Over the last few weeks, I’ve been looking over these cartoons a whole lot. I haven’t taken a serious look at some of these in years! I finally have a proper website for this work and I couldn’t be more pleased. I owe a huge debt of gratitude to L. Nichols of www.dirtbetweenmytoes.com for getting the wheels back on this cart. 

Right now, Little Garden will be updating daily (7 days!) until I run through the older cartoons. Then, I’ll post newer comics that no one has seen before. Exciting! Stay a while and let me know what you think of this weird world of mine.

When I was making Little Garden cartoons, I didn’t originally know what would come out of my pen when I sat down at my desk. It was all improvised. In cartoon #019, I played with light source in a way that I don’t often do in order to give the piece an almost ominous look.

Sometimes it appears that the light is daylight coming from behind the woman, sometimes it looks like her eyes are glowing.  O_O

Ayo

I thought it would be keen and appropriate to add some fun scribbles to the blog underneath the main cartoon. Tell me what you think! The first one is a real doodle of an imaginary superhero squad. I decided that a bunch of kids running around with superhuman abilities and vigilante aspirations wouldn’t necessarily dress in spandex skiier outfits.

Things like these start out as doodles, but may one day end up in my other comic strip, [Press (A) To Talk]. That is a strip that is developing on another website and which there never is much of a plan for. I make it for fun inbetween working on Little Garden!

-Darryl Ayo.

Ladies, gentlemen, welcome to Little Garden Comics. 

As some of you may have gathered, this webcomic updates daily; seven days weekly. Each vignette stands alone but together they form a picture of life in this crazy magical land that I’ve imagined. Sometimes, I’m going to want to write general posts and those can go right here, under the day’s cartoon. Today, I’m posting some doodles.

I have a big folder of doodles on my computer. I’m going to pass them out like candy to give you nice people something else to look at. 

While we’re on the subject of other things to look at, some of you may want to wander down to my other webcomic which goes by the name of [Press (A) To Talk] (http://pressatotalk.com). Be forewarned, that site isn’t always worksafe and should generally be regarded as being Rated R.

-darrylayo.

While I’m working on the new Little Garden strip, here’s a nugget of comic gold from my private stash. Right now I’m roughly keeping to the weekly update schedule. I hope that my other projects calm down soon so that I can get this strip on a clockworklike schedule.

The third page of the Little Garden story “Beautiful Monster” is on its way soon and I personally adore it. I can’t wait to see it run here on the site.

Coloring should hopefully be a lot faster when my new drawing tablet arrives. I just ordered it tonight, so hopefully next week’s update won’t take so much time to complete!

-darrylayo

I’m hard at work on Page 4 of “Beautiful Monster,” but unfortunately, I have been quite busy of late! While the next strip is still in the oven, I’ve prepared a snack for you to nibble on.

As you may know, I reside in New York City, the Big, Bad, Rotten Apple. I’ve never been to Portland, but I hear spectacular things about the city and its indie comics scene in particular. So here’s a little ditty I doodled about a dudette daring me to go dere.

-darrylayo

Make a note of it.

Right now I’m in the thick of comics life. I’m drawing Little Garden (which should be weekly), I’m working on some stories for the House of Twelve comics group and soon I will be working on a new minicomic called “Days.” The minicomic may not be ready in time for September’s Small Press Expo, but I’ll be excited for it whenever it is completed. I won’t talk too much about it because it needs to stay fresh for me while I am writing and drawing it!

I like to do these quick little single-panel vignettes as warm up exercises. It’s the kind of brevity of storytelling that I first learned doing the original Little Garden series. I crave the complexity of longform comics but every now and then I want to see if I’ve still got the ability to sum up an idea in a single shot. It’s a different discipline entirely from the segmented action storytelling of traditional comics.

More comics, more problems.

-darrylayo

Monday, Monday, Monday:

It’s a good day for comics, if nothing else. I know that most people loathe Mondays with a vengence, but I quite like them. Sure, there’s the disappointment in returning to work, the concrete realization that the freedom of the weekend was only temporary, but then there’s the deluge of wonderful new presents: for instance, lots of internet-based content goes dark over the weekends, so when the work week starts, it feels like there’s a limitless supply of fresh new ideas to be excited by!

