ErikaMoen

Sewing Dream Machine

These are the sashes that came with the curtains that came with the house we bought nine years ago.

They’ve been disintegrating for years and for years I keep telling myself I will (hand) sew replacements and for years I have not done it.

This is the sewing machine that an incredibly generous reader bought for me with her extra Amazon points m...

2020 in Quilt

In January of 2020, I started a journal quilt. At the start of each month I wrote a few sentences about how I felt in that moment, and then I would illustrate it by cutting out and assembling images from my stack of collage-fodder magazines and books. From that picture, I would base my quilt square using fabric and embroidery.

This is another one of those situations where if I had taken the time to research how to do it correctly fi...

Space Camp Outline Progress (💪 ACCOUNTABILITY 💪)

Ha-HAH! 

Remember two weeks ago I was all "oh nooooo, I haven't started working on my book outline yet, bloo bloo bloo" and then I was like "Two weeks from now, Friday, Dec. 2, I will post my outline here, to you. It may be super rough, it may not be in good enough shape to show my agent, but, by god, I'll put together something and I'm gunna be accountable to you."?

Literally yesterday I actually opened u...

Sketchbook Cover Decoration

The first thing I do with a new sketchbook is label the cover with my starting month and year, and then add a second blank label below it for the future concluding date. It's a habit I started during my 2005 semester in France, since I was blowing through my sketchbooks faster than I ever had before. There were so many things to draw, journal entries to write. I think I went through almost a full book in a bit over month. When I got home, I labeled them with "France, book X out of 5" and then the dates it contained, so I wouldn't lose track ...

COMIC: The Scroll

Hey, so I think this is the first comic I've made just for my new Patreon!

Normally I layout my comics to be read in a book, but this time around I trie...

COMIC: Space Camp, Day 10

Efffffffffff! I forgot to post the chapter in between Day 9 and the Epilogue! DAY 10. The final day at Space Camp!!!! So, here it is:

2022-11-21 21:47:48 +0000 UTC View Post

What's Next For Space Camp?

Ok, so like. 

I finished the first draft of LETTERS FROM SPACE CAMP. You all know that because you're here and I assume you already looked at the comics I have to offer. Or, wait, should I have assumed that? 

Recap:
Letters From Space Camp is my memoir about going through t...

2022-11-18 22:24:40 +0000 UTC View Post

#Broctober 25 - 31 : THE END

October 25

October 26

October 27

October 28

2022-11-13 22:26:02 +0000 UTC View Post

Sketchbook Roundup

Holy cow, I filled up my sketchbook and started a new one in RECORD TIME. Normally, it takes me over a year to finish a sketchbook, and that’s mostly with my lists and notes with only a handful of actual drawings. But this time? Four months! And it’s basically ALL DRAWINGS. Wowowow. Who even am I anymore?

Here’s a snippet of the first few pages of my new book and the rest from the book I just finished.

2022-11-09 20:02:38 +0000 UTC View Post

COMIC: I Want to Live

(Originally published August 13, 2014 on The Nib)

2022-11-03 00:09:58 +0000 UTC View Post

COMIC: The Letter Q: Queer Writers Notes to Their Younger Selves

(Originally posted August 11, 2017 on my previous Patreon account) 

Oh man, look what I found nestled in a long forgotten folder?<...

2022-11-02 23:05:15 +0000 UTC View Post

COMIC: In The Garden

This past August, Matt and I went to Laurelhurst Park for an evening of Poetry Comics. Anis Mojgani, Oregon's Poet Laureate, read two of his poems to the twenty of us sitting on the grass and then sheets of paper with an empty four panel grid were passed out for us to fill with our own comic interpretation of Mojgani's wor...

#Broctober 16-24

Even though I diligently took a daily photo of my little broc’s progression, I did fall behind on drawing it. The above row of sketches were churned out in one long session with the intention that I would come back and finish painting/rendering them later but later wound up getting used for more pressing things like getting back on my #Broctober schedule and finding accidentally obscene art at Goodwill.

