Nate Beaty’s Journal

I just express mailed my prints for what’s sure to be a fantastic show opening at The Pony Club on July 1st in Portland:

Lilli Carré did the delicious flyer.

As usual, I managed to work myself into a last-minute panic in order to actually DRAW this piece. I half-heartedly blame the trip to Milwaukee, WI with Aaron to attend a Lynda Barry workshop, but I knew we were going to that at least a week ahead of time. I’m starting to think that I’m only functional under the stress of the last few seconds — BLUE WIRE OR RED WIRE?! — because I’ve been operating this way for a looong time. And my best work always happens when I’m terrified I’m going to completely fuck up and miss a deadline, and/or turn in something so godawful embarrassing I’d rather have done nothing at all.

I am doing three prints from moments in the upcoming Piecemeal 2. This is the first of the three, and it just happened to fit well with “The Great Outdoors” theme of this print show. I’ve destroyed two birds!

I so miss rope swinging into a brisk lake that it’s almost painful for me to look at this damn print.

I finally decided to bite the bullet and buy a handful of better screen printing tools. Unfortunately, I didn’t go the extra mile with getting a decent fine mesh screen, instead buying the best the art store had to offer. If you look closely, it almost looks like an old 8-bit printout. Luckily this worked out well with this particular drawing, and although some details got lost in the translation, the parts that made it through beefed up and look just fine. For the other two prints, I’m going to track down a real screen printing supply shop for better screens.

Here are a few close-ups to see the 8-bit like chunking:

And here you can see that despite buying a few decent tools this time around, I’m still in need of a proper workspace:

Here is a new comic for a project put together by Robyn Chapman, the theme being, well, pooping. My body was more adamant about this subject than I care to remember for a two-year span, offering many episodes such as this gem.

Strangely enough, this was (almost) my last asscapade (sorry, couldn’t resist), and I’ve felt pretty much A-OK ever since. Taking the job in LA allowed me to get out of debt for the first time in my adult life. (Thank you credit card companies for preying on college campuses!) I’m pretty sure my body was revolting from stress, primarily money stress, but drinking copious amounts of alcohol and having a terrible sleep schedule didn’t help.

The execution and timing on this letter from my niece Hannah is absolutely spot-on. This girl is going to go far.