Mermaid

This weekend I drew a mermaid on 6x6 bristol board. I used just a regular ball point pen, though, because it was too freakin' hot to use the dip pen. I haven't even inked the pencils for Arthur and Georgie I did last Tuesday because it has been too hot out. The ink goops up almost as fast as I can get the pen to the page. Hopefully this Saturday morning or Sunday morning, I will be able to. But I have to get my hair dyed for my High School Reunion in a couple weeks.

I was inspired by the Girls Drawing Girls blog, whose theme last week was mermaids so I saw a bajillion mermaid drawings and had to do this one to get it out of my brain. For some reason I am tending to draw people with great big heads and tiny little necks...

Also, this weekend we got to have "lunch" with my Aunt Bonnie who lives in New York. I haven't seen her in two years about, so that was nice. We went to the Greenbean and Yum. I got a Peach Granola Muffin that was divine and Bonnie got a Vanilla Lavender Italian Soda. Pretty good. I would have preferred more vanilla less lavender. Then we ran home and got the dogs and represented the Boyle's at my Aunt Carol's party because none of the rest of my immediate family could go. Jerks. :) Actually, Isaac might have gone after we left, since we had to leave early because we have a headlight out. Fortunately, we were going to bring the car in for a tune up today anyways so we just had them fix that at the same time.

Playing catchup

Whoops. I forgot to post in a while. Maybe next time I will post about the plants. There is a new one...

Well, I have been up to a lot. Let's start with Harry Potter Crafts. I participated in the last swap, which was potions themed. Here is the very practical swap I received. From left to right, there is glittering body spray that smells like pear, brown sugar hand sanitizer, and baking soda based cleanser. And I think a small hand-knit sock.

I sent my recipient a potions recipe box.

This was pretty fun to make. I got the box at Good will and sanded and painted it. I am pretty pleased. I think if I make another, though, it will be even better.

I also sent her these potions. The sleeping Draught broke, but I sent it without the liquid. I put the correct number of drops of food coloring in each bottle so she only had to add the water to get these colors.

Haha. Funny stuff, right? Anyways, here is a scarf I wove. This one was tricky because the yarn I used was shlubby.Crystal Palace Yarns Waikiki in Kiwi/Mango. I am a bit smitten with it. It is nice and soft.

I also knit these socks from the Rockin'Sock Club in just under a week and a half. Pretty awesome, right?

They are pretty comfy. My next project is the Lilac Leaf Shawl. I have one end done and I am almost at the same point on the other end. I just need to have it done by October 15 for the Nordic Knitting Conference, which makes me giddy every time I think about it.

Also, I bought this funny magnet I drew for The Jerks Store. We will get pictures posted when it arrives and let you know how the quality is. $7 is a good price for a test though. Better than just buying a bag. Since Abe has a job now and I can never tell when the dishes are clean or dirty, we got this so I don't have to call him at work and ask.

Finally, I drew this the other day and I am pleased. I think it was inspired by looking at drawings of Regina Spektor on Deviant Art.

A short post

Just a quick post to link to this which is one of the most interesting things I've seen in a while. The guy that did it took WWII photos and found the places they were taken then took pictures today and overlaid the WWII photos so you can see both times at once. Some of them are really powerful.

--Abe

Two birds on a wire

I didn't get a chance to post earlier because I had to go to the dentist for a cleaning today. My teeth hurt. Anyways, this Friday I actually did some digital painting. Very fun. Here it is, a short comic inspired by the song Two Birds on a Wire by Regina Spektor on the CD Far. This may be made into a print at some point once we figure out how. Sound good?

Here's a link to a better one.

I also have the plain black and white version up there.

An Isaac'ed weekend

Here's a head kerchief thing I knit with three different yarns from the Phat Fiber box I bought a long time ago. I tried buying one this time but kept getting errors from Etsy so I think I am done with that little experiment. :(

My brother came over this weekend. We had a good time. He arrived before I got home from work, so Abe met him downtown, where they had coffee. Then they came home and played Team Fortress together. When I got home, we went to the Phinneywood Farmer's Market. Isaac bought Strawberry wine, Tayberry wine, and Blackberry wine and let us have the remainders of the strawberry and tayberry. Unfortunately, I didn't like either, but Abe did. So he can have those and I will drink beer. That night Isaac and I played some Lego Batman and it was awesome. I can't wait for him to come down and play with me again. Abe played through it once with me and that was apparently enough for him.

On Saturday, we didn't wake up until 10. Whoops. We went to Patty's Eggnest across the street for breakfast. I had swedish pancakes with strawberries instead of lingonberries. They were pretty good. Then we rushed over to the Sidewalk sale at Acorn Street where I think we (Isaac and I) spent 2 hours or so looking at the yarn. I found this great french one that looked like fur, but I wanted to make a whole purse with it and it was $8 for 17 yards. That was way too expensive. So I bought some other stuff.

