Becky Hawkins

Book 1, Page 199

Here's the original script for this page:

A full page splash panel shows the car driving along and everyone in the car. I’m imagining that we’re looking at it from the front, and slightly elevated, so we can see the people in the back seat too. Lillian’s captions are placed near the person.

I tried a few sketches as written, but drawing full car inevitably left a lot of empty space on the page and meant that the characters were relatively small. Zoom...

Book 1, Page 198

Just as we started the beach episode of SuperButch, the podcast 99% Invisible did an episode about an unofficial gay beach in New York: Jacob Riis beach! That beach was overshadowed—or sheltered from the neighboring area, depending on your point of view—by an old brick hospital building.

It...

An Abbott Elementary AU and end-of-summer postcards

This post comprises of watercolors that I started weeks or months ago, but I always had something more pressing to work on. I finally made the time to finish them during a cafe-session at Refuge with Barry. Yay!

The page above is a scene from Surface Protocol, a story by @katiehoughton in which Melissa an...

Book 1, page 196-197

The beach-trip issue commences!

Please enjoy this view without the inset panels:

This is the sixth double-page spread in SuperButch. It takes up two 11x14 sheets of paper with some overlap in the middle. I was really careful about making sure the lines and ink wash matched from page to page because it can be a pain to fix if they don't. On pages 166-167, the firehouse and sidewalk d...

Buildings and goofballs

Hi patrons!

Here are some things I've been up to in between jury duty, drawing political cartoons for Barry, and being on hold with Unemployment. The watercolor is from a photo I took of Walnut St in Pittsburgh. I hate that natural light makes everything SO BEAUTIFUL several hours before I want to be up and about. (I'm being dramatic. It was 8:30am.)

One perk of jury duty in Multnomah County is that the building overlooks the Willamette River and has huge windows.

2024-10-27 00:04:18 +0000 UTC View Post

Travel toons (Seattle/Pittsburgh/DC)

Dough Zone was delicious. So was Momosan, which we hit on the way back.

There are zero nonstop flights from Portland to Pittsburgh, so my new hack is taking the train to Seattle and flying direct from SeaTac Airport. You still cross the country in a day but there’s fresh air and scenery and better food on the �...

Page 196-197 Preview

Hi patrons,

I'm about to fly east for a family visit. (First time in Pittsburgh since 2019!) I was trying to finish this spread first, but unemployment knocked me off-schedule. This post was all ready to go, so I'm giving you a preview and a peek behind the scenes!

This is the sketchbook page I drew in while Barry and I talked about how to open Issue 7. You can see the double-page spread in the upper left. Of course, we're also planning what highway-related trivia Lillian is going...

Sounds like we're all in the right place

I started this cartoon towards the beginning of summer camp and finished it just in time for the beginning of fall classes. Have I mentioned that drawing multiple panels and picking contemporary hair/outfits adds exponential drawing time to a Becky-comic?

I have some big news: It turns out that this was my last newsletter comic for the children's theater. A week and a half ago, I was laid off due to budget cuts. I'll be okay for a few months, so I'm looking at it as a surprise art resid...

Postcards: Strong Songs and Girls5Eva

Strong Songs is the musical deep dive I didn't know I needed! It feels so good listening to someone get super enthusiastic about chord changes, instrumentation, vocal choices, recording techniques, and what the Dies Irae has to do with The Nightmare Before Christmas. Highly recommend.

The Kate Bush/Wuthering Heights episo...

Summer postcards (overheard at the theater)

The box office is right at the top of these stairs, so I overhear complaints/comments about the stairs every day. This one cracked me up, though. I hope the diaper bag, lunch box, and dry cleaning bags communicate that Mommy has, in fact, been running around all day.

Our house manager, Becca, has a pretty good knack for knowing what would make a funny cartoon.  They told me that during reh...

Issue 7 Cover Reveal!

My progress chart said to finish the cover "by 6/10?" and I made it!

