Blech! (Maybe...)

I finished my test drawing of the horse. I LOVE my new pen set. I am in the mood to only use these right now. But I do still love color so I got it in my head to keep on experimenting on the horse. First the finished pen drawing...



Then I thought "why not add color to the horse". Why not, indeed? So what if you haven't used watercolor in close to twenty years? So what if you weren't that good with it to begin with? WHY NOT?



Okay, well it's probably not as bad as I first thought looking at it, but it's not great. And it's certainly nowhere NEAR the quality I want to have for these types of drawings. I think I like where this is going so I'll keep practicing and we'll see what happens. (On a professional note: watercolor does NOT work well on bristol board. Lots of warping going on. But I figured that would happen.)

Back to drawing board...literally.

A Couple of New Things

Not too much today, but I wanted to put up SOMETHING. I've gotten a couple of new cartoons done. I'm not really in the mood to go all political blogg-ey, so I'll let them do the talking.

I dislike re-writing history...especially since there is no one conquered yet.



Next up, the obvious answer to everything in the United States today.



And now I just wanted to update on my Rapidograph testing...(outside of the work done on the cartoons, that is). I AM in fact, continuing to work on the horse drawing. It's just taking a bit longer since I've been trying to get the cartoons done. So, here is the next progression of horse pen and ink...



...seriously, I am LOVING my new scanner.

Irritation and Jubilation

I have a lot going on this week. The cartoons are coming as fast as I can get them down. I am perpetually irritated though. One of the unfortunate side effects of paying attention. But the jubilation comes from having a lot of new tools that REALLY make this whole process a lot easier.

My friend Denise (heretofore referred to as the Font Queen or FQ for those in the know) had an extra set of Koh-I-Noor Rapidograph pens that she was gracious enough to allow me to have. These things absolutely rock! They make lettering a MUCH less ungainly task and that while I still don't LIKE it, at least I don't break out into a sweat thinking about it.

This one was done last night after talking to my cousin through Facebook. She is a teacher and had just found out that her county was making cuts to a reading program that she considers very important. And that was enough for me. Getting angry about these things is tricky though. Really the only thing you want to do is tie the people responsible to a chair and just scream at them and call them obscene names all night. And while funny to me, it doesn't really lend itself to a fun graphic joke (okay, again, funny to ME). So while as a person you may be HUGELY irritated by something you have to find a (hopefully) productive and (even more hopefully) humorous way to get your point across. Here's what I came up with last night:



A better way of expressing my displeasure about this topic than just screaming mindless insults. And just as a side note, the writing on the signs was REALLY hard to come up with. This is because I have awesome parents, and family, and teachers who TAUGHT ME TO READ! Unfortunately for me, this makes purposefully writing things wrong extremely difficult. Oh well. So thank you to everyone who ever encouraged or inspired me to read!

And just so people don't think I've gone completely fine art-free, I did get started on this before my dander got riled up.



The other tool that is making life easier is my new scanner. Taking photos of oil paintings works pretty well, but photographing pen and ink is a GIANT pain in the keister. All in all life is pretty good on the art front.