Good Knight

I'm really super duper going to miss the Higgins Armory Museum. : (

Wounded

Just a little melodrama for your morning!

Beard Trim Quickie

Another one for Providence Monthly. It looks just a tad murder-y, I think, but what can you do?

Accordion Quickie

Here's a short-notice piece for Providence Monthly! I actually wouldn't suggest headbanging while playing the accordion; you will hit your face.

Bramble Trouble

Twilight and Spike stumble upon a dragon in trouble!

Art Date with Nick! (A Wild Shanth Appears!)

 During the Black Plague, rumors went around that the sickness was brought to households by a young woman with a red scarf- the "Plague Maiden"- and in one town, a man claimed to have fought her off with a sword. If I were a better artist I'd've drawn swollen bubos under her armpits, but I didn't.

 Do you have a special handshake? An exclusive signet ring? Archaic rituals and fancy-ass vestments? You might be a member of a secret society.

Nick & Shanth's studio! I was lucky enough to visit today and enjoy sketch time, witness glue being made, and learn things about brain functions, cuttlefish vision, and choosing to focus on good news rather than bad.

Terrible Hairballs

I deal with my day-to-day frustrations by imagining I'm a great-cat-riding jungle queen. What do you do?

Art Date with PeeJay!

Got together with a friend today to make art! Nothing better than spending several hours making stuff with great company.

ECDX, Team USA Tryouts, and Fun in Philly!

I missed ECDX last year because Audra and I went to San Diego Comic Con- Both events, though different in scale, are exhausting, high-energy affairs that put sport and industry heroes, respectively, side by side with their communities and fan bases. For those of you not in the derby, ECDX stands for East Coast Derby Extravaganza and is a tournament that also has expo bouts and pick up games called “challenge bouts”. This year is the seventh annual tournament, and the second open tryout for the US national roller derby team, which represents America at the Blood & Thunder World Cup.

I tried out for Team USA in 2011 partly because Audra shamed me into it (I was snarking on our league’s star player because she didn’t want to do it, and Audra was like, “Do it yourself, asshole!”) and partly because I needed something to challenge and inspire me. Last time I trained for three months both off-skates and on, and plowed through the tryout with reckless abandon, learning more in those four hours than I had in several years of derby training. 

This time around, I registered again, because I was in a super derby rut and feeling crappy about myself and my level of play. I was hoping that maybe lightning would strike twice and I'd be shocked out of my comfort zone in a positive way. I roped a teammate into training with me, and we were put through our paces by one of my coaches at the MMA gym where I get my ass beat 3-5 days a week. It was awesome, and I felt much better prepared this time around. The anxiety was a lot worse, but on the day of tryouts, it melted away. Buster Cheatin, Team USA's head coach, addressed our group of hopefuls in a no-nonsense way, saying, "This isn't a clinic." I respect that, but there is a large faction of us that are hoping to come home better at derby than when we arrived. So even though the main theme is competition, we all walked away with more than we had before. 

Photo by Sean "Hale Yeah" Hale

"But Rhoda!" one might ask, "You aren't even the best player on your home league! If you already know you're not on the same level as current rostered Team USA members, why would you try out?"

Believe me, I know my place. I'm not delusional. If I were, I wouldn't train at all. I'd do my minimums at practice and bitch about why I never get play time. Here are a few things that went into my thought process:

1. I have HUGE balls. Maybe a little bit of hubris, too. I have massive amounts of respect for the great derby players of the world, but I'm not afraid of them.

2. It's a very rare opportunity to be on the same track as the greats! Even if I were on the travel team, I'm unlikely to square off against players like Fisti Cuffs, Atomatrix, and Shenita Stretcher. And Snot Rocket Science, who is perfect in every way. I want to skate with these people and be tested by them. I want them to school me, and I want to try and beat them. I want to say that I was hit by V Diva and that I lived to tell the tale!

3. I learned so much last time and I'm a better derby player for it. This time around we were tested on skills that I had never practiced. It was gratifying to start off shaky and get it by the end of the drill. While I know that it hurt my assessment, learning on the fly in a high-pressure situation is sometimes the best way to make something stick. And now I have a lot to bring home and master!