This left us four days for Barry to finish lettering the issue, lay out the book, and make a PDF, and for me to buy printer paper, use the fancy printer at the theater, and staple enough issues for BwPCon. 8 weeks later, the adrenaline has worn off but I feel really proud.

I celebrated by opening the bottle I used in so...

Book 1, Page 195

You read that right: issue eight is going to be a beach episode! A Pacific Northwest beach, so It’s going to have more trees than I have ever drawn.

Barry listed a few ideas for panel 2 in the script:

Panel 2

1988 colors, about two-thirds of the page.

They’re back at the same park we saw on page 163, and possibly at the same park bench. Lillian and Alicia are seated on the bench, both enjoying ice cream bars. Tammy stands nearby, with the mic in one ha...

2024-08-05 03:47:24 +0000 UTC View Post

Book 1, Page 194

Suspense!!

It was my idea for Lillian to accidentally make her beer explode onto Kansas' lap. As always, I dig deep into life experiences to inform my art.

Mona's face in panel 4 makes me laugh. She's disappointed but sooo unsurprised. I worked on pages 191-195 at the same time, rather than completing each page one at a time. Still, at some point I realized that Mona had a slightly different neckline, sleeve, and hat in every page. I was ultimately saved by a white-out pen an...

Book 1, Page 193

Hi patrons!

Let’s give Barry a round of applause for the swoopy radio lettering. Even if it covered up some laboriously drawn hands wiping a beer glass in panel 2, per his script 😛

I took this jacket out of retirement to pose for Ruth and Lillian in this scene. I think I got it when I was a working musician and might be required to wear a black jacket at any moment. Here’s Ruth in panel 4:

2024-07-23 01:04:44 +0000 UTC View Post

Book 1, Page 192

I thought of the "second beer" gag while I was drawing page 183, in which Lillian face-plants in the alley. Here's my conversation with Barry:

As you can see, Barry developed the idea a bit. When I saw the script I had a knee-jerk reaction of "Hey, you changed the perfect page I had already drawn in my head!" But I liked how Barry's version included interactions with Mona and Kansas, as w...

Book 1, Page 191

Please, someone zoom in to appreciate the era-appropriate buffalo head nickel and mercury dimes that are hinted at in panel 1! Barry thoughtfully looked up the cost of beer in 1941 (about 28 cents) and wrote "one of Lillian’s hands, putting two quarters and a dime on the bar" in the script. Then I got excited about drawing the two discontinued coin designs that I knew about off the top of my head and totally ignored Barry's helpful and informative script. Oops.

Panel 2 was made possib...

Spring turns to summer at the children's theater

There was a memorable snail in A Year With Frog and Toad, so I saw a bunch of snail-walking from the box office.

This next incident was relayed to me by the house manager, pictured on the left. Once again I got to play with contrasting lighting situations (lobby vs theater)! I also enjoyed drawing the various ages of people who come to see the show as a family.

This was a c...

Book 1, Page 190

This page has seven new faces that we haven't seen before and won't see again in this issue.

For some of the women, I started by drawing one aspect of Lillian's appearance (face shape, hair, etc) that might catch Captain Turtle's eye, then drew their other features to be definitely not Lillian. I also scrolled a bit on Instagram, one of my go-to activities for drawing lots of different faces.

My mental image for the election monitor started with that guy [Bob Sweeney...

Book 1, Page 189

Hi patrons,

My parents were in town last week, so I took a nice break from the computer.

Now SuperButch updates continue!

Crowd scenes can be notoriously time-consuming so I wanted to show you how I thought about this one.

I mentally divided the page into Foreground (Captain Turtle), ...

Some Photos from BwPCon

This is my "yay I made it and only had to pull over and re-bungee the bike once" face. Luckily the bungees held when I kicked the grid wall which jostled the box which tipped the whole shebang over to one side. That was a wobbly ride!

BwPCon is a one-day outdoor comics fest organized by our friendly local comic shop, Books With Pictures. I think this was the first time Barry and I tabled a convention together since Fall 2019, but it still felt like something we do all the time.

