Category: Pictures

I’m finally moving on from Dear Anonymous by creating a batch for sending to a zine library in the UK. It’s my first library submission, so I’m quite happy about that.

Having finished those, I’ll finally be concentrating my efforts on this site and Dear Anonymous 2. I also have Sirius Rising, but the focus of that has taken a dramatic change so I’m putting that on the back burner for the moment.

I feel so good getting back to zines.

I promised myself some ‘relax and zine’ time this weekend, and I actually managed to keep the promise to myself. Here be the first letter laid out for Dear Anonymous V2.

Of course, it won’t look this way once it’s has been copied, but I sort of like this original with ends sticking out because I only stuck down enough for it to stay put in the copy machine.

With Dear Anonymous, I always start with the letter that goes in the middle of the edition – what I think of as the ‘feature letter’ because it stirs the most emotions in me. This letter – actually three pages long – is a bit different from the last issue. People who have DA V1 will see that I’ve changed things up a bit…

When I receive a letter for Dear Anonymous, I usually immediately ‘see’ what should go with the letter. The pictures that accompanied the letters in DA 1 were ‘flashes of insight’ that I followed. Sometimes much to my annoyance, as I am in no way good at drawing. But the flashes never failed to come, so I went with them.

The moment I read this letter, I knew I wouldn’t be handwriting it. I couldn’t. I couldn’t add my personal flavour or touch because it needed to stand on it’s own. This letter needed to be heard. I still consider the arrangement of the words to be art, but secondary to the letter as it should be.

When you read the letter, you’ll understand why.

So here it is, a peek into DA2 along with a little insight into the process that goes into putting Dear Anonymous together. This issue is going to be bigger and a bit different to DA1, so I hope you enjoy.

And, as always, I’m looking for submissions.

This is a page I finished that is simple, but I love it. It’s less serious than a lot of the letters.

I didn’t get to work on things last night because puppy – by accident – sunk his tooth into my thumb. It seems find today, though, so if I can just get the scanner working, I should be right to go for sending volume one out next week.

I already have letters for volume two, so keep sending those letters in! Volume two is probably going to be done on the computer instead of being handwritten like this one. Mostly to save time and because my mad drawing skillz are severly lacking.

This is the original cover for Dear Anonymous when I first started putting it together. At that point, I’d only received a few short letters, so they all fit in perfectly. However, I received one longer letter and rather have to force that person to severely edit the letter, I decided it would be better overall (especially because I want this to be a series) to move from a mini-zine (one page folded up) to a half-fold zine.

Ta-da.

It’s not as cute as the other one, but I’m really not that great of an artist so computer printing is a good thing. This is not the final product (as you may have guessed from my handwriting on it), but it’s pretty close. And it’s green! (Inspiration for the title of this blog, anyone?)

Not only does computer printing the cover (well, most of it) make it easier on me, but it will make it cheaper in the end. This first volume has all colour pages which is going to make copying expensive, but I wanted my first one to be exactly the way I wanted it. We’ll see where the next one takes me.

I am still looking for letters, so leave a comment if you’d like to take part. If you’re not comfortable with that, it’s all good. I’ll have a dedicated email for zine things as soon as I sort out whether I want to make this a .com or not.

Purple moose says, “Dot com!” But purple moose doesn’t have to pay any bills, so we’ll see.