Tumeyland

Here's a recent two-page comic created at the monthly DUNE night here in Seattle, January 18, 2014. It was published in DUNE 15.

I did something really cool on the night of December 17, 2013. I joined 62 other artists to sit in a Seattle coffeeshop bar and work like crazy to draw pages for what became DUNE 14, a 64-page mini-comic. The only way to get into DUNE is to show up and draw (and contribute two bucks to printing costs). The only way to get a copy of this comic is, you guessed it, to show up and draw and pay your two crickets. DUNE is a monthly comics drawing workshop open to the public and hosted by local Seattle area cartoonist Max Clotfelter. The event starts at 7 pm at the Cafe Racer, a very lived in, super cool coffee shop in Seattle's U-District (a neighborhood near the University of Washington campus). It may have been the tasty porter I was drinking, but I think I spotted hanging over the bar a huge, surreal painting of a frog by legendary Seattle cartoonist Jim Woodring. At 11 sharp, Max gathers the art, money and hightails it to the bus stop. Sometime before the next DUNE, which hap...

You know how it is. You live in a place, you pick up their ways.  From 1988 to 1997, I lived in Massachusetts -- first in Leominster, and then in Boston. Gradually, I became a member of the counter-culture. By "counter-culture," I don't mean a socio-political movement, as much as I mean a gastro-intestinal movement. Namely, diner culture.  Photo courtesy of the Diner Hotline Weblog New England is, among other things, a treasure trove of classic vintage diners. Many of the pre-fabricated railroad car style diners were manufactured in Worcester, Massachusetts -- so it makes sense that a large concentration of diners settled across the state, like so many patty melts falling from the sky. I used to go around the state hunting old diners. It became an idle past-time, and then an obsession. I met some of the owners, and ate many a fine meal while sitting at a gleaming chrome counter. One favorite was the Miss Worcester lunch car, where -- if memory serve...

BOLERY RANEL is my 1982 one-pager comic inspired by Milt Gross. At the time, I was attending Florida State University in Tallahassee. While I acquired a somewhat mediocre liberal arts education there, I used the fabulous microfilm archives of the university's Strozier Library to provide myself with an education on newspaper comics history. At the time, rerpint books were few and far between. The only real in-depth books on American newspaper comics were Bill Blackbeard's Hyperion Library (Strozier has a complete set). Hmmm... come to think of it, perhaps my mediocre college education was in part the result of those stolen hours spent as a comics archaeologist. For three years, I regularly visited the twilight basement of the huge library where I sat in front of ancient microfilm viewers and noisily cranked through tens of thousands of muddy newspaper images to search for great old comics. Little did I know that my long-time friend and colleague, Frank Young (winner wit...

Here's a selection of comics drawn on ruled notebook paper. Virtually everybody has done comics and doodles as a school student. These efforts to combat stultifying lectures and asphyxiating boredom are "pure" cartooning, with little editing  -- a mainline to the subconscious. Most of these are drawn by my 12-year old son, Reid, but I've thrown a few of my own, as well. I really love Reid's glyph style of cartooning. A while back, inspired by ancient western Indian rock art, I designed a few glyphs of my own. On his own, Reid began making his own symbols, and incorporated that into his visual expression. Next posting, I'll share entire comic stories on notebook paper by the talented Olivia Gibson, my partner's daughter. This one was a guess as to what 'Washington D.C." stands for... And here's a few by me... Bluesman and American Treasure Muddy Waters

Here are some images of Christmas gift package tag cartoons  I drew. these are actually from Xmas 2011.  At some point, I'll also share the tags from Xmas 2012.

A bummed out cast of characters. This expressed some inner pain at the time I drew it, about a year ago, but now it makes me smile like a compassionate parent. Even so, I go through these feelings from time to time.  - Paul Tumey paultumey@gmail.com