Joshua W. Cotter

@joshuawcotter

ND Secular Humanist ♾️ Traditional Media Cartoonist & Illustrator ✍️ Fix Your Hearts or Die 🫀 or

944 Following3,891 Followers765 Posts

Bluesky

amateur

Is this your profile?Claim it and joshuawcotter.dirty.social is yours.Claim profile

Joshua W. Cotter@joshuawcotter· 4d

‘nod away, volume 2’, pen and ink on bristol

A pen and ink drawing of an aerial view of a fictional airport, a small section of the drawing is shaded with hatch marks.

Joshua W. Cotter@joshuawcotter· 8d

A page from ‘nod away, volume 3’. Blue pencil on bristol.

A stream of consciousness sequence with numerous objects, human and animal figures blending together, winding an s-curve across the page.

Joshua W. Cotter@joshuawcotter· 21d

My folks lost their home to an electrical fire a couple weeks ago. My dad built it himself one summer when I was a kid & they lived there for 40 years. Fortunately they’re unharmed & getting past the shock. I’m on the other side of the world & can’t do much to help out, so I made this for them.

An acrylic gouache painting of a long house with a brick facade and a garage with yellow siding, surrounded by trees and a small decorative windmill, their schnauzer runs through the front yard. A blue sky with a few soft white clouds fills 2/3 of the vertical painting. The colors are highly saturated.

Joshua W. Cotter@joshuawcotter· 27d

‘The Odyssey’ (2026)

Monty Python pushing a large wooden rabbit on wheels towards a castle.

Joshua W. Cotter@joshuawcotter· Jul 10

丹波市07月26年, acrylic gouache on board

Painting of a rural Japanese landscape, train in the foreground / paddies, river and a small village in the mid ground / tall wooded hills and a blue sky with white fluffy clouds in the background. Painted in highly saturated colors, predominantly green.

Joshua W. Cotter@joshuawcotter· Jun 30

原爆ドーム, the ‘Atomic Bomb Dome’ in the Hiroshima Peace Memorial park. May the hate-mongers who have seized control of our world be put in check before we repeat the catastrophic mistakes of our past.

A watercolor painting of 原爆ドーム, the ‘Atomic Bomb Dome’ in the Hiroshima Peace Memorial park.

Joshua W. Cotter@joshuawcotter· Jun 26

‘nod away, volume 3’, WIP, blue pencil on bristol

A stream of consciousness sequence, figures in various states of abstraction, next moving in and out of legibility. Hands with eyeballs and teeth.

Joshua W. Cotter@joshuawcotter· Jun 24

A page from ‘nod away, volume 1’, pen and ink on bristol. Ho ho, hoo hoo.

A deity sitting in the clouds in a black sky, one large eye for a face, lots of lines moving outwards from the eye, a mouth that looks like fingers, liquid pouring from the mouth. This description doesn’t really do it justice, but there’s a lot going on. A male figure with long hair and a scraggly beard rides in a craft in the black water below the deity. The words ‘HO HO, HOO HOO’ are written in the sky in large block letters.

Joshua W. Cotter@joshuawcotter· Jun 19

‘nod away, volume 3’, WIP, blue pencil on bristol

A cropped comics page, a few panels of a woman wearing an augmented reality visor.

Joshua W. Cotter@joshuawcotter· Jun 17

A pen drawing of Peter Thiel looking like the shriveled boiled ham life-hating demon that he is. Caption below it reads ‘The Antichrist’

Joshua W. Cotter@joshuawcotter· Jun 9

I used to make comics for the Kansas City Star. Here’s one.

Mr Peanut struts down a city street at night, whistling.

Same city street at night, Mr Peanut’s attention is drawn to a female candy bar leaning against a wall, blonde hair, pink heels, smoking a cigarette, her wrapper is folded down, her chocolate exposed.

Day time, some months later, Mr Peanut and Mrs Peanut walk down the city street, Mr Peanut’s hiding behind his hat, Mrs Peanut looking at the blonde candy bar, attempting to get Mr Peanut to pay attention to their child that she’s pushing in a stroller - a box of Goobers.

Joshua W. Cotter@joshuawcotter· Jun 8

‘nod away, volume 3’, WIP, blue pencil on bristol

A cropped comics page, a series of panels showing a vessel flying through space, a man looking through a box with a flashlight, a woman sitting in a small compartment with a visor on, she takes it off and says ‘bleh’, rubs her eyes and blows a raspberry.

Joshua W. Cotter@joshuawcotter· Jun 3

From ‘March Hare 08’, pen in sketchbook

A bunch of surreal biomorphic doodles, a few dozen sweaty critters made of hair, eyeballs, tongues, etc. Kind of hard to describe effectively. There’s something that looks like a hotdog in a bun with goose flesh and millipede legs. Stuff like that. There’s text that reads ‘Television Don’t Go to My Head’

Joshua W. Cotter@joshuawcotter· Jun 2

Sketch for a children’s book project that didn’t end up working out (2024). It would be nice to revisit these characters some day, they were fun to work with.

A pencil and watercolor drawing of three anthropomorphic animals, a cow dressed as a British Bobby, a fox in a purple coat and scarf, an octopus in a rickety wooden box with wheels. The octopus says ‘EXCUSE ME, SERGEANT KNOW-IT-ALL, BUT THE BRIDGE MAY BE OUT’. The cow is replies ‘COME NOW! WHAT
WOULD A SMALL FOREST MAMMAL KNOW ABOUT BRIDGE INTEGRITY?’, the octopus replies ‘I MUST ADMIT THAT I AM NOT AN EXPERT.’, the cow says ‘THERE YOU HAVE IT’

Joshua W. Cotter@joshuawcotter· May 28

I was only on the site for a few seconds when I saw the ‘$ spent on AI since page load’ section. As an artist I could survive a lifetime or two on what these twits spend on their plagiaristic slop generators in a few seconds. Incredible.

