Stipples are the Devil's Dots

Obviously, this is not a stippled image. The stippled strip had no panel that would make a nice splash isolation. Also, I am mad at it for wasting most of my evening. (It came out looking nice, though.)

The image shown is more about me being in DC. It looks like I'll be here one more day. It means I'll have to start scanning/'shopping/uploading strips here, which is not my preference, but the whole "being with loving family" thing outweighed the "be a lonely and selfish jerk" mindset. They're still not getting me for New Years!

For my inking update: Four strips remain incomplete. Two of them involve a chessboard, which is something that will be annoying to draw with tech pens. One is the last strip, which is a relatively easy inking job. I just wanted to save it until last. The final is a strip I wrote about before. Strip #45 was the one that could be simple or easy, depending on my ambition. Well, I went for the most ambitious drawing as possible. The result: FAIL.

The most ambitious panel of the whole damn series is panel #3 in strip #45. In it we see a close-up of the water balloon in Jacob's hand, with Jacob's face showing through the balloon. I even filled a teapot with water and held it up to a poster so I could properly get the distortion. Well, guess what... in ink it just doesn't work. I can't properly draw his fingers to show them curling around the balloon. His face is distorted and upside down, so I have to make sure people know he is looking *through* the balloon and not looking at a reflection. Parts of Jacob's head should also be visible from behind the balloon. That's just too much for me to take at this point. I botched it horribly, and it was made worse due to me not having any white out to cover up the disaster. I might have to redo panel #3 and scan it in separately. That's frustrating.

Oh well, there's a good chance I'll be able to finish the inking tonight. That's supremely awesome! Once the strips are done, it's just a long grind to scan and prepare them. If only no-copy blue was also no-scan blue. Life would be so much easier.