skolstrejk för klimatet

Scene from yesterday’s school strike for climate in San Francisco. The kids did great. Climate action NOW!

c.a. native plant socie-T

T-shirt design process (from final back to thumbnail) for the Santa Cruz chapter of the California Native Plant Society.

The prints turned out very nicely!

immigrant parents, american lunch 1-4

My malaysian mom and british dad moved us over the ocean to america in 1983. The next challenge: lunch. They did their best, bless their hearts.

empathy

A promising sign from the nephew.

usborne book of the moon

For Moon day, I present to you the delightful book my friend Diana Toledano illustrated and I helped get out the door. I was the flatter! (Not the flatterer, although I am a big fan of Diana’s work)

Shiny!

Oh lunar lander. So many fiddly shapes to flat. 😱

A spread mid-flatting.

further risograph experimenting

An Austin house with all its backyard plants. I’ve been really into hot pink and fuchsia lately!

risograph bowerbird

My old bowerbird image revisited! I took a Risograph class this week to see if it would be a good substitute for the dear departed Gocco, which I miss using a lot! It turns out to be almost identical but at a larger scale, similarly delightful and frustrating, and a fairly inaccessible medium 🤑🙅‍♀️ (the machines are essentially obsolete and expensive photocopiers and it’s hard to find ones to use or rent $$$—although once you have access to one, the prints or booklets are pretty cheap to make at volume). I made extras: $12 for the more successful ones and $5 for somewhat misprinted.

colorblind

Describing colors to the mister has made for what must sound to passers by like some exceptionally surreal conversations. (Ps: If the pink of red is light red, then the pink of lime is…)

favorite things

beginning on the new island

An illustration for my agency newsletter on the theme “beginnings”: an ancient Polynesian girl arriving for the first time at a new island, her arms full of canoe plants.

Canoe plants were a set of about 20 or so food plants that the Polynesians took with them in their canoes and propagated all over the Pacific. They include taro, sweet potatoes, coconuts, yams, and breadfruit.

Her dress is made of mulberry barkcloth – essentially paper! She’s also with her poi dog, which were related to dingoes but are now extinct. They were pot-bellied dogs evolved to eat poi and take care of children. A lot of internet descriptions of them are rather dire (they were fairly dim and as likely to play and sleep with the tribe’s children as they were to be eaten by them), but I think they sounded kind of sweet.

This picture was inspired by my recent (40th!!) birthday trip to Hawaii.

on being ambiguously brown

5 panel comic! Click thumbnails below:

my brother’s fire gear

During the summers, my brother works as a California wildland firefighter. For his 30th birthday, I made a poster of all the gear (55 lbs of it! 😱) he hauls around with him in the mountains.

Prints here: My brother’s wildland firefighter gear

I’m donating profits from this print to the Wildland Firefighter Foundation. (My share is 50% of the list price, plus I’m applying to Inprnt’s 10% matching fund program)

(somewhat) hourly comics

For Hourly Comics Day 2019.

on being a 4th culture kid

I grew up a biracial, tricultural kid in America, with one grandmother living across the Pacific in Malaysia and one across the Atlantic in England.

notes from france: merci à vous

French people get a bad rap. I had a hard week, and to console myself, I drew some of the 10-minute friends I made at markets and hotels and shops on our trip in October. They were so kind! 😭

notes from france: bon appétit!

Les adventures culinaires en Paris et Lyon. Dedicated to Lactojoy, without whom none of this would have been possible!

notes from france: orangina

In first year French, Madame Gabet taught us how to order an Orangina. But what was an Orangina? Was it better than Fanta? It was so French and mysterious. On a layover in Calgary the summer after freshman year, my family stopped at the resort in Banff and had lunch on the expansive terrace overlooking the Canadian wilderness. And oh mon dieu, there it was on the menu, Orangina!! The moment I had been trained for arrived. With rapture, I said to the English-speaking Canadian waiter, “Un Orangina, s’il vous plaît.” It was delightful. Ever since then, even though I don’t like soda anymore, I can’t help but ask for an Orangina s.v.p. in Francophone countries. And it is still delightful.

san francisco, 4è

Collected scenes from around town, quatrième edition.

The citywide Tuesday noon sirens (with unintelligible message), the Fruit Shelf/Gay Beach at Dolores Park (the highest spot in the park, perfect for views of either downtown or handsome young people wearing very little catching some sun), a glowy St. Ignatius on top of Lone Mountain, the hall closet: i.e. your lovely new baby’s bedroom, the cheese section at Rainbow Grocery that Gordonzola presides over, mint It’s-its: the most nostalgic ice cream sammich, the wild parrots of Telegraph Hill, a BART train with requisite muffled announcements, Ritual Coffee Roasters, pan-fried soup dumplings (shen jiang bao) at Shanghai House in the Outer Richmond, majestic redwoods, wood type for letterpress at the San Francisco Center for the Book, my favorite bookstore: Green Apple Books.

san francisco, 3è

Collected scenes from around town, troisième edition.

Matcha/vanilla soft serve at Café Maiko in Japantown, Scoot electric rental scooters, Tank Hill for the secret best view of town, earthquakes, soup dumplings (xiao long bao), Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, Presidio Picnic on summer Sundays, Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence (the geniuses behind, among other things, the Sexy Jesus contest every Easter in Dolores Park), Tandoori chicken pizza, California poppies, the Two o’clock Titty on St. Mary’s (a cheeky local landmark), citywide composting (fantastic!!), Cinderella Bakery for Russian pastries and lunch.

blood moon

Commemorating the blood moon I missed on Friday. Karl!! 😩🌁