#darryl ayo

[darrylayo]

Trans rights 🏳️‍⚧️

Reproductive freedom 💃

Free Palestine 🇵🇸

Polyamory 👯‍♀️

Cats are beautiful 😻

Black Lives Matter ✊🏾

Reading fantasy 🐉

[littlegardencomics]

Nature is Beautiful, page 01

[counterintuitivecomics]

I did the OC Meme!

Big thanks to @sev-elbows​ for including my character Shifter in their version of the meme! I really enjoying going through my comics and picking who to draw (so much so that I kind of overdid it and hurt my hands, ha) and I hope I did them all justice. C: I officially release people from any obligation to draw their own though!

Here are all the credits, going from top to bottom in columns from left to right:

Iris from Darryl Ayo’s comic “Little Garden” @littlegardencomics​

Bobby Dal from Mimi Chrzanowski’s issue of Ley Lines, “Made with Love in Hell” @bbytown​

Agony from Gwendolyn @skeletonpendeja​‘s webcomic “Nothing Girl” @nothinggirlcomic​

Jane Doe by Sara Freya aka Sev @sev-arts​

Rosie and Isabelle from Juniper’s webcomic “Close Your Eyes Look at the Mountains” @cyelatm​

The unnamed protagonist from April Malig’s comic “Questions of Space Travel” @aprilmalig​

Kimberley Yu from gray Folie’s webcomic “Fresh Meat” @pluralthey​

Diana from Casey Nowak’s comic “Diana’s Electric Tongue” @caseyboots​

The unnamed protagonist from Karen Charm’s comic “Te Gusta Así” in their book Fütchi Perf @czapbooks​

[darrylayo]

Once upon a time in Mount Vernon 🌅

Good evening it’s finally the end of the week for office workers and guess what—I’m an office worker! Spending the evening by doing laundry and texting friends intermittently. I’m not good at having evening tea, I need some coffee. It seems unfair to only have energy and zest when I’m at work and then having to be sleepy eepy when it’s finally my own time.

I’m thinking about zines today. Not just making zines but how zines should interface in daily life. Do you read zines on the train? Maybe on your couch at home? Do you read zines on the porch or perhaps at a neighborhood cafe?

Sound off in the comments

-Ayo

[darrylayo]

King Ayo the God is back on tumblr. Tell your friend to tell a friend. My primary concerns are illustration, comics art, zinemaking, and especially all of these with respects to my own creative endeavor, Little Garden.

If you follow me on BlueSky, Instagram, or something else, there’s no need to follow me here as well. But for the record, I do not tend to crosspost, I tend to post differently on different platforms.

[darrylayo]

on drawful animate, i got the colors for Feral 😺

[darrylayo]

doodling every now and then on my computer (iPad Pro + Apple Pencil, with Procreate)

One of the best aspects of drawing digitally is that I can finally get the little fiddly bits drawn the way I like them. All of the fingers, placed where I like, not just where my pen can fit (like when I draw on regular paper). That alone is a major factor for digging deeper into digital drawing. But make no mistake; I still love/crave/desire the tactile process of drawing on paper with pens. Sometimes I wonder if I won’t split the difference by keeping a nice paper sketchbook while moving my “professional” work to the digital realm. These are just musings.

The drawing above is a sketch of a warrior who has some kind of superhuman power. Maybe I’ll get into it, maybe it’s just a doodle. Time will reveal all.

Before I close this post, my strong belief is that comics should be drawn at a slow and steady rate of one page per week and comics artists should be paid an absolute bare minimum page rate of one thousand dollars (USD) per page. The quantity of comic books produced is supported by the torturous conditions by which comics are produced. And I truly believe that the audience does not even want that many comic books; they’re simply trying to keep up with their stories.

If the comic book publishers released one forty-eight page graphic novel of each character, each year, I believe that they would be more accessible, easier to sell to people outside of the fan community, and most importantly, they would be produced in a manner that allows the artists to live well.

Thanks for listening,

Darryl Ayo

[darrylayo]

Good morning, tumblrinas

The best thing about waking up early in the morning in New York is that it’s high morning for European illustrators when I wake up. My sleepy self, looking at everybody’s best professionalism

[ =_=]-b

Last night, I was in the group chat, doodling on this sketch. In my estimation, I figured that I would work on my iPad a little bit just to warm up and then switch to my more “serious”/“proper” artwork on my drafting table. But you know what, I just didn’t have it in me. And it’s frustrating/demoralizing to sit at the drafting table, pencil in hand, with the full intention of scribbling up a new comic page…when I don’t even have an idea set to go. And so I accepted that I was making good progress and momentum with this digital sketch and plus, why move my entire setup to the drafting table just so that I can +try+ to think of a comic?

Anyway the sketch above is nothing serious, just a digital drawing that I began a while ago and kind of liked the look of. It isn’t a very serious drawing—there’s no background, no deeper story—but it will soon be a completed drawing and a lot of times, that’s all that matters.

If you’re wondering why I’m talking up a half-finished sketch, it’s because I’m presently riding the train to my day job and musing about my own thought process. Finishing a drawing used to be no big deal at all. But when you burn out—as I did—the things that used to be easy and natural take on the weight of a burden. Additionally, there’s a sort of physiological tension reaction that the brain signals when the source of the distress returns. The source of the distress is making art. So you can see the dilemma.

That’s why—after all this time—I am learning that I need to take these small steps. A sketch that once would have been no big deal is now a noticeable hill to climb. Also my physical feet are always tired due to years of bad shoes and flat feet. Not a metaphor. But the common thread is that easy things can get harder and even debilitating with age.

In any case, maybe I’ll finish the above sketch when I get home from work.

~Ayo2023