Falling Rock National Park
My friend and partner blogger Steve commissioned this timely image of Voltron wearing a mask. It was a lot of fun to make!
If you are interested in a commission, message me or simply head over to my portfolio website, kidshay.com
Ready to be taken into your home from the streets of Covidlandia!
I’ve been thinking about how much we have lost this year. Family and friends, acquaintances and those who we never knew personally but whose work affected us nonetheless. Each life represents a story that is gone and never fully recovered.
I once visited the Vietnam War Memorial in DC and was struck by the inconceivable number of names engraved in stone. It felt endless, not because of the physical length but because of the unquantifiable loss represented by each life brutally ended. That war changed the country, but I don’t know if it was for the better.
The virus has cut short a number of lives that I cannot begin to comprehend, but it doesn’t end there. Unemployment, overworked first responders, essential workers who have had to hold the economy up on their backs. We haven’t even begun the mourning process because we’re still in the middle of the tragedy.
And now we are seeing the result of too much brutality against black and brown citizens for too long. The pent up anxiety of a pandemic has no doubt fueled the rage, but that makes it no less justified. What we need is a government willing to listen to the voices rising up in the streets. What we have is a president who understands nothing but his own ego, who only denounces racism under extreme duress. We all know he is on the side of the oppressors.
It feels bleak, but whenever I check my feed I see posts of support, people who want to do the right thing. People writing of acceptance and love. We want to help each other. So I’ll end on that note. If you made it all the way to the end, thank you. I’m with you.
*Don’t take that couch!
I started a new website dedicated to commissions and illustration work.
If you are interested in someone with my particular style, or know someone who does, have a look and feel free to contact me.
In my ongoing effort to produce coloring pages for all of LQ’s favorite characters, I made two more engines from Thomas & Friends: Emily and James. In this time of self-quarantine, perhaps you or a child you know could take solace in coloring some trains.
Some recent dinosaur drawings. I left the last four black and white in case you’d like to print and color them. In case you check only this blog and fear I have fallen off the planet, fear not: I post regularly to my Instagram account: @kidshaycomics
I don’t often think about how far I’ve come as an artist. But, it being on the verge of a new decade, I thought I’d see exactly what I was doing ten years ago. In 2009, I released Welcome to Falling Rock National Park, the third comic strip collection of the above-mentioned comic strip.
Here is the cover to that book, as well as one strip that I particularly liked.
Happy 2020 everybody! I hope we all grow into ever more wonderful beings over the next decade.
Another month, another drawing challenge. I’ve been participating sporadically with #Dinocember. These are my results so far:
Two heartbreaking decisions I’ve had to make recently: one, the next issue of Falling Rock National Park will be the finale. The second, that I won’t be exhibiting at San Diego ComicCon next year.
Falling Rock has been a big part of my identity for much of my adult life. I started the strip in 2006. After six years of that daily strip (and four years of my previous strip), I realized I was not going to ever be a syndicated newspaper cartoonist.
Falling Rock made its debut as a comic book series in 2013 (with the awesome help of guest artist Reid Psaltis). Over the past 7 years I’ve released 8 issues (with two more guest artists, Tyrell Cannon and Oscar Woodruff), and hopefully will release issue 9 next year. But it never made the bigger impact I was hoping for, never got the readership or publisher’s interests. And so, it’s time to try something new.
As for ComicCon, it’s been an amazing 8 years, but it’s been getting more and more difficult to afford that convention. I can’t do it at a loss. Every year I am amazed at how well it is run, and how gracious the people are, from attendees to exhibitors to celebrities. I will miss it, and I definitely want to return.