Hey everybody, it's the "Thank You Chicken"!

I know it's a rooster. But yet again, I like the way "Thank You Chicken" sounds. Again, only because it makes me laugh. Anyways, I just finished my first official pen and ink/watercolor! Since my friend Denise (Font Queen) was ever so generous as to donate a set of Rapidographs to me, I felt that she should have a thank you gift for such a spectacular present to Paintmonkey Studios. She had told me of a liking she and her son had for chicken decor and she had liked the one that was the first ever prize for the Paintmonkey Studios Facebook challenge. (More on the second challenge coming soon!)

So I decided that I would combine the two things and create her a chicken with the new pen set and splash on some watercolor to finish the image. So here is my thank you gift for a brilliant new medium for me.



Angry little sucker, isn't he? Roosters just always look angry.

Some computer stuff isn't ALL bad...

So I was trying to enter a contest where you design the next character for a movie/comic book sequel. I won't name names, but it's out now and it involves body parts and kicking. Anyways, I didn't read the fine print in time and realized too late that I was too late to enter the contest (I would have felt bad but the silly thing had ended even before I started working on the character).

But I felt I would share it SOMEWHERE and suddenly it occurred to me "hey dummy, you have an art blog". Ta-da!

I did the basics in my usual format, ink on bristol board. But I noticed everyone else had color entries (again, BEFORE I realized the contest was over). Granted, they had done theirs on the website and it only involved uploading photos and using basic tools to put costume features that already existed over the photos. So I figured I needed to do something to jazz mine up. Since I had done it on bristol board, I knew from my horse drawing that watercolor doesn't work great on bristol board. Warps it nicely. So I thought outside my normal realms...

My brother had just recently acquired some gigantic package of Photoshop and related software. So I emailed it to him to see what could be done. He was doing some coloring with it, but I knew what I wanted so I took the opportunity to go up there and see what these computers could do.

Here is the finished product:



My brother had gotten the basics out of the way for me and then gave me a slight tutorial on how this stuff works. I think for my first time with computer coloring, it's not TOO hideous. It may work for some things I do in the future but I think I'll stick with my antiquated methods for most of my work.

Oh and by the way...for those of you who think I have lost my mind as far as what constitutes a superhero, I have not. I based this character on Ignatius J. Reilly, the protagonist from John Kennedy Toole's masterpiece, A Confederacy of Dunces. I thought a superhero based on one of the most obnoxious characters in literature was just funny.