The Waikiki from Crystal Palace will some day be woven into an AWESOME scarf. I think it will be awesome. It is the Kiwis/Mangos colorway and I just love it.

The Baby Alpaca Grande from Plymouth Yarns will be fingerless gloves. They were supposed to come with a free pattern, but I didn't get it because I forgot to ask. Though perhaps it is inside the band? Anyways, I can undoubtedly find a pattern on Ravelry, my love. It is so soft, you can barely tell you are touching it. I will make the fingerless gloves and see how it wears. I might get two more skeins to make a pair of the best slipper socks ever.

Finally, there is the Noro Sukko. I think I will be making the Swallowtail shawl out of that. It is a simple shawl pattern and it appears others have done that with success and it looks nice. The colors of the yarn are black, green and brown, as far as I can tell, but I bet there are surprise colors inside too. There always are.

Then we went to the Cartoonists North West meeting where Milt Prigee gave a talk/answered questions. It was fun. He does editorial cartoons, which Abe is more into than I am. Then we dropped Isaac off at the train station to get back home to his GIRLFRIEND. :) Good for him.

Anyways, the other thing I bought at Acorn Street was a skein of Noro to make a tea cozy. And make a tea cosy I did. (I think I just heard one of the dogs fart...) So here it is in all its glory. This is a nice pattern. I am not kidding. I think the whole thing can be knit up in 4 hours (small version). If I hadn't been distracted by how much I love the first X-Men movie, I think I could have knit the whole thing Saturday night, but as it is, I sat there just holding the knitting for a fair chunk of time. So I finished it Sunday morning while I drank tea.

This week on the Ten Ton Studios Sketch Challenge, the theme was Nocturno, an Argentinian graphic novel, by Salvador Sanz. Lovely, but I can't find it in English. Anyways, here is what I drew. It is also up on the Forum.

Last week, I also started the Lilac Leaf Shawl so I will have a Nancy Bush Estonian Lace Shawl to where when I go to the Nordic Knitting Conference in October! (I am taking Icelandic Lace on Saturday and Estonian Cuffs on Sunday.) I started with the other end so that I can knit the middle until I run out of yarn or finish the pattern, whichever comes first. My skein of yarn is about 50 yards smaller than the one called for so I wasn't sure I would have enough.

One of my friends, Celina, put a link to I Write Like on her blog. So I though I would give it a shot. Here are my results. I tried a bunch of things because that is how I am.

When I put in writing from the blog, which is a bit stream of consciousness: Vladimir Nabokov. Abe was impressed.

A story I wrote in high school (which I may end up turning into a graphic novel - 'Cigar Smoke' if I ever talk about it again): Jack London.

Office Cowboy is apparently written like Stephen King. (Haha. There is a joke in that sentence if you know of Stephen King's writing style well enough.)

The water lady story is like Harry Harrison, who I have no idea who that is.

At this point I stared to think it is just completely random.

Vergamon is apparently written like Dan Brown.

A paper for a TC class my last year of college: Agatha Christie.

Hmph.

I will have pictures of my plants in my next post, maybe.

Snow and Rain

When I was reading blogs, I found this website, the cartoonist studio. Here is my favorite studio, I think: Tom Batiuk, who does Crankshaft. It was fun to look at all the studios. My studio is currently the couch. I have a drawing board that fits on my lap, a TV Table that I set up to put my ink and water and nibs on. And all the drawing stuff that will fit, like the nibs and pens, inks and erasers, go into a fishing tackle box next to the couch. I also have a full spectrum light that I can set on it side behind the drawing board if I need to trace something, like this drawing! I did it on the "brown" paper, Yupo, which I call brown because it is made of polypropylene. It is fun to work on though. I used a water brush and watercolor pencils to make this. I like the trees and snow, but I don't know how well the girl turned out.

I also draw this, though I drew this in my spare time at work. It is on the cardboard from the back of a pad of paper that I had finished. I like it a lot. It was rather inspired by Edward Gorey. I didn't have a reference of his, but it turned out ok.

Here is this week's Ten Ton Studio Sketch Challenge . The first one is pretty dang funny. I would like to draw something, but I can't think of anything.

I started working on this cropped cardigan for summer (I say cardigan because I will be adding sleeves). I had about 800 yards of cotton and didn't know what to do with it, so I looked up the gauge, weight, yardage, and fiber on Ravelry and found 4 patterns that I liked to choose from. How sweet is that. I also found this top that I plan to make using two different colors of yarn. I might even use two different weights. I might have to modify the pattern a bit, but the top part could be a bit lacy. And this tank top, which is cute and simple and super easy to modify, I bet. And this little Hexacomb Cardigan that I want to make with robin's egg blue for the main part and a nice sunny yellow for the hems. If you look at it on Ravelry, there are some great color combos, so I might do another combo other than blue and yellow.

