Do you remember in Mean Girls, when Crying Girl just wants to bake a cake filled with rainbows and smiles? So many feelings, no place to share them!

Well, these eight lady-pals have a lot of feelings, too. So they decided to collect them all into a rad little zine! Sad Girls features a few of my favourite illustrators, such as Kaye Blegvad and Tuesday Bassen. It's like a cake made of rainbows and smiles, but for your eyes! Haha, maybe not. I don't know. Anyone who's never seen Mean Girls will be wondering what the funk I'm going on about here.

Enough words, bring on the sweet hand-drawn portraits!

Sometimes when I'm feeling sad or lost, I doodle. But I've always been a bit ashamed of the doodling I do when I'm not in an upbeat headspace. It's darker and sketchier than my normal stuff. There's a lot of confusing patterns and sad faces. As soon as my pen comes off the paper, all I want to do is scrunch it up and throw it away - maybe because it feels cathartic to get rid of it, but also because I have this notion in my head that doodling should always be playful and happy and fun!

But it doesn't always have to be, does it? I mean, if doodling is an honest chat between your brain and the paper, it can't always be just sunshine and kitten faces and those happy little circle patterns. Sometimes the pen digs in a little deeper.



I started thinking about all this after finding the online sketchbook of 17-year-old Jenny from South Carolina. She posts up pretty doodlings that speak about hopelessness and feeling lost. It quite intimate to scroll through and hear her inner thoughts... like when you notice someone, and they're smiling or whatever, but then for a second you catch a sadness in their eyes and you know that their mind is elsewhere for a moment.

Anyhow, I'm glad Jenny didn't scrunch these up and throw them away, they're lovely.

Rick makes quite a variety of work - a real creative inspiration - his work includes collage, intricately doodled pattern pieces, beautifully observed and drawn lineworks. What I love about Ricks works is how they are imbued with a haunting sadness - an absence, a sorrow - particularly with Rick's figurative stuff. There is a feeling of something hidden... something partially remembered... an underlying melancholy.

I'm really interested what you guys think - it took me a little while but now I couldn't live without them. I did notice on Rick's MySpace page that he studied religion at college... I wonder if that has added an extra dimension to these wonderfully created, sensitive and poetic images? Then I wonder if not having an answer - in itself - is what makes the work really fizz... I do know they'll stay with me for a very long time and I wouldn't have it any other way. Thanks Rick. More pics »