Jet City doodles, Jaw dropping doodle, and Plastic Man

Whoops! Been a while since I posted, yeah? Well, I haven't been avoiding it. Just busy. So I did these recently. I did other stuff since, but this is the most recent. 

At the Jet City Comic Show, I noticed a lot of the other artists were drawing while waiting for people to come to their table. So I gave it a shot. I am not so great at drawing in public - I find it hard to concentrate. It was a good first experience, even though the show was slow. I came home and got sick. Lovely. Anyways, here are my doodles.

That first furry fella is a character for an idea I had for a story when I was in a meeting and a chair moved that no one was near. The Tiniest Jawa was the cutest little kid with the Jawa robes. And the fella with the bad posture is not as bad as the guy I was trying to draw.

Then I drew this, perhaps another bunny and girl painting, but I am not sure.

Last night I wanted to practice doodling because I am sorely not used to it anymore. I am still not feeling well, so I drew what I am feeling like, but it is a dude. I do not feel like a dude.

And I was thinking how I could get the upstairs neighbors to be quiet a while back and was wishing Abe was more like Plastic Man.

Upstairs, the girl on the left is saying, "You only eat toenails" which is something I misoverheard once. And Plastic Man is saying, " Uh, shut up?" The guy on the right is just screaming. Downstairs, the girl in the bed is telling Plastic Man, "I need to sleep."

Well, now I am off to doodle or knit and watch MidSomer Murders, which is completely awesome.

Busy Weekend

I posted about our busy weekend printing comics. Busy Busy Busy. I better hurry up and start binding more comics right now!

Comic Review: Gingerbread Girl

Gingerbread Girl by Colleen Coover and Paul Tobin

Top Shelf Productions, 2011, $12.95

I got Gingerbread Girl because I had a vague impression that it had been the hot item for this year’s Stumptown Comic Fest, which makes sense as it was published this year by a Portland cartoonist and it is set in Portland, OR. So when I found it at Third Place Books in Lake Forest Park, I thought I’d at least flip through it and read the back. The art was endearing to me – a simple character style with a realistic background. And the story summarily wrapped up on the back cover was overwhelmingly intriguing. It went in the pile (along with a collection of Harvey Pekar, Freakangels (Abe’s great pick), and Chew Vol. 2).

Art: 4 stars

I enjoyed the art immensely, such smooth, fluid lines and the two tone as far as I remember (I have since lost the book somewhere in the apartment already). I really like the style with cartoony people and realistic backgrounds. The cartoony people are easier, quicker, to read and readily provide a canvas for varying emotions. Coover’s style is sort of like Julia Wertz in that juxtaposition of cartoony people and realistic backgrounds, but sweeter with softer lines as opposed to Wertz’ stark, hard lines. Coover’s style fits the story well. The pigeon at the beginning and end is particularly charming.

Story: 4 stars

Boy, will Abe hate this. It is one of those stories that goes about its business until it just stops rather than ends. By “ends,” I mean satisfactorily wraps up the storylines and characters. That was certainly not the case with Gingerbread Girl. And fortunately for me, I love that type of story. It kind of continues on in your head for a ways. This could have been a prologue to a much longer, far stranger story. It’s almost just a practice in character development. And they do it in a really interesting way by having the reader follow a variety of characters to explain their point of view on the main character. It is quite a weird set of view points since half of them don’t even know her. But as you read, each character fleshes out not only themselves, but the main character in some fashion.

Overall: 4 stars

Grab it now if you love pointless meandering stories about people who are slightly off. Off what, I can’t say. I am really glad we bought this book.

Zoo sketches

A while ago, Abe and I went to the zoo and it was an absolute blast! We biked over. Took about 20 minutes. I can't wait to go again. What a refreshing day. We even paid the $3 for the dinosaur exhibit. Here 'tis. First up is the stamp (on Abe's hand because I only got half one).

These are all photos from my phone, fyi.This is the first dino. He even spit. There are two little boys standing in front of him waiting to get spit on. Those are also wonderful rays of sun. It was a great, sunny day, but Woodland Park zoo is great and shady so it wasn't too hot at all. I finally understand why people enjoy the sun. At least a little.

I was a little sad because most of the dinos were not life-sized. I thought they would be, but the bracchiasaur would have been a little ridiculous. That was my favorite one though and I really wanted to see how big it was compared to me.

Abe and a dino! This my be my favorite pic of the day. Or ever.

Triceratops and a baby one!

Abe ain't afraid o' no Rex!

For lunch we had some corn dogs. Not yummy. Nice and burnt butt there.

And the hotdog color was almost white.

The rest of teh day Abe took pictures. Maybe he'll post them some day. I spent the rest of the day drawing in the great sketch pad that Abe got me for xmas. Sorry for these poor photos. They were also taken with my phone. The scans were so washed out I couldn't even see anything.

First (and these are totally out of order), here is the orangutan. Most of them were sleeping under burlap sacks, but one was sitting around when we got there and then walked up to the window where all the kids were watching. He laid his head on the edge of the window and looked at them all freaking out and jumping around and when they started to lull, he tapped on the glass at them! It was one of the coolest things I have ever seen at the zoo. Then we some some adorable fat and happy Meerkats. They were quite pear shaped. Very cute. I could watch them for hours. Next to the Meerkats was a sloth, but he was asleep in a bin or something so we could only see his back. Next to that was the Tamadue Anteater They were slow and soft colored and very cute. One of them stopped on a branch and looked around with a bunch of drool on his chin just like Ernie.

Elephant. We only saw the one. Big fella with only one tusk. He was eating so the first sketch, his head is behind a pillar. Then I drew his butt because it was funny and kinda cute. We also saw the hippos before that, but they kept going under water so there wasn't much to draw. And they were very popular that day. We also saw the macaques, which totally look like Fraggles.

We got to see some Colobus monkeys, but only just barely. Mostly we saw their long hairy tails. And a giraffe head. I would have liked Eeyore to see more of the giraffes, but Abe pushed us on. Then was my favorite, the Tapirs. I love them. They are like Eeyore and pigs and elephants and pandas all mashed together. Both of them were chillin' with their butts up against the window glass. Kept turning around to look at the crowd. Unfortunately, all of Abe's photos are of reflections of the crowd in the glass. :( I would like to do more drawings of these fellas.

Gorillas. Abe's favorite. They were really cool. Some old lady gorilla was chillin' against a log like it was a sofa. So cute. And another was grabbing a whole bunch of grass and brought it down into the water to chow down. There was a big old guy too who wandered around a bunch.

Last stop was the wallabys and emus. The photos didn't turn out well because the ones not in the sun were very camouflage and the one's in te sun got washed out. Ah well.

So much fun. I can't wait to go again. Expensive and I was wiped at the end of the day from being around all those people. But I would love to go again on a week day when all the kids are in school.