you have to sit there and delete the first copy while doing your damnest to not delete the actual song”.
The cheap shite wireless mouse that I was using, coincidentally enough, likes to drop inputs with the scrollwheel and middle mouse button. And you use middle-click and the scrollwheel A LOT in LMMS.
And, after like eight straight hours of tweaking a track while having to heaavilly rely on ctrl-z to fix misinputs, I forgot to take my fat finger off the ctrl key while moving stuff to the right to accommodate a foley sample.
what it looks like when you fuck up something in lmms...or when you use lmms at all, for anything, really
You can probably guess what happened.
If you want a visual, I’ve got one off to the right here. I’ve been having to go through the whole shebang, instrument track by instrument track and line by line, and baleet everything that sounds four bars off. Those greyed out ones are the ones that I have yet to go through. Does it look like A Headache? That’s because it is.
On that line of thought, you can probably also guess why I caved, dropped the cash, and am rocking a cheap Bluetooth Logitech M650L now. I’ll hopefully have time soon after I stop carting all my stuff over to Chicago to sit there and fix this track, but right now, we are sloooowly chugging along.
lmmsdevs plz patch membuffer tyty
And that’s about the long and short of what I’ve been up to this past month…er, months? two? three?? Possibly. Time is a con job and a weekend in Vegas sounds like a welcome reprieve from the gambling with my sleep schedule I’ve been doing these days.
Hopefully I’ll be caught up with everything sooner rather than later, and next month I’ll have some more good news for y’all. Regardless, until then, I hope you all have lovely days and enchanting nights.
You’re amazing and don’t let anyone tell you that you’re not. Have a good one.
–piper <3
Footnotes…
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At some point, I do need to write up a follow-up column or two to the “Cat Tools” post from a while back and go into what minimal “digital workflow” I do have, along with my travel rigs for knocking in illustration work on the go. Hopefully, once I’m settled in here, I’ll have a lot more time to write…on top of the other things I still need to use that extra time to do, anyways. ↩︎
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I don’t like talking about it, but I’ll hit three years without a drink in November. Miss it like a dead friend, as someone once said. Not sure how I’ll make it to four, but I wasn’t sure how I’d make it to a month when I first quit, either. ↩︎
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I also happen to be the one who designed their website, so this is far from my first Pact With The Eldritch Leftists. Still haven’t had too many adverse effects from it, I don’t think. Then again, I was born on the river’s banks to begin with, so maybe I’m just already fairly used to strange sounds and fishy smells. ↩︎