Gimmie some space!

It's very interesting to look back on early Precocious and see how things have changed. What's on my mind at the moment is not the ever-changing character proportions or little details that come and go - it's SIZE. My characters have gotten BIG! Not fat. Not tall. Not stretched. Just drawn bigger.

I look back and I used to easily crap three characters into a tiny three-inch space. Nowadays I have to use tricks to fit more than one in there! I'm working on this Sunday's strip, and I have to fit two characters into a larger panel than normal. (Three panels per page verses four.) Add in some dynamic poses and suddenly I NEED MORE ROOM!

The more comfortable I become in drawing the characters, the larger I draw them in the sketchbook - and that sketchbook size becomes the comfort zone. There was a time I used to use sketchbook pages for tracing when I ran into complex panels. Nowadays, one sketchbook character would take up a full panel. They look great, but this practice is really throwing my comicking off. The solution? Re-learn how to draw smaller?

The thing about sketchbooks is that it's far too easy to only draw in the comfort zone. I've been working on repetition and accuracy in drawing characters - getting the details down, rather than exploring new territory - and that can hurt me. The sketchbook focus needs to change to uncomfortable things! I need to draw celebrities to practice portraits. I need to draw actions poses. I need to draw smaller! Man, this is WORK!

Edit: Yes, another solution is to buy a tablet, draw digitally in my comfort range and resize as needed, BUT I RESIST THE CALL OF TECHNOLOGY! I want to hold my nice inked originals in my hand. They will be collector's items down the road!

It remains whim time!

Today was recovery from the Super Bowl day, so not much bonus, bloggable progress was to be made - until I returned to whimsy and painted some more FOR THE PEOPLE! It may be chaotic. It may not be going anywhere good. It might accidentally trigger the downfall of humanity. WHO CARES! It's bloggable progress, and it beats having to show you a shot of my desk as I work on this week's Precocious and Copper Road strips. (I am indeed doing that today.)

It's whim time!

I didn't want to show you a barely-changed painting or a shot of my desk with in-progress comics, so I started a new painting JUST FOR YOU!

As is my way, I squirted one color (this time burgundy) and some white onto the palette and went wherever my hands took me. Did it work? I dunno, but it was fun to improv a bit.

Snowpocalypse 2.0!

Since the plan for today is to knock out some comics, which is not a bloggable thing, I choose to distract you with a snowy picture!

Another boatload of snow has crushed Winchester, and I'm not remotely thrilled with it. This amount is well beyond the manageable stage and into the "oops, there goes your power" area. All I want is a warm stretch and some heavy plowing. Free me!

The worst part of this is that I'm snowed in with the worthless damn dogs. I hate dogs. I really hate dogs. I look down on dog people, as if they are fundamentally flawed. Dogs are stinky, stupid need machines, and the two in this house are some of the worst.

My normal routine when stuck with the dogs is to throw them outside and let them enjoy the yard. I can't do that with TEN THOUSAND FEET OF SNOW OUTSIDE! Today, I had to shovel them a path so they could wander around and do their disgusting things. But the dogs are not content with going out the side door. It's snowy out the side door. Why can't they go in the backyard, where it MUST be sunny and warm! Every time I go upstairs, they clamor to the back door and look at me with hope. This is where I point out that the back doors are GLASS, and anyone with a brain can see the snow has piled up so much that the drift is taller than the dogs! In their small brains, there's some HOPE that it's nice out back!

So I finally gave them what they wanted. I opened the back door and they bounded out - smacking face-first into the wall of snow! They stumbled backwards in complete disbelief. You mean that snow drift that was visible outside is ACTUALLY THERE? Idiots.

So I'm hoping making comics will improve my mood, but I'm sure the situation will get worse before it gets better. That's the cue for our power to go out.

(Please don't go out, power.)

Finishing touches on unfinished touches

Work on the dance commission continues, and it's time to hammer out the final details before the finishing layer. This is always the two steps forward, one step back part of painting, as each new touch requires a new touch-up to fix.

