Who

Cloud and Tree is a creation of Ezra Stevens, whom shall forthwith be referred to as "me" (subjectively) or "I" (objectively), to better reflect the autobiographical nature of this portraiture. I am a bored college student living (regretfully) in the Midwest of the United States of America. I draw silly comics when I should (?) be doing homework or paying attention to my professors. I would describe myself (oh yeah, and as "myself" reflexively subjectively) as a lovable yet reclusive computer nerd, but I am probably not to be trusted with such evaluations. Also, I'm single.

What

My current active comic is Journals of Toast. It is a collection of musings written from the perspective of Toast, one of the not-quite-main characters from my first comic. Until last summer (the one in 2006) I drew Cloud and Tree, a lighthearted, zany and somewhat abstract gag strip with anthropomorphic inanimate objects as characters. Inbetween the two I launched White Flag, which in retrospect was too ambitious a project for me to have attempted by myself. It never really got off the ground.

When

The first Cloud and Tree website was launched in the latter half of 2005, on some free, ad-supported host. In January 2006 I moved to a real host on my own domain. After a decent run of 91 comics, C&T was showing its age, so I discontinued it in midsummer 2006. I spent the next few months sputtering through an attempt at a deeper comic with a real story and art, and then the website pretty much died. On 14 February 2007, Journals of Toast launched. It's pretty much my least ambitious project ever, so hopefully I can maintain a consistent update schedule with it.

How

Not much to tell here. I sketch out my comics on a notepad as the ideas come to me, and then redraw them on my computer with Inkscape, using a plain ol' mouse. This has pretty much always been my modus operandi, except that I originally drew Cloud and Tree using GIMP (before discovering Inkscape).

Where

Places I can be found on the internet include:
  • This website, http://cloudandtree.com.
  • My email, ezrastevens /AT/ cloudandtree /DOT/ com
  • unholysauce on Yahoo Messenger
  • unholysauce@hotmail.com on MSN Messenger
  • ezrastev on AIM
  • ezrast at OnlineComics.net
  • ezrast or unholysauce on lots of various websites. If you look you can probably find all manner of embarrassing information about me. Isn't the internet amazing?

Why

A lot of artists will tell you they would keep making art for art's sake, even if they didn't have any patrons. That's cool and all, but not really how I roll. I like people, on the whole, and they motivate me. I'm basically the same as your everyday MySpace slut, only with the taste and expertise to actually contribute content to this fair internet of ours. If you've bothered to read this far, drop me a figurative line. Hearing from random people who have looked at my stuff is the most rewarding part of this hobby. I mean, the worst that could happen is I ignore you, and the best that could happen is I say something really awesome and permanently change your life for the better. This is a good risk-benefit analysis, people.