Linework NW recap

Image from the Linework NW website.

Image from the Linework NW website.

So this last Saturday was the maiden voyage of a new illustration and comics event in Portland, Linework NW. Organized by Zack Soto and François Vigneault, here’s the description from Linework NW’s own website:

“Linework NW is a new illustration and comics festival taking place in Portland, Oregon. Linework NW’s goal is to focus attention on the creators who continue to inject new energy and vitality into these venerable mediums that share so much in common, whether their work is to be found in comic books, original art, graphic novels, prints, or other forms. Drawing upon a wealth of talent from the Pacific Northwest and beyond, Linework NW seeks to cultivate a vibrant cultural experience for creators, readers, art lovers, and collectors alike.”

It delivered on all of this. And speaking for myself, and from what I could gather from some other folks I talked to, it was exactly what so many of us needed.

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Upcoming Events!

Hey! I’ve had my nose down getting work done for these events, I forgot to tell you guys that I am in them! There are two events that I’ll be at over the next two weeks. If you live in Portland, you should come check them out!

What: Linework NW

When: Saturday April 12th, 2-9pm. FREE

Where: Norse Hall, 111 NE 11th, Portland, Oregon 97232. Here’s a map link.

First off is Linework NW. It’s a new comic show that focuses more on the creator, art-aspect of making illustration and comics. It’ll be at Norse Hall on this Friday April 12th, from 2-9pm. AND IT’S FREE. I’ll be debuting a preview chapter of the big book I’m working. Here’s a couple of teaser pages:

the-searchers-06the-searchers-12I’ll also have original art, and my backlog of mini-comics, including a new print version of the Titular Hero, a short comic MK and I did for Tor.com, and my other new mini-comic, The Littlest Littles.

Next up:

What: Comics for Change! Reading

When: Monday, April 14th, 7-9pm

Where: Powell’s City of Books, Basil Hallward Gallery, 3rd Floor, Pearl Room

The following Monday, April 14th is a reading at Powell’s for the Know Your City Comics for Change! project. If you’re not familiar with it, Know Your City is a non-profit organization in town that connects people to the place they live. For Comics for Change!, they collected a group of local artists and writers to create biographical comics on social activists in the Portland area. I worked with the ever fantastic and amazing Douglas Wolk on a biography of Darcelle XV.

Hope to see some friendly faces there!

Happy Year of the Horse!

Chúc mừng năm mới! Happy Year of the Horse!

My first project of the New Year is to work on a little bit of promo push, this includes my first quarter postcard! I just sent them off to the printer, and should get them sometime next week.

2014-tet-postcard

I did a postcard for Tết last year too, but I did a bad job of continuing to crank them out after that. I want – nay, I need – to be better about self-promotion this year if I want to keep this freelancing sustainable. In an effort to branch out and try to expand my client base, I signed up for Hire an Illustrator. It seemed like a reasonably priced risk to take, and from some reviews I read online, a lot of people seemed to get a decent amount of work the first couple of weeks. It seemed like they only used the online component, but the most appealing service to me was the mailer service. You can either print postcards up yourself and send them to them, or you can have them print them up for you. They then use those postcards and send them out on a weekly basis in their personalized mailer packets.

Anyhow, I’ll keep you updated as to how it is, but it seemed like a tiny way I could expand my reach a bit and like I said, it was much less expensive of a gamble than say, the $2000 Society of Illustrators membership.

Oh, and since it’s Tết, here’s the zodiac illustrations I did for this year’s special edition of the Asian Reporter.

jhill-2014-zodiac

I did them a little differently this year – completely digitally, and using a white-on-black mark making technique to just change it up. I’m really happy with how the print-like texture came out. If you’re interested in reading your horoscope for the Year of the Horse, you can check out the Asian Reporter online. Just follow that link and download the Lunar New Year section.

Hope you have a wonderful Year of the Horse filled with prosperity and good fortune!

Join Together

Just wanted to share a piece that I did for the Join Together show for the wedding of my good friends Meg and Mike. This is actually the second piece I did because I didn’t really feel 100% on the first one. For comparison you can see the first piece I did here.

join-together-pdx-redux

I already posted this on my Tumblr, but figured I should post it on my main blog, too. Anyhow, I have been wanting to redo it for the last month, but was having a really hard time coming up with a good concept. This Monday, like right before bed, I got this idea and went to town. I guess sometimes you just have to wait for lightning to strike.

In other news, I’m in the middle of a three week teaching stint, and I spent June getting on track and starting to draw pages for The Searchers! There’s a lot on my plate, but hopefully I can share some of it after the teaching winds down.

Summer 2013 Classes at OCAC

ocac

So I just finished up my Writers in the Schools residency at Roosevelt High School. I’ll recap the experience here later this week, but right now I wanted to mention that the comics teaching train is only temporarily stopped, and will be firing up again on all cylinders come July at the Oregon College of Art and Craft.

The exciting thing about this year is that I’m teaching three comics classes! There’s the intro class, Creating Comics, but we’ve also added two advanced classes – Digital Tools for Comics and Advanced Topics in Comics and Independent Projects. W’ve also bundled the classes together as a three-week Comics Intensive, where by signing up for all the classes, you get a discount. All of these classes are for pre-college high school students.

I’m also teaching two classes of Digital Illustration for Young Adult [Middle School] students. One of the classes has already filled up, and the class later in the summer only has three spots left as of this post, so if you’re interested, sign up fast!