Today my Aunt Susie sent me a great photo of Nana, age 24, around the time she moved to California from Mexico. Click the gallery below to see the before and after.

Take that, `11! Overall, it wasn’t a bad year, but it certainly walloped my family at the tail end. So here’s to a better 2012!

I was a bit awestruck by a photo my cousin Stephanie posted to her Facebook page, of my grandfather’s hand with my late grandmother’s wedding ring on his pinky. Besides the obvious poignancy, it was the first time I had really paid attention to the innumerable folds in his century-old skin. And I realized it would be a whole lot of fun to draw. After about an hour of drawing, I looked down at my own hands, and they seemed completely smooth and boring and devoid of character.

Guess I was in an arts and crafts mood today–I created a custom comic strip sketchbook using a cheap notebook from Staples, and mailing labels printed with a basic template for sketching rough layouts to be scanned and inked. I can also used the lined pages to work out dialogue and plotting. Now I just need some ideas.

This (to the limited extent of my rendering abilities) is the face of my Nana as a beauty queen in the 1930s. And although she died last night at the age of basically 95, genetics dictates that I see a shadow of this face every time I look at my sister, cousins, aunts, and even my girlier uncles. And who knows, maybe it’s because they see a bit of Nana in themselves that they do their best to carry on her ageless exuberance, nurturing manner, and sharp sense of humor.