Those of you that follow Becky Dreistadt and Frank Gibson in their various endeavours may know that they’re in the midst of a continent-hopping trip that took them from their home base in LA to New York, London, the Low Countries, Germany, Austria, and they still have parts of Europe and then Japan to go¹. Those of you that follow them may also know that Becky paints about 300 of her watercolor/gouache paintings a year, which makes for a challenge when so much of your life is taken up with travel, conventions, and suchlike. So it’s good to know that even on vacation, when the muse strikes Becky’s gonna paint the everloving heck out of that muse, and it’s going to be awesome. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that the sketchbooks and notebooks full of words and pictures that they’re presently filling will make for one hell of a travel story and I can’t wait to see it.

• Speaking of paintings, I just learned of an art show that I had to share with you. Way back in the long-ago, there was a wonderful webcomic called Patches by the equally wonderful Kelly Vivanco, which went on hiatus at roughly the same time that Vivanco started producing moody, dreamy, whimsical-on-the-verge-of-disturbing paintings².

  If you find yourself in the Greater Los Angeles area on Saturday, you may want to head to Culver City, as Vivanco will be opening the latest solo exhibition of her paintings at Thinkspace, which is found at 6009 Washington Boulevard. The opening reception (read: snacks and booze) runs from 6:00pm to 9:00pm, and the show itself will be up for three weeks.

• Anybody have an eBay account and a sense of justice? Firstly, observe Mary Cagle’s really wonderful Kiwi Blitz, say this page right here, and note the young lady with the hat and the artificial leg. Secondly, this eBay offering, which features a suspiciously similar young lady with a hat and an artificial leg for sale, and which is not offered up by Mary Cagle. Next up, the Report Item page, which requires an eBay account, and where one can (I imagine) notify eBay that Mr or Ms Vinylcustom is violating the rights of an independent creator. Remember the rules, kids: be factual, and be polite.
• Kickstarter roundup: TBONTB:ACFABRNAAWST is just over a week into its campaign and closing in on US$200 large³, the Johnny Wander bookstarter needs to think up more stretch goals for its last four days, as it’s blown past the last one. Also, I saw that Neil Gaiman retweeted the Kickstarter twitterfeed, and I said to myself, Self, that sounds familiar:
  

  The beautiful blue businesswoman Gabrielle explodes from Claire’s toilet and informs her she’s pregnant with the new Messiah.

  And indeed it was, which is how I learned that Sister Claire has a Kickstarter going to print the first eight chapters (or roughly 200 pages) of relentlessly cute and just the right amount of blasphemous webcomickry for your reading pleasure. I see that creator Elena Barbarich (or Yamino, if you prefer) has reached about the 86% mark in about three days, meaning she’s statistically certain to make goal⁴ and surpass it. Oh, and obligatory disclaimer: Ms Barbarich, like seemingly half the kids I know in webcomics these days (cf: Gibson, Dreistadt) went to college with my niece, so there’s that.

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¹ Even better, they managed to hop across the Hudson while in New York and visit me and my wife, on account of they are awesome people.

² They’ve always reminded me of fairy tales, at the moment just before everything starts to go seriously wrong.

³ It helps if you read that in the voice of Rodney Dangerfield when he shouts Hey everybody, we’re all gonna get laid!

⁴ Fun fact I learned at the B9 panel at NYCC this year: Cindy Au (Director of Community for Kickstarter) shared some statistical information that included the number 1/3. Projects that fail typically do not get anywhere near goal, and almost never make it even 1/3 of the way to goal; projects that make it to 1/3 of goal almost always go on to meet or exceed goal. Neat!