Starting with Dionne, her dress now has texture, a proper nose and lighter hair. I'm not sure I like the dress effects yet, so I may knock 'em all out and try again. The rest looks good and should only need some finishing. For Max, I did as promised and changed the pants to brown. I think it's a good base, but it needs another coat. His tie will be more red in the final, so worry not. I just threw in some burgundy while I had it out to serve as a placeholder.

Once the paint has a chance to dry, and I finish watching this Caps game, I'll return to the good fight and touch-up some more. This painting should be finished this weekend!

Another day, another sketchbook page

I think the title says it all. Nothing snazzy to show from today, but that's not a bad thing. I need to do more of this daily sketching thing - this is sketch blog after all - but all that productivity stuff can get in the way! Eh, look at it this way: No matter what, I'm doing something awesome! THESE SKETCHES ARE AWESOME!

Formal fashion

Work on the Dionne/Max commission continues! Look at Max's surprisingly awful suit! Yeah, gotta fix that. I'm thinking changing the pants to brown would do wonders. Dionne is sporting mauve, which looks better on the painting than in this picture, but still needs some accents. (Burgundy?)

Fashion choices aside, things are progressing nicely. The background should be set, which is nice. Lots of places need touching up - some need a couple paint attacks to make right - but it's looking good!

Sexy sexy SCIENCE!

Got my new Precocious shirts in today! Conclusion: Mixed success! Neither came out as nicely was the Exceedingly Cute shirt, but the SCIENCE! one is quite acceptable. I'll have to create a new SCIENCE! design with non-white letters so I can attach it to different shirt types. The Unrestrained Creativity shirt, however, was lackluster. It didn't print very clean and, like with Zazzle, it printed too high on the shirt. I'm starting to think "center" means "top center" in those shirt makers. It makes no sense, as all horizontal designs would be screwed up, but there you go! Whatever. It is now banished from the store! Man, I hope you people like the Exceedingly Cute look...

I have other shirt ideas, but no time to work on them in the present. You know that long laundry list I've been talking about. Still there. Still scary. Tonight the goal is finishing comics and painting. Tomorrow it's writing. Thursday is probably finishing that writing because I procrastinated. Such is life.

You know, it looks like I have boobs in that photo. I assure you, I was just puffing the shirt out so the design would show. Really. I'm not that fat yet. Yet. *sob*

Forecast: 50% Gray

Aww, I missed the midnight deadline. AGAIN. I tried to make it, but I had to move at the pace of paint. (You can still the light glinting off wet paint in the pic.) Oh well, productivity happened and that's what matters.

This painting is aaaallllmmmooosssst done! Just a few touches of white and we're set! As you see. I went with the 50% gray for the background. Good or bad, that's my choice. In an oddity, the painting actually looks much better in person than in the pic, so take my word that it's awesome.

Today was a 50% gray day. Snow kept me from frolicking in the outdoors. Writers block kept me from doing all the important stuff. My wonky sleep schedule caught up to me. Gray. Day. (I did get some comics done, though, but I obviously can't share them here.) Solution: GO TO BED EARLY! Hit the reset button and start anew!

Dancing Now

Haven't checked in with my Dionne/Max commission in a while, so here we go! As you can see, most of the main colors are down and I'm rapidly approaching the "repaint everything" stage where all the blotchiness become pure color bliss. If you would like to picture the final in your mind, I'm looking at making Max's suit a lightened Prussian blue.

I'm really happy with how this is progressing, and hope to get it done soon. It won't be done by the end of the month as I planned, but that was before I took a week off to wait for the projector. (Worth it!)

Now the unsexy work continues. Painting aside, I have to work on next week's comics, get back to writing character bios (I haven't forgotten) and write some of my Shepherd professors for grad school stuff. This is just the immediate stuff! I have business cards and postcards and t-shirts and the Precocious book and... ACK! Let's just savor the niceness of the painting for now, ok?