A screenshot that reads ‘$786, 534
$ SPENT ON AI SINCE PAGE LOAD’

Joshua W. Cotter@joshuawcotter· May 27

A page from ‘Driven by Lemons’, 2009

A 12 panel sequence of a rabbit in a hospital bed drawn loosely in a sketchbook with a black pen, the outdoors - a tree, grass and blue sky as seen out of the window - is drawn in color pen. In the sequence the rabbit’s head separates from its body like a helium balloon, floats upwards and then is seen bobbing through the air outside the window.

Joshua W. Cotter@joshuawcotter· May 26

infinitippy

Sketchbook drawing of a few dozen Tippy the Turtles (from the Art Instruction School pamphlet) in a large cluster, drawn in pen and colored yellow orange and pink. Drawn over a period of a couple months every morning as a warmup before I started in on pencilling ‘nod away’ pages.

Joshua W. Cotter@joshuawcotter· May 19

A page from ‘nod away, volume 2’, three Chicago institutions - @quimbysbookstore.bsky.social , @recklessrecords.bsky.social & Margie’s Candies

Three horizontal sequential panels drawn in pen and ink, city street scenes depicting the above listed institutions, people floating down from the sky to populate the sidewalks.

Joshua W. Cotter@joshuawcotter· May 19

Pepsi Japan way ahead of Coca Cola US

A picture of a bottle of Pepsi concentrate, just add water.

Joshua W. Cotter@joshuawcotter· May 13

‘nod away, volume 3’, WIP. Blue pencil on bristol.

Two women looking down on someone, viewed from below, one woman is singsong saying おはよう (Japanese for good morning)

Two panels of a large man and a small woman speaking, in the first panel the woman says ‘THERE IS PLENTY OF TECH ON BOARD WE WILL FIGURE SOMETHING OUT. HOLD HIS HEAD, BIG H.’ The man says ‘I… I’M NOT CERTAIN IF WE SHOULD. WE DON’T KNOW WHAT…’, the woman interrupts with a loud ‘FINE’, a look of exaggerated exasperation on her face.

Joshua W. Cotter@joshuawcotter· Apr 27

Physical copies of my books ‘Goat & Sheep by the Well’ and ‘Driven by Lemons (2nd Edition)’ are now available on @johnporcellino.bsky.social ’s Spit and a Half online store - www.spitandahalf.com/product-tag/...

Cover for Goat and Sheep by the Well, a pen drawing of an unnaturally tall hill with a tree and a well on top of it, shaded with blue wash.

Cover for Driven by Lemons, a black and white nonobjective abstract painting, similar to a zebra’s patterns.

Joshua W. Cotter@joshuawcotter· Apr 22

Three Wise Monkeys, from Kaibara Hachiman Shrine

Three “hear no evil, speak no evil, see no evil” monkeys carved from wood sitting on a wooden shelf in front of a wooden altar. All is very, very old.

Joshua W. Cotter@joshuawcotter· Apr 21

‘Thistledown’, a page from ‘nod away, volume 2’, pen and ink on bristol

A rural landscape dotted with trees and windmills. Thistledown taking human form floats through the sky above.

Joshua W. Cotter@joshuawcotter· Apr 17

New studio setup. Really happy to have a corner in the world to work in again. ‘nod away, volume 3’ in progress.

A pic of my desk where I make comics. There’s a small angled drafting table sitting on top of a larger drafting table, a couple pages of bristol paper with blue pencil drawings on them, three lamps (I’m getting old and my ability to see is in decline), drawing materials, some toys - a screaming goat, ‘Back to the Future’ Lego mini-figures, an Alien gochapon. Japan can be seen out of the window in the background.

Joshua W. Cotter@joshuawcotter· Apr 6

A couple watercolors from the past week. The first done from nearby castle ruins on top of a mountain overlooking the valley below, the second from our town’s spring (春) festival.

Two brightly colored paintings on a sketchbook page, the first done in natural colors - greens yellow and browns, the second in bright yellows and reds.

Joshua W. Cotter@joshuawcotter· Apr 1

A pen and ink drawing of an astronaut in space, looking back at earth a mushroom cloud is reflected on their visor.

Joshua W. Cotter@joshuawcotter· Apr 1

‘nod away, volume 3’, blue pencil on Bristol, WIP

A cropped comics page, a broken sequence of panels of two women discussing something unknown to the reader. One is wearing a hood, looking at a computer, blows a raspberry.

Joshua W. Cotter@joshuawcotter· Mar 31

A page from ‘nod away, volume 2’, a drawing of a thistle from the protagonist’s sketchbook. Pen and ink on bristol.

Joshua W. Cotter@joshuawcotter· Mar 26

‘nod away, volume 3’, blue pencil on bristol, WIP. We moved into our new (old) house in Japan this week, my studio is set up and I can finally start working on ‘nod away’ regularly again. It’s been years. Feels good.

A wordless sequence of panels taken from a comics page, a panel of a ship flying through space, a woman with long hair in a hooded sweatshirt looking at something, puts her hair up, takes a watch out of a suitcase, looks to her left where something is going ‘tak tak tak tak’

Joshua W. Cotter@joshuawcotter· Mar 19

“If I had it all to do over again, I'd cut off my hands.” - Wallace Wood, one of the greats.