This Sunday (April 30) is MicroCon, a comic book convention sponsored by the Minnesota Comic Book Association. If you live in the Twin Cities area, come on down to the State Fair grounds and join the fun. While you’re there, stop by my table and say “hi”. For more info, click here or on the image above.

Today is Tax Freedom Day. What is that, you ask? If you add up all the federal, state, and local taxes that the government will take from us this year (income tax, sales tax, property tax, etc.), the average American’s share would equal all the money you’ve earned from January 1 to today (April 26). It’s a way of illustrating just how much of our money the government takes from us each year. That’s 83 days of work (116 days counting weekends) just to pay Uncle Sam. Much of it we aren’t even aware of, for example the taxes listed on your phone bill, or taxes you pay whenever you buy gas at the pump. According to the Tax Foundation, the average American will pay more in taxes this year than they will for food, clothing and medical care combined.

Taxes were not always this high. According to this website, in 1920 Tax Freedom Day was only January 20. The total government bill then was only 5.7% of our income, today it’s almost 32% (and we’re still running a deficit!)

I’m not anti-taxes. We need to have a government and that’s going to cost money. But 32% is outrageous.

Of course there’s nothing I can do about it. I just needed to vent.

This is a terrific new artist resource. It’s a large collection of photos of famous character actors doing facial expressions. There have been many other “facial expressions” books for artists in the past, but this one is unique in two ways:

First, these are professional actors, not low-budget models trying to be actors. Second, instead of just giving us generic expressions (be happy…now be angry….) which tend to look forced, these actors were given more specific instructions. For example, “You are a five-year-old hiding something from your uncle” or “You are a rookie detective practicing your interrogation technique in front of the mirror”. The results are absolutely astounding. My only complaint is that the faces are sometimes cropped too closely, cutting off the top of the head and/or the shoulders.

I can’t wait to start sketching studies from this book! Every artist should have a copy.

Take THIS TEST to find out.

This is probably old news to some of you, but Snickers has been doing a really fun online campaign. Every day their website has a goofy interactive Flash animation that you can play. They’re sometimes bizarre but always entertaining. There’s a new one every day.

To view today’s snickery goodness, go to snickerssatisfies.com.

The last week or so I’ve been living in strange new territory: Babyland!

Last weekend my wife went to a baby shower. Two days later (Easter Sunday) we found out she is pregnant with our first child. The next day we went “window shopping” for baby stuff. The day after that we got a call that my wife’s sister had given birth prematurely, so we drove down to Chicago to spend a few days with them (they’re doing fine). We got back yesterday, and I spent the evening putting together a DVD of a baby shower for another of my wife’s friends who is a missionary on the other side of the world. Talk about baby overload. But I’m sure it’s nothing compared to how things will change once our child is born. I can’t wait.

For an “aw shucks” moment, here’s a pic of our new niece, Lauren:

When I’m not doing baby stuff I’m working on some client projects I can’t talk about yet. But I did find time in Chicago to do a little sketching (from a google photo search). I felt pretty rusty, but here’s a few of those sketches: