Owlex

Hey guys, I donated some art to an auction taking place in Champaign, IL.

On May 29, there was a house fire in Urbana, IL. Everyone was unharmed except Ashley Ames, who was airlifted to a hospital in Springfield with very severe injuries. She passed away on Tuesday, July 6 2010. ASHLEYFEST will be held on July 29th, 30th and 31st. The proceeds from this event will go to the Ashley Ames Scholarship Fund. For those of you living in that area, I strongly encourage you to attend this event.

During this three-day event, you can view and bid on pieces by myself and other local artists at the Indi Go Artists Co-op from 2pm-11pm, and hear live music at Class Act Interactive Education and Events. Here’s the lineup:

Thursday July 29, 2010 – Music begins at 8:00 PM

Sugar Prophets
Killborn Alley
Corn Desert Ramblers
My Dear Alan Andrews
The Palace Flophouse

Friday July 30, 2010 – Music begins at 9:30 PM

JigGsaw
Roberta Sparrow
Private Thoughts
The Fresh Kills
Take Care

Saturday July 31, 2010 – Music begins at 7:00 PM

Death Tram
YouthBitch
The Burninators
Alleyway Sex
We Must Dismantle All This
SDS
Wither & Bloom
The Diamond Stretch
Last Legs

If you’re interested in learning more, or in donating to Ashely’s fund directly, visit: http://www.supportashleyames.com/

As promised I am going to start posting some things here for you guys, so here’s a preview of SPAZ! #3. This is a panel from a story I’m working on that I had so much fun drawing that I just had to share it. The story is from a series started working on this week where I illustrate some of the Wikipedia list of unusual deaths. Can you guess which unusual death this panel is from??

So this post is a little bit late but I did want to point out, to any of y’all that missed it, Owlex just passed its 100th strip. When I started this strip a year ago I don’t think I had any idea how far I could go with it or how seriously I could really take myself as an artist. Trying my best to produce work for an audience every week has taught me an endless amount about drawing, diligence, and self-publication. I just wanted to thank you guys for all the support you’ve given me, even if that just means reading the strip every once in a while. So here’s to what I consider a big accomplishment and hopefully many, many more Owlex stories in the future!

photo courtesy of Audrey Ward

After a lot of going back and forth on this, I’ve decided to alter the updating schedule here at Owlex. Instead of posting a new comic twice a week, I will only be posting once a week until further notice. This might be a disappointment to some of you (especially Mom) and it is certainly a disappointment to me. A large part of why this website was created was to keep me constantly creating and posting comics. However, recently I have been slacking a lot and dealing with a lot of stress related to the website and to my work in general. I’ve decided that it just isn’t worth it to stress out about this strip. It’s supposed to be fun! And really, it is fun. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed creating this strip and intend to continue doing it for some time. But with everything else going on in my life I feel like I’m worrying more about updating on time than I am about the quality of my work, and that focusing on this strip is taking my attention away from my SPAZ! minicomics, which I also really enjoy making.

This is not to say you won’t be hearing from me only once a week! Now that I’ve decided to cut back to one strip a week, I’ll be shifting a lot of my attention to finishing SPAZ! #3. I’ll be posting little progress reports here in the site’s blog, as well as some process-related posts and maybe even throw you guys some preview pages of the minicomic as they are completed. I’m also going to try to do some work on the site, like maybe finally getting around to finishing the cast page and maybe adding a nice banner.

I apologize for my inability to update the site as frequently as I’d like to. Between my day job and other projects and getting ready to move this summer, I’ve been feeling sort of overwhelmed. Right now anything I can do to lower my stress level and improve the quality on my work feels like a thing I need to be doing. So for now, there will be a new strip on Tuesdays only. As always, if you’d like to help lower my stress level you can always donate. In the future I am going to try to think of little incentives to get people to donate (buttons, maybe?) so if any of you have ideas about things you’d like me to make go ahead and let me know.

As you may have noticed, the site has not been updating the past two weeks. Between my birthday, a couple important applications and then getting really sick, I have been super busy and unfortunately there was no time for Owlex. But we’re back! Updates should continue on our regular schedule from now on.

Also, for my birthday my mother sent me a package and look at these adorable little figurines that were inside:

A little owl for Owlex and a little hedgehog for Kevin!!! So cute!!! I love it!!!

One more piece of news: since I was unable to make it to TCAF year (which was really disappoining) I’ve decided to go to MoCCA instead! So next weekend I will be in New York City, let me know if you will be around! Since I don’t have any new work and this was a really last minute decision, I don’t have a table or anything, so I will just be wandering around the show. Come find me!!