Hayley & Shark Week

Wow - I've started a streak! Two days in a row!

Trying out some cartoon strip templates I got at the art store - saves me the time of measuring out panels and the like.

Hayley, as might be expected, LOVES Shark Week.

Click on the panel below to see the full strip - no pushing now, there's bandwidth enough for everyone!

Haven't Forgotten About You ...

... been keeping busy with my all ages book. I'm several pages in now but I figured I'd backtrack and post a preview of page 2. I've already done some miscellaneous inking, although I might go back and redo some of those fence posts.

Everything Is A Weapon In The Hands Of An Artist

I keep forgetting to post this - I was doodling Mona 73 on the back of an envelope since it was the only thing handy when I started thinking about how anything can become art if you make it so, which made me think of the little slogan I wrote on there about Everything Is A Weapon in the Hands of An Artist (although that sounds more like more politically/socially concious art than a doodle of a female assassin character) which made me think of how cool it'd be if the character Mona 73 could make weapons out of anything which made me think if I wrote one reeeeaaaalllllyyyy long sentence as a blog post - would anyone read it?

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Speaking of reading things, I'm totally into Essential Captain America, Vol 1. I never read Captain America growing up, but I'm totally digging the old Stan Lee/Jack Kirby stories I've read in here thus far.

Potter 7

So I read Potter 7: Potter Hardest Of All Saturday - it took about 12 hours but I made it through the whole book in one day.

It amuses me how crazy some people get about insulating themselves from spoilers. I had intended to read the ending on the internet before reading the book itself just so I could relax and enjoy it but ended up doing it the old fashioned way and letting the story unfold without spoilers. I certainly never went to the extremes some people are doing with turning off all media and locking themselves in their rooms until they're done reading. But I thought it was funny and so here's a cartoon I whipped up quickly when I should have been working on my all ages book and/or Jen's birthday present.

Life Drawing Group

Sketches from Wednesday night's Life Drawing Group. Jen and I didn't stick around for the full session, but I still got a couple pages filled.

TBCC Sketches

I uploaded the sketches I did from the Tampa Bay Cartoonists Collective Saturday session.


Here's the character I came up with after misreading a preview page from Phil Noto's new sketchbook. Extra added bonus is Tony's directions to AOE (a local art store).


No story behind this one - just messing around



Roughing up some Hayley action poses for my all ages book.

A Preview Of Things To Come

Posting on Kitty Cat Jet Pack may become a little more scatter shot over the next few weeks but for very good reason.

At the kind invitation of Mike Maihack I joined up with the Tampa Bay Cartoonists Collective for a massive sketching takeover of Border's cafe. All that talent, creativity, and personality under one roof is a sight to behold and in between talk of Transformers, New York City weather, and which Pixar movie is the best, I walked away with tons of tips and even more inspiration.

Most notable was some great advice from Dan Boyd that it's okay to start drawing your book without having every last detail of the script nailed down. I've been so focused on getting every last word for my all ages book down in stone that I think I'm missing the point. So I'm just going to take it on faith that if I know A and B starting out I can make it between them in an entertaining and hopefully coherent way. If not, well at least I'll have some pages done regardless.

So the whole point of this rambling is I'm going to be concentrating mostly on my book for the next few weeks. I'm sure there'll still be postings going on, probably just not on the every other day routine everyone's used to.

Here's a preview of what's to come - sorry for the bad scan:

Potter!

Jen and I were going to see Harry Potter this weekend but since I'm stubbornly holding out to see it on the Imax screen we might have to wait until next weekend to do so. In the meantime, here's a shot of Harry and the gang which I drew up as a nice excuse to try out my new Prismacolor Greytone marker set.

Now this is better ...

Kickin' it South Park style!


Note: the Lightsaber is just wishful thinking unfortunately

Everyone else is doing it ...

... why not me?

I don't really watch the Simpsons, but I made my own avatar anyway. For the whole two people on the internet who haven't done this yet, you can make your own at The Simpsons Movie site.

Tripling Up

I haven't forgotten about you guys - just been trying to get my head around a particular pose. I've done this same one three times now - first time I did it from further away (this is Jen's favorite):


But I didn't care for it, so I did it again, this time more close up:


Still wasn't too happy with it. After reading Mark Kennedy's advice on Life Drawing, I decided to have another go, this time worrying less about realism. This one I popped in Photoshop and had a go at coloring.


I think I've had my fill of the Wookie-size air brush setting - it's time to start learning how to use all those little brushes. Luckily Mike has shared some great tips! Hmm ... maybe I should have read over that post again before working on the above ...

Bunny Honey

I'm not entirely sure, but I think the new DrawerGeeks topic is "Bunny." At any rate, that's what I picked it to be and did the following. I got great results (to me at least) doing the shading on the arms and shirt by using some different brushes in Photoshop - it's a little muted online unfortunately.



Comments and suggestions, of course, are always welcome.

I also figured out how to add my artwork to my iPod, so if any readers out there catch me on the street and want to see cartoon kitties, comely lasses or other whatnots you're in luck! I'm also impressed with the resolution the files show up in - it looks top notch (better than they do online as a matter of fact).

New Sketchbook, Page 3

Okay, I promise I'm not going to take you through my new sketchbook page by page but I'm having so much fun I'm going to give in to temptation and post one more. This one was more about the pose than anything:



Jen has already declared this one to be her favorite. I'm still partial to the Page 1 sketch, but then I always like introductions ...

New Sketchbook, Page 2

Still having fun with my new sketchbook:

Breaking In My New Sketchbook

Jen had to go to the art store today to pick up supplies for her summer session classes and I, of course, tagged along (who can resist a trip to the art store?). I spotted the 11 by 8 sketchbook below - its size positively demands pin-up style pieces. Why look the inspiration horse in the mouth? I furtively slipped it into the cart whilst Jen was browsing canvases.



I couldn't wait to break it in - here's the first page!



Hopefully the other 211 pages will go as well.