Hello. I realized the other day that I raised the alarm on social media about my dad, then never turned it off. I just don’t like being all dramatic and personal with my posts on those sites.

But he’s fine. (Phew!)

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In other news, I got a bike for my birthday!

I made a zine about it. I just roughed it out in pencil, but because I spend so much of my time at work inking and finessing my cartoons, I decided I just like the rough-looking pencils, and I’m going to leave it like that.

I also want to lower the bar for making zines, so that making them doesn’t have to be a big, heavy production; I can just quickly express what’s on my mind.

Here are the panels for this zine.

…And here’s what it looks like, assembled:

I like to give things away. Sometimes that impulse makes me gasp, like this weekend when I bundled up an expensive pair of shoes and fed them to one of the city’s (very few) clothing donation boxes.

“Oh, but they were so expensive, and that’s rare for you.” But they were leather — recycled leather, but still, I know myself, and I know I don’t want to wear that, and won’t in the future.

Likewise, the area of Toronto where I work, Liberty Village, has just set up two library-boxes — a “leave one, take one”-type plan that’s become popular. So I dropped off some books Monday, and was going to put two in today, then paused on the last one:

I bought this back when I was taking workshops and learning how to be an organized person. Last night when I was packing my bag I put this in, thinking, “Oh, that stuff is so basic to me now,” but as I flipped through it, standing in front of the library-box, I remembered why I liked it so much: I love the promise and possibility of setting up new projects, and the dream of things going to plan. This book is full of brilliant tips and systems for managing personal and organizational projects. As Marie Kondo would say, it “sparks joy”.

So that was a close one. But still, I love the smell of burning bridges in the morning!

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It seems wrong to not mention this, since it’s such a big thing, yet blogging about it feels crassly dramatic. I don’t really know how to process this event, except the way that I have — by drawing about it.

I spoke to Mom again last night, and it sounds like Dad’s okay, which is a relief. But it’s hard to be here just getting on with everyday things.

Somebody keeps leaving this smut in the hallway of our condo:

I was searching yesterday for a quote from F.A. Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom. (It’s a go-to favourite for economic libertarians — those who’d prefer that the government left the marketplace regulate itself.)

In so searching, I found an illustrated overview of the text, produced by General Motors . The drawings are spare, powerful, 1940s-style linework, but: ironic, given the behaviour of the most prominent spokesperson for the modern-day marketplace.

So I gave one of the drawings a little update:

This weekend, I finished the final illustration for the next Strategic Coach book.

I’m learning more techniques and principles with each of these projects, but there’s a point with each of these panels where I’m just applying effects and shapes and layers by guess and by gosh until it feels right.

I wonder if other artist/designers do this, too, or if they actually have a plan.

I’m extremely grateful for the people who developed the program I use to do my work, Clip Studio Paint. The more I use it, the more I discover — and I feel like I’ll never run out of new things to learn.

I usually learn software by just flailing around in it, trying to reach an outcome, but CSP is so involved and there’s such a steep learning curve to it that I watched a whole series of tutorials to get started — a brilliant series by Doug Hills — and I’m really glad I did. I would never have understood or found these great features on my own.