Christine Shields was born in Mountain View, California and grew up in various parts of Northern California around hippies and cowboys. She moved to San Francisco when she was 17 and went to the San Francisco Art Institute, and has lived in San Francisco off and on since 1987. In the early 1990s she became involved in the thriving comics, zine and music scenes in New York and San Francisco, producing her own comic, Blue Hole, as well as contributing to many other publications such as Zero Zero (Fantagraphics) and Top shelf Under the Big Top (Topshelf). She did a page for a Ramones comic book that came in a box set that Rhino records put out in 2005. She has been drawing as soon as she could pick up a pencil, but has returned to her old love of painting.