4. It's fun! It's a fucking great time! I was sad to see a few girls that were really crushed that they didn't make the cut to get invited to scrimmage. I didn't make it either, but I felt like the experience was worthwhile. I left all I had on the track and had fun in the process. Sometimes (all the time) it's easy to forget that roller derby is supposed to be fun. Situations like these, where you meet new people and then beat the shit out of them, is what it's all about!

But not all of our weekend was about derby! Audra and I went to the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Mutter Museum, had some cheesesteak, gawked at the line for the Liberty Bell and said "HELL NO", and once tryouts were over, had some margaritas and some Yuenglings (which we can't get in Rhode Island).

I also got to spend some time sitting and drawing. Yay, working out the drawing muscles!

I also want to give HUGE props to Audra, who danced until 3am at one of the derby parties and then got up at the crack of dawn the next morning for the black & white open scrimmage! In general she's kind of a saint for dealing with me on trips- I'm like the dad with the khaki shorts and high socks yanking the kids out of bed on vacation; all, "Early bird gets the worm, kids! The museum's not going to explore itself!"

Providence Monthly quickies

 Some quick spot illustrations for an article on running in Providence!

And another last minute one for a fun article on getting justice through the Internet. A good read!

I can't handle it.

Smartphones are hard. If you hand me yours and ask me to text someone, or find directions, this is what will happen.

Arts & Crafts, Gored Edition!

Yesterday, my derby league participated in a "Running of the Bulls" event 18 months in the making(!) to raise money for Amos House, an organization dedicated to helping the homeless. Runners would create teams or register individually and run through the streets of downtown Providence, and our job was to wear horned helmets and skates, and chase them down and tag them with red paint- If you got red paint on you, you had been effectively "Gored for Good." It was a super great time and raised like $110,000 or something close to that. Part of what made it really fun was that everyone got to customize their helmet! Folks did some really creative stuff with their helmets, notables including a "Beach Bull" with a beach ball helmet cover and snorkel, a "Bull's Eye" covered in targets and darts, some covered in fur of different lengths and colors, flowers, fringe, googly eyes, sparkles, decoupage, creative paint jobs, even bird's nests! I did mine in rhinestones! It took a few separate trips to the craft store (a big thank you to my fiance, whose helmet was already finished) and several hot glue burns, but it got done!

Photo by Patsy "Welts" Coderre

And I had fun wearing it in what looked like the human equivalent of the Chicago Cow Parade. MOOOOO!

Sketching Around Town

Sketches from sitting inside various places during crummy weather, and some stuff from open drawing. Here's something I learned from open drawing: I am slow! No, really... I get, as my Painting 1 teacher would say, "overwhelmed with a juggernaut of detail." And then halfway through my drawing the pose is over. Sad trombone!

Warrior/Healer

We are all shocked and heartsick about the Boston Marathon bombings. Nothing has felt completely normal since, least of all today, with news of a shootout and subsequent manhunt greeting us in the morning news.

The Boston Marathon has special significance for my family. My parents are both fixtures in the running community, my dad as a coach for collegiate track and field, my mom as a former Olympic hopeful and current masters' level competitor. Mom placed fourth in the Boston Marathon when she was in college, and a BAA print hung in our hallway when I was a kid. My sister and I understood the significance of the event from an early age. It's a dream for people all over the world, not just Boston. My first reaction upon hearing about the bombing was anger. Whomever perpetrated this terrible act had desecrated something that was really special for so many people. No one runs a marathon on a whim one day. The level of dedication required to even qualify for the event comes from a drive deep within. Some people run to find themselves, others run for causes like cancer or autism, and some run because it was something they were born to do.

While waiting for emails and Facebook updates that would account for the people I knew were in Boston, including a dozen or so people from my parents' running club that were participating in the race, I thought back to the 1972 Munich Olympics, where 11 Israeli athletes were killed by a terrorist group. International athletic competition is supposed to be about friendship, international relations, and celebrating the human spirit through incredible physical accomplishments. It is a hallowed place where violence isn't allowed; a church of tears and sweat.