2024-06-18 06:03:58 +0000 UTC View Post

Book 1, Page 188

Once again, Barry crushes it with the digital lettering and pain-stars.

Speaking of lettering: old hand-lettered signs are so flipping stylish! Take a moment to admire this exquisite rendition of banal signage.

(Also take a moment to admire Gordon Parks. There's a ton of his photography online and I browsed it extensively while drawing an upcoming street scene.)

I really like the ...

Issue 7 sneak peek

Annnd with this, I’m done inking SuperButch Issue 7! We haven’t been finishing the pages in order, but I wanted to share some progress!

My original idea for the cover was to show the store window and “Vote this way” sign with Captain Turtle’s shadow crossing menacingly over it. It probably would have been hard to do a recognizable Captain Turtle silhouette using ...

Book 1, Page 187

OMIGOSH, so happy to finally get to draw this gag! And can we give Barry a hand for doing the AAAAAAA lettering while I was at the box office, working through 4 shows and a Taylor Swift birthday party? The lettering makes it.

I'd like to thank this figure that I got at a yard sale a kajillion years ago for posing.

Electricians, please don't tell me if the wiring on the outside of th...

Book 1, Page 186

Greetings from the middle of the fray!

Is this an overambitious plan to finish SuperButch pages approximately three times faster than I've ever done before? MAYBE. Am I on schedule? ALMOST. Will I keep this pace up after BwPCon? ABSOLUTELY NOT! But it's going okay so far.

I definitely enjoy working on several pages at a time. It's good for continuity. I noticed some bloopers with Captain ...

Theater Postcard and news

The play was The Wardrobe, if you're curious. It's the first play we've done in awhile that was aimed at tweens and up instead of ages 3+. I'm so happy with how the lighting came out in this one! It's fun to use color to differentiate the actors from the audience.

Unfortunately, I am really making a habit of inking one version and then redoing it.

2024-05-13 21:52:00 +0000 UTC View Post

Hijinks at the children's theater

Hi patrons!

This cartoon was inspired by an actual meeting. In real life, I was using Zoom on my phone, so my coworkers got a Blair Witch viewing experience while we were trying to discuss collaborative email accounts! I tried to draw it as a postcard and quickly realized there wasn't space. Naomi helped me find the right rhythm for a gag comic by having me try to start the same sentence three times, getting more and more frazzled, with the third and final interruption coming from my co...

Book 1, Page 185

Reference for panel 5:

Hi patrons,

It's been a hectic month! Lots of good things (extended-family destination wedding, seeing a cool play, hanging out with Barry), but also taxes, LOSING ACCESS TO MY DROPBOX ACCOUNT FOR SIX DAYS, and oops: the theater scheduled a show opening, four field trips, and a fundraising auction within 8 days of each other.

2024-04-23 01:39:33 +0000 UTC View Post

Political cartoon with Barry: "Celestial Politics of Trans Bans"

Hi patrons,

I've finally re-started on the next SuperButch page! I just needed to step away for awhile, reopen the file, realize that I ignored Barry's script, and then ignore it a different way. Then I spilled a full cup of coffee on my desk, splattering the wall, floor, and a bunch of cords. (Coffee cup and electronics are safe, thank goodness.) With a newly clean desk and a clear head, it's all coming together.

In the meantime, here's a recent political cartoon that went onto <...

Postcards from the children's theater

This was very close to a verbatim voicemail. I checked work-email during a staff meeting and everyone wanted to know why I burst out laughing!

On the other extreme, I also like bending reality for the newsletter:

Stuffies are alive in the Newsletter Cartoon Universe, but I think this is the first time an adult is seen interacting with one.

This next cartoon was in the back of my hea...

This might be the pinnacle of self-indulgent Abbott art

Tell me this scene isn't lit like a pulp novel cover! I love the blues and pinks on their faces...

My parents have an old paperback bookshelf, and I remember being mesmerized by the expressively painted covers. It was really fun to try and recreate one!

Thanks to 2024-02-23 04:49:37 +0000 UTC View Post