2022-10-24 17:44:04 +0000 UTC View Post

#Broctober Continues

October 10th

October 10th- no wait-oh fuck.

That one is actually October 11th. I got mixed up because I was out of commission for a few days and had to catch up on my backlog of broccoli photos all on one day and I mixed up the dates 😬 Fortunately, I had time to correct the rest:

October 12

2022-10-17 02:55:05 +0000 UTC View Post

#Broctober

As is the way of my people (artists on social media), October is traditionally the month of drawing once a day on some set subject while referring to your project as #[Theme]tober. In the past I've done #Inktober (straight-to-ink), #OCTOber (octopus), #Locktober (Lady LovelyLocks, although there is a pre-existing #Locktober on another corner of the internet that has nothing to do with either drawing or 80s dolls that also looks like a lot of fun if you're into chastity play), and probably some other themes that are escaping me at th...

COMIC: Space Camp: Epilogue

2022-09-28 22:55:41 +0000 UTC View Post

Now and then

Matt found these photos from 2013. This is the very first picture taken of what would become our backyard, from our first tour of the house:

A couple months later, this was our first snowfall in our first house:

Not exactly a winter wonderland, but still! A significant moment worth capturing and sending along to Matt’s fa...

Sketchbook

Normally it takes me well over a year to fill up a sketchbook, both the pages with my notes and the covers with stickers.

This book, however, has been different. I only started it three months ago and I’m down to the last… 11 pages?!?!? I stopped writing here so I could eyeball how many are left (“a couple dozen”, I assumed) and then I realized, whoah, this isn’t many pages at all, so then I did...

The Case of the Missing Puzzle Pieces

Ok, so a bunch of my Helioscope studiomates went out to the coast to assemble a 1,000 piece puzzle* and after many many many hours we discovered that thREE PIECES WERE MISSING.

*(I guess some people came out to the coast to actually experience, y’know, the coast, too 🙄 Here is my basically-middle-age husband dabbing agai...

Ey Girl, I Heard U Like Potatoes

Here we have the glorious lifecycle of the noble potato! From first baby leafling breaking through the earth to the final harvest of those rich, magnificent tubers, this is not just the story of a root vegetable, nay, it is the story of us all on a spiritual level, is it not?

Potatoes are ready to harvest when their above-ground stalks and leaves start to wilt and die.

There is nothing I would like more than to tell you what kind of potato I planted but the thing is I don’t remember where I wrote the name down 😬 “Golden�...

COMIC: Out of the Alley

Out of the Alley

This is my latest collaboration with acclaimed writer Lux Alptraum for The Nib! 

Working with Lux is always such a gift and I'm so proud of all the comics we've done together. She cuts through complicated  and controversial sex-related topics wit...

COMIC(?): When I was 14, I read Whiteout.

(Originally published November 9, 2017 on my previous account.)

I had cocooned myself under my dad’s bulky feather blanket as sunlight poured through my tiny basement window but really I was in Antarctica with Carrie Stetko as she lost her finger to frost bite during a deadly snow. I was lost in that world with...

LETTERS FROM SPACE CAMP - Index

Hey! So. I have been working on a memoir about going through the Intensive Outpatient Program in 2019 and posting up each rough comic chapter as I finish it here, on this very Patreon.

Ideally I'd like to get this first draft done, then, like, polish it up, draw it nice, expand on and delete the bits that need it, and... turn it into a physical book? ...

Hey Kids! Comics!

Let's be honest, you're probably here for the comics so here's an index of them, all in one spot! Wanna read the locked ones? Become a patron at the comics tier, baybeeee. Book Worm level patrons even get digital downloads of my books!

Newest posts at top!

►►►2022-09-06 02:14:03 +0000 UTC View Post

Accidental Selfie

Another accidental selfie as I fumbled with my phone to take a picture of my plants.

Have you ever seen lettuce seeds in the wild*?

*(The “wild” of my backyard garden in a suburb of a manmade city)

These are th...