Abe and I went to our second Drink-n-Draw last night. People ran away from our quiet creepy presence. We'll get better at being social as we continue to go. We missed last week because Abe was sick. Anyways, one of the fellas brought in some paper he got with a taco. I made this comic out of it.

Then I actually got drawing. The first thing (and best thing) I drew was the weird long-necked guy on the left.

Then I drew the little fella and some sort of muppet guy.

It was pretty fun. I even had a pint of Pike Place Kilt Lifter. Yum.

My bike is too real

Proof that I actually got a bike. Schwinn Sierra 7 2011. I haven't even ridden the thing yet except in the store because I have been waiting for Abe to get his bike. What is the fun in biking alone? Here it is with the stupid back fender that I don't think I am going to use. It looks really stupid.

And yes this is in my fenced back yard. Don't you just love how grassy and green it is?

Here is my helmet from clearance at Gregg's Cycles in Greenwood. There is a monkey on the side. I know it is too far up my forehead in this picture. But look at all that hair!! I am wearing a large, probably to fit all that hair in there.

 And here I am on my bike. I really can't wait for Abe to get his bike. I think the Library is only a 10 minute slow bike ride away. We'll see how it goes when we actually bike over there since it is up a hill from here.

Sketch

This weekend, I spent most of my time making this lino print of crows in a tree. I had a lot of fun and definitely look forward to making more. Abe was getting over a sinus infection over the weekend so we couldn't play as much Rift as I had wanted, but that did let me draw and cut the lino print Saturday evening and then I made the prints the next morning. The ones I didn't ink very well actually look nice too, like there is fog. I might like them better.

On the 18th, I doodled the following. This was based of a lady's face on Deviant art, but doesn't really look like her.

Leprechauns

Leprechaun's for St. Patty's. According to Wikipedia, leprechaun's in Ireland originally wore red and you could tell by the way they dressed what part of Ireland they were from. So I have a red one, a green one, and a cute uncolored one (because it was way too late) from Ben Templesmith's graphic novel Wormwood, Vol. 2: It only hurts when it pees.

Crow story is well on its way. I am really enjoying it.

Crows

Crows - I started with pencil outlines to learn the shape and then did a page using a sharpie. It is a cool sharpie I got at the UA Writers Conference last time I went that is clicky instead of capped.

Thumbnails are done. This is going to be a smaller book so I think this one will actually go pretty fast even though it is 14 pages.

Doodles

Last nights doodles when I wasn't feeling well.

We have umbrella girl, a dude, Batman, and a poor drawing that started out as some lady on Traffic Light (tv show).

Abe and I aren't feeling well, so we didn't get to go to Drink and Draw tonight. Ah well. It is every week.

Wonderful comic news

As of today, I have comics for sale at The Comic Stop, a great comic store in Lynnwood. And by comics, I mean multiple copies of Hardly Kind. They are working a great indie section. Though as soon as I have copies of the lemming story, that will be there too. Hardly Kind is a black and white comic; the story is 9 pages.

They are our favorite local comic shop, even though they are too far to bike to. They have a really friendly and helpful staff and the store is bright and clean. Most of the comics stores we go to are over flowing and hard to get around in. Let alone actually find something. They also have a nice selection of comics that aren't the big two, which is great for us, since neither of us really wants to spend money on a super hero comic we will read only once. (The exception being Batwoman, since I plan to read that over and over again. :)  )

These guys, if you have a question, will hop right over and find it. If they can't find it, even if they can really, they will suggest other similar comics to you. Abe went in to look for Atomic Robo for me (I need to get vol. 2). They didn't have it, but the guy suggested The Goon, which neither of us had really heard of.

If you can't get to Lynnwood, though, you can buy a hard copy online at The Jerks Etsy store. If you are not keen on Etsy lately, just send me an email and I will see what we can do instead. I'd love to get a hard-copy of Hardly Kind in your eager hands. You can also get a PDF copy from The Jerks Etsy store, or you can hightail it to the amazing selection of digital comics at The Illustrated Section. So far I only have Hardly Kind there, but you will see more soon.

Doodles

I was really tired last night from staying up until 1 on Friday and Saturday and then the dratted Daylights Savings on Sunday, so by the time I was done inking The Jerks for the week, I didn't have much energy left. But I did a page of sketches. I never did get to knitting on my hat, though.

