My love for art - and narrative art in particular - began well before I had ever laid eyes on a comic book. As a child, my parents and my grandparents worked selling books for publishers. Every few weeks we would get a big box of sample books and it would be ...

Picture books
HippieVan at 12:00AM, Dec. 11, 2015"Every revolution is sparked by an art movement"
HippieVan at 12:00AM, Nov. 27, 2015
Jane Alexander, Butcher Boys
That happens to be a line from one of my favourite albums, a combination CD/graphic novel from an obscure now-defunct South African hip hop group.
I think it’s pretty easy to understand how a South African group would come to that conclusion. When I ...
Inking: Literally the worst?
HippieVan at 12:00AM, Oct. 9, 2015
This is building a bit on ozoneocean's previous newspost on developing a sketch! For most comic artists, after having perfected a sketch (or at least getting it to an acceptable point) the next step is inking. I don't think I'm alone in saying this is one of ...
Collaborations
kawaiidaigakusei at 12:00AM, Sept. 28, 2015
I recently watched a concert of Ed Sheeran singing “Thinking Out Loud” when the camera panned to the person playing the piano and it turned out to be Chris Martin from Coldplay and the song finished with a duet. I sat there thinking, “Wow, that really worked.” Collaborating with another ...
Then and Now
kawaiidaigakusei at 12:00AM, Sept. 7, 2015
“Save ALL your work. Never throw your old art in the trash!” was a repeated mantra from all my art teachers over the years. The reasoning behind this idea makes sense: Old art is like a time capsule for fresh ideas and it can be a great addition in a ...
Comic-making shortcuts
HippieVan at 12:00AM, Sept. 4, 2015
After a long comic-making hiatus, I’ve had several ideas for comics in the last little while. Working on the first one, though, I’ve realized that unless I get a heck of a lot faster at drawing it's unlikely that all of my ideas will ever come to ...