IT'S ME: 31 Self Portraits, 2021-2024

The beginning of Lynda Barry's book Making Comics includes a long-term exercise in which an artist uses a pen and note cards to draw quick self portraits based on a random prompt. The point is to loosen up, draw whatever comes to mind, and put oneself in a spontaneous, from-the-heart mindset. 

I am an artist who learned in traditional mediums but is now stuck with a digital process for commercial efficiency. Loosely following Barry's guidelines, I've returned to this exercise many times to remind myself why I love drawing. The satisfaction of holding physical paper, with an image smelling of ink that I drew simply for the joy of creating, will always be more satisfying than the impersonal detachment of making art with a tablet pen on a screen.

IT'S ME is a collection of all the self portraits I've made with this method so far, spanning a variety of genres and subject matter. They're silly, authentic, and some of the most fun I've had drawing in the past few years.

32 pages, 4.25" x 5.5", available digitally as a PDF download.

This zine was previously hosted on my pal JoJo's itch page, but is now hosted here. There is no need to repurchase if you have already done so over there, as the zine is the same.