And so I understand the furor of everyone who is either directly affected or following the story unfolding in various media. It's natural for us to want to take up arms like a swarm of avenging angels and vanquish the evil in the world. Of course I feel this way. Nobody wants to stand helplessly by. We all feel the need to DO something. We feel the need to own a part of the tragedy ourselves, even if everyone we knew in Boston was okay, even if we ourselves were hundreds of miles away. We all want to get those evildoers.

And so with the best of intentions, we spread information as fast as we could receive it. The immediacy of Twitter feeds and news blogs meant that facts weren't checked and stories were disseminated without discrimination. I swear I've heard five different versions of the shootout so far today. Several young men were misidentified as suspects, including a young Brown student who went missing from my neighborhood a few weeks ago. Over the past few days, Internet vigilantes demanded investigation into any photo that pictured a man holding a backpack. The story has become a cloud of panic, anger, and needless hurt, all fueled by our collective unwillingness to be helpless. Our warrior spirits are restless, and they want blood.

But here's the thing; unless Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is standing right in front of you, there's not much impact that our warrior spirits can actually have. Why ride off into battle against a foe we can't even see? Could we not instead try to be healers? Enact the good that we believe in and care for the people that are still alive? We can have much more significant effect on this terrible situation if we listen instead of shout, find out where we can do good, and go there rather than into the fray on our chargers, waving our swords into a cloud of smoke. Do one of the community runs. Show solidarity. Comfort people who are having a hard time. Donate money. Do whatever you have to do to banish helplessness and chase away the nightmares. Be a healer, and help.

Team Player

So, for the past six months, I have been learning the sport of mixed martial arts. It started while I was on a break from derby, but continued well past my planned end date. I'm not entirely sure why I chose to try it. Though I had enjoyed watching fights on TV, never once had I thought to myself, "I could do this." Because even though I'm no stranger to contact sports, I'm actually kind of a wimp. I was super nervous on my first day at the gym, and I threw my back out in the warm up. After a month of painkillers and chiropractor visits, it took a lot to get over my embarrassment and come back. But I did, and now, even though I'm the worst student on any given day and continually get schooled and beat up, I keep coming back. MMA is hard. Really hard. Derby, also, is hard. No one reaches their goal immediately. Some folks have a quicker learning curve than others, but generally it's accepted that before you can be considered "good", you have to get better a little bit each day over a long period of time.

What makes this easier is community. People who are engaged in group fitness activities have an easier time of reaching their goals than people who go it alone. At the MMA gym and in derby, one is surrounded by people who can support, encourage, and teach. In turn and in time, a fighter or derby player will be in a position to do the same, both for newbies and more seasoned teammates.

I pour a lot of my time and energy into sports. It's my social network, and it satisfies my need for achievement in ways that are quantifiable. I delight in looking up my stats after each game- My progress as a skater is encapsulated in a series of spreadsheets over the course of several years. For now, I still hold the record for the most laps completed in five minutes. MMA affords a whole new set of skills to master. Each class finds me making a conscious decision and effort to control the little things: Hands up, chin down, change levels, keep a good base, posture... It's a long list. I don't always succeed, but I'm getting a little bit deadlier every day. Though I may be confident of that, it's nice to have people around to confirm it, and to remind me of the things I still need to fix.

I have no such community for art. It's all my own doing, honestly. Perhaps still having a preconceived notion of what my career was supposed to look like by now has made me slowly withdraw from the illustration world. Lord knows it's nothing like what I had hoped. I worry that my friends will think my work is backsliding, or stale, or at worst, stupid. Sometimes it's hard to stay motivated to keep working on my projects because the only people who ever see them are the submissions editors, art directors and artist reps whose response has mainly been, "Thanks, but no thanks." (This of course excludes my soon-to-be wife, who is supportive beyond measure!)

Some days I go to the gym and get submitted in every round of grappling.

Some nights I go to derby practice and don't score a single point.

