If the Shoe Fits (comic in progress)

Remember how I replaced the zipper on my boots? It was surprisingly easy and I wanted to show other people how to do it, too! The only way I know how to share information is to put it in comic form, so I made a mock-up with photos from my earlier documentation:

And then I was like "Uhg, this is waaaaay too easy" so I decided to make the illustrations out of paper and fabric collage, because why not make this simple project take exactly one million years longer to finish? Content Warning for self-harm through crafting.

After testing out a few different background papers, I decided to go the fabric route for the nice, subtle texture and warm hue. Using a sheet of double-sided adhesive, I attached it to the back of some discarded bristol board. A decade or so ago a publication hired me to draw a profile picture of one of their writers. This was back when I was still drawing and inking using real, physical materials (just like our artist ancestors in the stone age!), before I joined the 21st century and switched to all digital for drawing. My first attempt inking that piece was not up to snuff, so I put the bristol board in my "plain papers that can still be re-used" pile and then, lo and behold (and a decade+ later) I finally repurposed it! It's not hoarding if you really do eventually use the stuff you're saving, Matt.

In my other pile of "decorative papers that can still be re-used", I found these cut-offs from a multimedia piece I made (also) over a decade ago. See, I painted this eggplant portrait on a normal-sized piece of paper, blew it up to be like three feet high, cut it out, and then glued it to a sheet of wood. The cut off purple background pieces were too pretty to throw away, so... Well, here we are, a ten+ years later and they are the perfect fill for my boot shape! Just as the Creativity/Hoarding Gods Foretold! I am once again vindicated for meticulously holding on to all my pretty trash, even if it means storing it over multiple years and through numerous household moves, Matt.

Then I cut out all the individual shapes I'd need to fit the outline I'd drawn over my photo reference. (Insider Info: The light orangey-yellowy texture on the black paper boot was left over from the gold powder I used in my mug repair project. I used that uncut black paper as a background and drop cloth for the mug while taking photos and brushing away the excess gold. Then I looked at this sheet of black paper with a cool celestial gold smear on it and I was like "Into the 'solid-colored papers that can still be re-used' pile you go!" This time it didn't even take me ten years to reuse it in another project! Matt.)

This is what happens when you are practicing French with your audiobook on your library app while you glue down tiny paper cutout pieces and you keep fucking up how to restructure sentences with reflexive verbs so you sigh really heavily 😒

There we have it! A mighty fine boot!

The accompanying text will be written on a separate sheet of paper and then digitally superimposed over a scan of this panel.

One panel down, five more to go.

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Members of my Erika Weeds community-chat-thing on the Patreon app got to see most of these pictures as I was working on this in real time. In fact, in the next panel that I'll be sharing here, I actually did something that looked slightly less than good (it was ass) and then some patrons offered some smart suggestions, so I redid the whole thing and now it looks a million times better. You'll see it in the next update I post here- unless you go hunt down the chat-thing and scroll back so you can see the conversation happen in real time. Then you'll see it before everyone else who doesn't do that. But if that's not your thing, don't worry! I'm gunna post about it here anyway! Everybody wins! Except Matt. Who is trapped in a house with a thousand "those papers are special!" hoarder piles. Pray for him.