Hark, is that rustling taffeta I hear?

Prom season, yo. It is upon us, I suppose, if you are in high school or you are the chaperone sort. Recently I was talking with my friend Courtney (see her high school self in row 3 of the below) about this comic, and after I emailed it to her, I decided it deserved a post here.

So, the prom: I'd been looking forward to it for mostly fashion reasons for a while. Around the time we had to buy tickets, my friends and I realized that those cool dudes we knew from ska shows probably weren't going to go with us, and that our best pals (in other grades, from other schools) really would be the best prom dates ever. And so it went:



Footnotes:
a) Courtney didn't end up going with us to prom after all. I think she had mono or something?

b) That t-shirt i'm wearing was handmade by me in graphic arts class (really one of my first PROPER graphic design experiences). It was the label/sticker on the records in the triple-seven-inch version of Cub's "Come Out, Come Out" album. The silkscreen process was totally dope, with THREE color separations (violet, magenta, and lime green) and I made one for me and one for my penpal Mara who took me around NYC to see some of the sights mentioned in the Cub song "New York City." Wow, that's quite a footnote!

c) Other funny things I am wearing: vintage polyester warmup jacket I found in a box in the hall at school, the same glasses I still wear, the yellow mini-cardigan I picked out at Urban Outfitters in the big city (ie. Boston), which I got as a birthday present from my parents. The dress in the ska show scene is amalgamation of all the mod dresses I wore in that era.



Don't worry, old-timer! You can see the super-ginormo size here, to inspect all my crosshatching and continuity issues.

ballad of the long-distance muralist

my friend karen recently opened up a coffeeshop in our fine hometown of willimantic, ct. in preparation for said coffeeshop, karen asked me to draw a few things for her.

there is a long history of me drawing things for karen, in fact we first became friends when she was directing a production of "alice in wonderland" at my high school, and i was working on sets and costumes. "i need a tree bleeding color," she said, "i saw the tree in a dream, and that's what it needs to look like. can you make that?" and i did. there were other drawings, and projects, after that.

this project was a little bit different (no bleeding trees involved), we wanted to make a mural that would be a little bit new yorker cartoon, but in color, but not realistic color, and incorporate the eastern perk logo: a steaming cup of the day's brew. here's what i came up with:





and! the window murals have gone over VERY well with the shop's visitors, so there may be more of these guys in the future. i've been sent back to boston with a roll of kraft paper and license to draw even more colorful coffeeshop patrons.