These things are hard, but I accept them as part of the journey. Mistakes and missteps have immediate consequences, but I don't tend to internalize. Instead, I try to learn. Why, then, is it so hard to see rejection in the art world as anything but a giant wall of "NO, GIVE UP"? Is it because rather than having teammates to bolster my sense of purpose, I've chosen to make art in a vacuum? I see you all out there. Your work is fantastic! You are all doing wonderful things, and bless you for sharing them. If art was a sport, I'd want you all on my team. And so I suppose that's what I'm missing right now; I'm a team player without a team.

If any of you out there want to do art exchanges, get together for figure drawing, give each other feedback and critiques, hit me up! I want to cheer you on, and I want to make stuff with you.

Because You Can

Roller derby is a beautiful sport for many reasons, and has been the catalyst and structure for immense personal growth in thousands of women and men. Derby players will declare their affiliation proudly to anyone who will listen, and effusively gush about the positive influence the sport has had on their lives.  For many, the day they found derby is the day their life started to change. It turned them from a retiring couch potato into a world-class athlete, a shy nerd into a fearless leader, a whiner into a soldier. No one will argue that it becomes a way of life.

It stands to reason, then, that something to which you devote so much time, effort, and love can let you down. I used to joke that derby breaks my heart on average about once every two months. A few years later I stopped joking about it and acknowledged the truth in it. In July, it will be nine years since I first laced up a pair of quad skates. I've broken up with my home league at least once, and seriously considered it several more times. Staying with my league for so long sometimes makes me feel immortal- But only the sad side of it, watching people come and go, watching the same mistakes made over and over, and having difficulty adjusting to all the changes. Is our league better or worse than it was five years ago? Will the style of derby I'm good at become obsolete with rule changes? Which first year skaters will outclass me by the end of the season? How many more times will I be told I'm not good enough? How many injuries can I sustain before I throw in the towel? For that matter, even if I never get injured again, how many derby years do I have left?

Over time, I've come to realize that anything worth pursuing isn't going to be an upward journey the whole time, and that sometimes it's all you can do just to be going forward. Right now I'm having a bad year for my career- I'm trying to get a book published, and trying to break back into freelance illustration with very little success. Rejections come in daily, and my wonderful fiance occasionally has to listen to me cry about how no one will hire me and how I'll always be poor. The next morning, though, I get up and send out more inquiries. I draw ugly snowbanks and stoplights, just to draw something. I keep plodding forward, knowing that it can't be crappy all the time.

I want to be a great derby player. I want to crush the competition. I work hard for this. Harder some times than others, but always hard. Very few people know the extent to which I work outside of practice. Lately, my experience jamming has been dreadful. I've traditionally been a jammer, but since the middle of last season, I've fallen out of love with it. I've had much better years jamming. The next opposing blocker that says something encouraging to me after she's knocked me down might get punched, no matter how good her intentions are. That's how bad it is. But I'll still volunteer to jam, because going forward is better than folding and not going at all. Eventually I'll figure it out. Fortitude and determination are gifts, but neither is greater than the gift of being able to play.

This year, I'll keep pushing forward not because I want to be great, but because I can. It's wonderful to be able to draw and paint. Being able to tell your story through pictures is an amazing gift. So is being healthy enough to play a ridiculous game on roller skates. A lot of truly great players have been forced into retirement because of injuries or life circumstances- Those of us still playing should consider ourselves lucky that we haven't experienced that heartbreak. So maybe I won't be an all-star this year. Maybe not next year either. Maybe a newbie will break my lap record. Maybe I'll go all season without getting lead jammer. It's all possible. But I still get to spend my nights on skates, playing the game. For all your derbs out there, your journey will probably have more downs than ups. But whether you are on a meteoric rise to derby stardom or crashing and burning, always move forward- Because you can.

Rollergirls! Come out to play-ay!

Here is the PRD season schedule poster! It doesn't have type yet, but it will soon. I think the texture of the ink wash gives it a very different look than I'm used to, but I dig it. I might work this way again in the near future!

Analog Media

I forgot how much I like ink wash. It really helps establish a value hierarchy early on, which is something I struggle with a lot.

Ink wash is also really great for capturing the subtle gradations of under-butt cleavage.

I'm the Worst

...the worst at updating this blog. Ugh. The character doo-daddles next to Wayland Square are from a personal project. The archer didn't make the cut. Too snarky and negative, also unnecessary.