While I was at the store grabbing those little notebooks, I also got a cheap portfolio to finally put a loose pile of old art into the closet instead of having it kicking around the living room.

College stuff. Cut paper on the left, ink and colored film on the right. I feel like the Thoth poster (assignment: ‘do a cut paper poster for a Mardi Gras krewe’, I chose the one that let me get away with TEH FURREH) may have been one of my first attempts at my current Illustrator style, perpetrated in the unforgiving medium of cut paper. And oh man I was such a Matt Howarth fanboy when I did the one on the right.

Text: “Miss July, 1990 Paul Trauth”. I think it was not insignificant that I allocated this ‘centerfold’ to my birth month. I was still a guy at this point – but the gender stuff was definitely an undercurrent, I think.

There’s like three more pages of this but they really look like I was sick of the story and just wanted to finish it. I really love the way I was so consistent with the Cubist nature of that treasure chest.

Guess what? I didn’t quit drawing her. Didn’t get a sex life, either. From a college-era sketchbook in the same pile. Which is completely full of hesitant pencils and overly-precious inking like this. I stuck this sketchbook on the shelf where all the sketchbooks go – mostly the ones I’ve filled since Katrina, but there’s a few early ones in there as well that I chose as representative of a giant box of the things my mom still had.

There was some other stuff in this pile too – a scratchboard drawing of a lamia in front of a full moon, an ad layout pasted up for an already-obsolete-as-I-was-taking-it graphic design class, other college stuff. Maybe I’ll photograph some of it the next time this portfolio surfaces.

I stuck all the flat stuff in the portfolio, then grabbed a marker and drew this on the outside, and stuffed it into the deepest recesses of my living room closet. I’ll find it in another few years when I move out, giggle at it, possibly post some of it again (I know I’ve posted some of this shit before), then stuff it in the new place’s closet until the next move.

Always label your storage, even if it’s just to calligraph an elegant “WTF?” on the side of a box filled with miscellaneous stuff.