Sorry some of the images are sideways. Maybe I will color those tonight.

Drink 'n' Draw

Abe and I went to our first normally scheduled Drink 'n' Draw. Pretty fun, even though we came too late to get a good seat and ended up sequestered on a lonely couch that faced the same model TV that we have at home. First was the pig girl with mohawk and sideburn ponytails. There was also a sweet little Boston Terrier running around which inspired the little dog fella.

I realized I had been drawing hooves (the frog pony was first drawn on this page) because I am no good at hands and feet. So I drew a foot. I also started drawing what I thought my new glasses were going to look like before I picked them up. And Abe wanted to see Georgie's parents and Wellington's sisters (yes, The Jerks).

Abe didn't have his stupid mechanical pencil, so he ended up writing comic notes/stories most of the night, but  because of that he wanted to see some pictures of the Jerks to see that I could do it: Arthur blowing a raspberry, Georgie flipping someone off, Georgie smoking a cigar, Georgie from the side,  Georgie and Arthur bowling, a porcupine character for a Jerks Adventures story, Georgie splashing in water (I assumed happily, but it turns out he wanted scared).

I also drew Arthur and Georgie at different ages (sorry they are sideways). And some weird fish fella whose fin has been ripped off.

It was really fun and I look forward to going again. 4 pages of doodles is pretty good for me. And we get to meet other cartoonists. It was too bad we came too late to hang out in a section with other people, but we did get to talk to Adam a little, who we met at the ECCC version of the Drink 'n' Draw. I also passed around a copy of Hardly Kind, but I wasn't near anyone who read it so I don't know any reactions. The fella who returned the copy to me said he liked it, so that's something.

Color practice, lemming and bus stop

Well, I may have been a page and a half from finishing the inks for the lemming story for the last 4 days, but I did color the dancing lemming drawing. This was good practice because I found some colors I needed to order refills for. Though I think I have all the pens for the colors I need.

I also colored a page of Harrowing Tales at the Bus Stop, which turned out better than I expected. There may be a color version of this story in the future. The coloring in this is inconsistent panel-to-panel because I was trying out different colors. Based off this one, I do need some more colors. I ordered some of them, but others I didn't notice until I looked a little longer, like a lighter yellow.

Tonight is our second drink and draw. I am pretty excited, but I am also pretty exhausted. I had to pick Abe up from work, but I get there over an hour before he actually gets done. But I took full advantage of that time to read Shop Girl by Steve Martin. I am really enjoying it. Perhaps I will draw something from it and write up a review when I am done.

Do these sketches make me weird?

I decided to just sketch last night. Let the pencil do what it will. This is what happened. Think what you will.

You know, if anyone has tips on scanning and fixing these dratted pencil sketches, I would love to hear them. I draw pretty light.

Drink and Draw, ECCC edition

Sketches from my first drink and draw Friday night at Von's Roasthouse. I did not get much drawing done. I have a hard time drawing in public. Probably because everyone else is so much more awesome. So here we have some sketches in preparation for a Jerks story and just some other stuff.

On that last one, that is so washed out, there is the original Dude and updated Dude on the left and how I drew when I was very little on the right.
In other news, I finally got an artist's desk. It is nice and big and I can leave my stuff out. It has 6 small drawers and trays on both sides. Sometime I might even put pictures of it up.

people, part2

Quick post. More sketches of pictures from The Sartorialist. Also a drawing of me in a Julia Wertz style.

Tonight I am going to the special Emerald City Comicon Seattle Drink-and-Draw. I hope it is fun, but I will be at Von's Roasthouse tonight at 8:30, I guess. Away to Rift!

Sketches of people

Sketches of some great photos of people from The Sartorialist. I really need to practice drawing people, so I will probably be referencing that blog a lot. I used to watch it, but I wasn't really interested. Now that I had the idea to sketch the people I am interested again. 

 These are sketches of superhero women drawing by Andie Tong. These were really fun.

FYI, don't forget, I have Hardly Kind available as a PDF from The Illustrated Section and in hard copy at The Jerks store (if it is not there, send me an email or something and we will put it back up).