As for me, I posted my Little Garden page in the wee hours of the night/morning this past Friday/Saturday, so to start the week off well, here is a little doodle from my sketchbook that I colored for fun. I’m hoping that you folks have been enjoying the main strip on the site these last few weeks; I have some sideline treats that I may run down here in the blog so be on the lookout!

-darryl ayo 2009

While reading about comics online, I came across a discussion in which the general concensus was that negative criticism and unfavorable reviews were in various ways wrong and a detriment to the cultural dialogue of the comics world. You can read the original discussion here: http://www.thewebcomiclist.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=7016

I strongly disagree with the notion that bad reviews are “bad.”

As a former art school student, I believe in the value of a sound thrashing. And I don’t mean “constructive criticism” either. I also come from the old school Comics Journal school which supposes that there is something for the reader to gain from ANY in-depth analysis of a work.

Reviews and critiques are not for the creator’s benefit, but for the benefit of the reading public. That’s why many of the better critics are non-practicioners; those who have little or nothing to lose or gain by praising or condemning a work.

Sometimes there’s more good to be said for the artform in making an example out of its lesser practicioners. As played out as Rob Liefeld-bashing is, for example, many of us, both readers and creators have gained a good deal from the extensive analysis (or rather, condemnation) of his work. As an example.

Personally, I feel that most of the branches of comics–webcomics, minicomics, literary graphic novels, etc–have become far too comfortable and complacent throughout the years and much of this is due to the fact that the writers of criticism are too close to their subjects to offer anything but acceptance and support. Not that I have a problem with that per se. My problem is that there’s not much counter balance. Most critical voices in comics are good friends with the subjects that they cover and most are peers as well. Most critical voices in comics are good friends with the subjects that they cover and most are peers as well. I’ve heard people say in conversation things that you would never read on the internet or in a magazine because people just can’t express their feelings. There’s trends, styles and genres that probably would NOT exist if the people who disliked them all stood up and voiced their opinions on the subjects. But nobody wants to be the bad guy. Nobody wants to be the person who offended Person C because C is friends with B.

During the waning days of The Comics Journal’s “mean” criticism, I managed to learn a great deal and found my world enriched by the hard standards established by the “bad guys” who dared to say “you know–this comic is just NO GOOD!”

I’m just saying.

THE PURPLE

Every day of the weekend has been heatburgers. I had initially planned to surprise you all with the next page of Little Garden early, but it has been so very humid and nasty that it’s difficult to work. Other obligations are rapidly approaching their final deadlines, so I’m going to be hunched over the drawing table very consistently for the next few days.

Here’s a fun panel from a bonus comic that I’m going to try to squeeze in, perhaps the following week. This was my view of Bedford Avenue from El Beit Cafe. The foreground fellows happened to be sitting on these pole things that surround fire hydrants, so I threw them in the comic as well. When you have a style as simple as mine, you try to compensate by adding as much detail and as many sideline dramas as you can. The fun thing for me is that since I do most of my ground work at coffeehouses, there’s a lot of these small stories unfolding around me as I work. There’s two ways to read the phrase “draw from life,” and both apply here.

And this is the color orange in Cafe Grumpy in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. As a Greenpointer, I make it a point to patronize this establishment at least once per week if at all posible. I took a sketching day with my friend and neighbor John Wyffels this Sunday afternoon which actually did a bit of good. I made some headway on my House of Twelve (link is NSFW) story and got some much needed fresh air.

John and I went to Williamsburg’s Desert Island comic shop to inquire about their free newspaper comics anthology, Smoke Signal. Earlier in the day, I’d posted the following video to my FaceBook page and a few friends seemed interested in what it is:

Smoke Signal is here

For actual details, please visit Desert Island’s webpage!

By the way, this is what it looks like when I’m coloring comics:

Whatever you do, do it for comics.

-darryl ayo 2009.