Recently, in Dicebox I have had reason to render a horse that had been partially, ah, rendered. I actually did it rather discretely, mostly draped with a tarp. People asked if I chose to cover most of the carcass to save me drawing the slimy innards.

Heck no. I find drawing such things intriguing and challenging in a truly enjoyable way. Not that I go out of my way to create storylines to include such drawing opportunities. But I have had reason to do so in the past and foresee future opportunities.

You see, I grew up the daughter of a cardiac care nurse who got quite a few medical trade magazines. These were glossy, full color magazines that featured each month pictures of subject matter such as burn victims or explicit shots of open heart surgery in that same lighting they used for 70s porn flicks so that you see every loving detail. I had been flipping through these magazines, looking at the pictures since I was at least five so when my seventh grade the class was shown these really tame airbrushed depiction of internal organs, I was surprised by the squeals of disgust by both girls and boys. Geez. Imagine if we had the Head 2 Heads flip book to pass around the class.

But then, the half of my extended family that isn’t in business, is in medicine—there are even a couple who are in the business of medicine, hospital general managers and the like. My father is a well respected animal orthopedic surgeon with his own practice in Indiana—he’s even operated on wild eagles’ wings with full success . Every summer that I’d visit entailed at least one visit to the clinic and watching Dad operate on some pet. Once, while visiting the Indianapolis Zoo when I was six or seven, Dad was asked by some Zoo staff to take a look at one of the tigers—Dad used to be a consulting vet for the Zoo, it’s how he met my step-mother, Jean. Oh, sure, they sedated the hell out of that tiger before he went in to the special holding pen. Still, I had a lot of bragging rights that day.

My family, dedicated to medicine or loving those who were, collectively thought that I might go on to do medical illustration. Thinking back, I’m rather surprised I didn’t. Beyond my upbringing I have always found well done medical illustrations very appealing. A fine example of what I consider beautiful about these illustrations can be seen in the work of Fred Harwin, especially in how he does eyes. Any reproduction of his work doesn’t do it justice. He executes his work on both sides of translucent vellum for a stunning effect; one side is mostly the line art, the other the color shading. Extraordinarily lovely art that I wouldn’t mind hanging in home, if I could afford it.

But don’t let all this lead you to believe I like slasher flicks. Oh no. People—or animals—in pain, terror or any kind of suffering upsets me greatly. In fact, I find it mystifying that some people enjoy these kind of movies, even more than why some people need to see more than one porn movie in their lifetime (okay maybe 2 or 3 porn films so you can get an idea of all the major “plots”). And I’m not talking about any movie with suspense or violence, like Donnie Darko or Alien, but the fetishistic portrayal of pain and terror, like Final Destination, which seem to move beyond the idea of cathartic release.

Not that I think that people that do enjoy these movies are Bad or Sick. Some of them happen to be friends of mine, in fact. And some of those particular friends were a little unnerved by the little bit of horse I did show. Go figure.

Oh, so why did I mostly cover the gutted horse? Well, I just didn’t think the two characters that were actually harvesting meat wanted to have that all exposed near them as they worked at wrapping what they took in order to eat.

Kip also will occasionally write articles for Comixpedia. The latest is The Pram in the Hall, all about the trials and tribulations of being married to a cartoonist, web or otherwise.

But let me just say right here, he does exagerate a tiny bit. And he conveniently left out the part where he comes into my studio and asks, “ Whatcha doin’?”

And I say, “Drawing, Kip. Just like I was ten minutes ago. Just like, over breakfast, I said I’d be doing all day.”

“Oh. Okay, I go away now.” And he does, for at least another ten minutes.

… and your little plastic horse.

You both went a long way in helping me complete the latest page of Dicebox up at Girlamatic.

In an attempt to have several people on deadlines to sorta, kinda socialize, Sara organized a day for a group of us to work on our various projects at Mercury Studios downtown. The group consisted of Sara herself and her novel, Steve on his Road to Perdition, soon to be Portland resident Jeff Parker who was helping Steve with said road, Kip with various writing projects, and Johnzo and Victoria down from Seattle and both banging on their respective short stories.

I joined up later as I was trepidatious about all that typing going on (it can drive me mad in the right circumstances) but I wish I had gone earlier with Kip. Beyond the air-conditioning and saving me from writing on a drawing day (but it was going so well…) and get in some more socialization, I could have taken advantage of Steve’s bounty of horse reference, saving me much frustration.

You see, there are damn few shots of horses on their sides to be found, and none of the belly side that I could see. Between Steve’s anatomically close plastic horse and 3 inch thick clip file on horses (with several pictures of horses undergoing operations! Sweet!) I was a happy girl.

Steve apologized for not having the twelve reference books on horses he owned available as they were packed away in preperation for moving. The building that Mercury Studios is in now has been condemned. But that’s okay as they have found new swank digs also in Downtown Portland.

The sound of typing wasn’t so bad.

As I have noted above, I have finally created a webpage that outlines my art process when creating a page of Dicebox.

I hope to continue to fill out my website over the next few of months, including opening the art section (finally) as well as expand the comics section. Not to mention general maintenance, like updating and checking my links or the various problems people have noted to me.