Kathy
p.s. Jennie recently quit her day job and started doing the comic full time, so as long as you're checking out the site, you might consider stoping by her online store.
Kathy Peterson: To begin, I'd like to ask you about the portraits you post on Sundays. I've found many of these to be quite beautiful and I was wondering where you get your inspiration for them? Are they based on real people? Friends? Strangers?
Jennie Breeden: The comic strip started out just as a way to keep me drawing every day while I put up with a retail day job. The Sunday watercolor paintings are a way for me to keep my fine arts skills in shape. Mostly they are models from fashion magazines that have some interesting lighting on them. I love strong shadows. The gypsies are based on picture I take at the larp I play (live action role playing). Some are family members from when I didn't have the money to buy Christmas presents. Some are from pictures that I took at Dragon con.
KP: Are there any particular themes you are trying to explore with these paintings?
JB: It's all in the eyes. I never know what expression the person is going to have until I get the eyes done.
KP: In addition to the portraits, what other non-comic based art projects are you involved with at the moment or plan to start in the future?
JB: I do illustrations for a short story website fromtheasylum.com. Other than that, the comics are a very time consuming business.
KP: Getting back to the comic, you recently quit your day job and started cartooning full time. How is it going so far? Have there been any unexpected surprises? Has anything worked out especially well or not as well as you hoped?
JB: I haven't missed a mortgage payment yet. But I am living month to month. I've gone a bit nuts for merchandise. I found a place that can print dog tags and wooden nickles. I'm just careful not to spend money I don't have or wait until a new product starts selling before I send away for another. I want to do more t-shirts but have to wait until the new playing cards are finished printing and I can start selling them. Yes, not five months since the first deck of playing cards came out and I did a new deck. They're just fun to make. I didn't realize how much time is taken up by designing and ordering merchandise. I have less time to draw the comic than I did when I was working full time at the comic shop.
KP: 10 years from now, where do you hope to be professionally?
JB: I hope to have an assistant/booth babe. Someone to mail out merchandise, put in orders, arrange convention tables and work the table while I go to the bathroom at a convention. Someone to help carry the boxes from the hotel to the convention. It's frustrating trying to get from the airport to the convention center with 70lb's of books by yourself. I hope to have action figures. Maybe a statuette of the Devil Girl. A flash animated series that I don't have to draw. And cabana boys. My boyfriend said that as long as they do housework, we can have cabana boys
KP: In the 6-7 years since you've been doing The Devil's Panties, you've hardly missed a single update, and last I checked you were still in the running for the Iron Man Daily Grind Challenge. How do you manage to come up with new material 7 days a week?
JB: Well I just got booted from the Iron Man. I didn't realize that I had posted two different one panel comics within ten days of each other, which is against the rules. yay! I'm free! That Iron man is going to go on for so many more years. But anyway, what was the question? There's nothing more bizzar than reality. Especially at comic conventions. I get tons of material from the cons, but it's also a matter of how you look at life. I fell off my bike and got 8 cartoon ideas. I went to the dentist and got more. Whatever seems strange or silly, whatever people laugh at, I write down. We went to see 300 on the Imax and my friends asked how close we wanted to sit. "Close enough to pinch their nipples!!" I said. I got about six cartoon ideas from that trip to the mall with the girls.
KP: I'm sorry to hear you got booted from the Iron Man Daily Grind. Now that you're no longer in the running will you finally take a day off? If you had won, what would you have done with the money?
JB: nope, no day off. I'll loose readers if I take a day off! But if I had won....hmm... I would have bought new flame boots. Maybe the ones with the silver heal and a scull cut into the flames.
KP: You often write about your experiences at conventions. Do you have a particular favorite or worse memory that perhaps didn't make it into the comic?
JB: There's tons of stories that don't make good cartoons, and cartoons that make terrible stories. Some experiences, especially at Dragon Con, are just too bizzar to try and draw. One had to do with a...um...."puppet" and Blue Beard the Pirate.
KP: Last, what's the one webcomic you'd recommend people check out that they're probably not reading already?
JB: http://ericahenderson.50webs.com/journal.html or http://www.projectkooky.com/dylan/
