Concept Art – Tam Go's Art Blog

Reflecting on Cans of Beans (2012-2019)

The new cover I drew for Cans of Beans exclusively for Tapas (December 2025)

Cans of Beans was a slice-of-life dramedy webcomic that ran from 2012-2019, about a creepy-by-choice loner werewolf named Carl and his chill surfer-bro roommate Dude. I wrote, drew, and did all of the management of Cans of Beans–a one-woman show.

Aaaand about 2 weeks ago, I accidentally destroyed my own website by updating WordPress using an old version of Comicpress, a theme used by many webcomickers of that era, and now I have no choice but to upload my whole comic onto a mirror while I’m scrambling to fix the original site.

What an excellent way to force myself to revisit my old comic!

Sketchdump 3/9/2025

Daylight savings time has me exhausted as usual, but I’m somehow reminded that I need to post some stuff out of my sketchbooks again (some of which I’ve neglected to post in a while… whoops). Mix of the traditional sketchbook and the Supernote this time!

sketchbook page of gesture drawings done with fountain pen

sketch of Chiara in her night outfit/underwear

photo of Nomad, headshots and thumbnail drawing

photo of Nomad, sketch of Chiara and Marcello

photo of Nomad, sketch of Jonathan saying "I am quite literally going insane, thank you very much!"

sketchbook page of Chiara in different poses, fountain pen

photo of Nomad of Chiara in a pirate outfit

Chiara in a White Dress

I saw a photo of a couple of young Italian girls in identical dresses, and I thought that dress would look adorable on Chiara.

Reference Photo from Slim Aarons – La Dolce Vita by Christopher Sweet

illustration of Chiara in a white blue-tinted dress

A Man of Constant Sorrow

Lately I’ve been finding a lot of comfort in drawing Jonathan. He’s an OC who’s been with me since middle school, and while his backstory has changed a LOT since then (he used to be a magical writer with depression… lol), I keep returning to drawing him and trying to figure out how to weave him into a story. I think with La Principessa, I finally found a home for him that makes sense.

Englishman

“Signora Stassi, when the hell did we let an Englishman into my home?”

fake watercolor illustration of two men, one holding a cane to the other man's throat

This is a scene from Chapter 2 of La Principessa, but I couldn’t wait to get around to actually drawing the comic pages, I wanted to draw it nowwww

Stassi Cola – Character Design Journey

I decided to design a different minor character from La Principessa, one who DOES show up more. The design below is the ‘final’ design of the head of staff, Stassi Cola (and let’s be honest, there is no such thing as a final design in a solo comic creator’s comic), but how I got here was a bit different than the main characters.

matronly woman in a dress with a half-apron. Various facial expressions.

Mamma Perla

Mamma Perla is the very first minor character introduced in La Principessa. Even though she only shows up for one chapter, she is somewhat referenced through the rest of Act 1, so I felt it was important to design her, especially since my attention is moving towards thumbnailing and rewriting.

I imagined her to be a religious woman, but she is not above petty gossip.

Woman with an orange blouse and blue skirt or dress.

“Watercolor” Comic Panel Tests

This was a fake comic panel for La Principessa where I was trying to figure out the general direction of what I want my comic to ‘look’ like. I know I wanted something colorful but easy to draw, and this is a close approximation to what I wanted. The other failed tests below the line!

girl standing in a kitchen during the day time tying the bow behind her back

girl standing in a kitchen during dusk tying the bow behind her back

Marcello – Early Exploration

An older drawing of Marcello, the antagonist of La Principessa. He’s a little too villainous here, but I still like this drawing.

a red haired man sitting on an armchair reading a newspaper