I have also wanted to start another Harry Potter kick lately. I have a bunch in my queue, so I will probably just finish up some of those, but I might start up on the Harry Potter Craft group again. This month is a challenge to create a transfigured object. Not sure what I will do yet. If anything. And I might join the Hogwarts Sock Kit Swap, round 11. I have at least 2 pairs of started Ravenclaw socks that I should finish. One is my own pattern. Another is from the Harry Potter knitting book, which is an okay book, but not great.

I was working on other socks, Ravenswirl and Ada Lovelace, both Rockin' Sock Club kits. But both ended up being too tight to fit over my heel, so I need to rip both out and work a bigger size or something. I am not sure what to do. More increases at the gusset on the Ada Lovelace? I think I will just make the L instead of the medium. Sigh. I had only finished the ankle on the Ravenswirl and the leg part wouldn't fit over my heel. Maybe I have a giant instep?

Home Sweet Homo Erectus

Finally, here is the painting I did while I was on vacation. Pretty fun, right? Well, I had fun with it anyways. I really like the eye sockets. This got me excited to do more painting, too, which means I might finally get around to doing something with poor little Umbrella girl.

In a couple weekends, we are going to do a craft fair with Abe's mom. Abe will have more information tomorrow, but it is in Lake City from 9 to 5 or 6. We will have knitting needles and other knitting stuff, cards (blue lady), and comics (Bus Stop). We will see how well the comics sell and then put them up for sell on etsy.

Stumptown to vacation in no time flat

Here was my description of our trip to Stumptown to my co-worker:
"well, we drove to Portland Saturday morning and went to Stumptown Comic Fest. we only walked around for about an hour over the course of the whole day as we spent most of the time in panels. But somehow I still ended up with 6 blisters!! They we drove back and got home in plenty of time to miss the I-5 Northbound closure."

Because of one of the panels, Self Publishing like a Rockstar, I started reading Octopus Pie, which I am really enjoying.

Here is a blister montage. Haha.I didn't take a picture of the one on my big toe because you can't really see it. The ones on the arch of my left foot are by far the most painful.

The digital painting class was great. I started working on something last night. I don't know how it will turn out, but I have high hopes. I have a tiny portion of it done even though I worked on it for about 2 hours. I did keep messing up and having to fix that, but that just takes practice. The guy who does Dresden Codak led the session. It was really impressive to watch him take 30 minutes and make a really cute little pic. I learned the brush settings I need and stuff. Very cool. You know, I was going to write a huge long post about all the stuff I learned, but I am too lazy.

Since I will be gone for so long, here are some pics I have done. First, a color of the Creeper from before I took the digital painting class. This is just a completely different style of coloring from the digital painting. Probably much faster. I like both.

Next, here is a picture called 'Bunny Loves Robot.' I have not decided what to do with this pic yet. I drew it much smaller a long time ago. So I scanned it, printed it larger, traced it again while make it much better, and then I inked it.

When I get back from vacation, I should have a lot of shtuff to put up here and on deviant art. Or not. Depends on what I work on. I have grand plans. I have no idea how much I will get done because it is not often then I have this much time to work on art. I should have the thumbnails done for another graphic story and some drafts of the main characters. I might even have a funny digital painting of batman. I did an ink of it, but I hate it. I like the pencil still, but I might need to fix that too. I already packed a bunch of stuff for vacation. In addition to my art box, with my ink and brushes and some water colors and other random stuff, I packed a bag of paper: 9x12 water color, 11x17 Bristol board (two kinds: with and without the blue lines for comics), 9x12 Bristol board, lots of computer paper, water color sketch books (including the one with the original Umbrella Girl drawings, which I am thinking of redoing), and more. I would bring my 11x17 water color paper, but I can't find it anywhere and I am so bummed about it because there are two nice paintings in there. :'(

Completely non sequitor, if you like comics, you might want to watch the videos made by Crazy Sexy Geeks.

I also forgot to post this earlier. I drew this for Isaac in the car on the way up for his birthday. Haha.

Dino-Vamp - now in color

Fun weekend. We went to this month's Cartoonists Northwest meeting. They are very nice. The lead lady even recognized us from last month. This month, we listened to Michael Foster, who does a comic called "Larry's Cafe." It is fun and inspiring to hear about other people who are doing art.

I have been watching Arrested Development on the weekends, since I finished Law and Order: Criminal Intent. That show is really funny. I have been having a hard time drawing the last week, but I did draw The Creeper this weekend, which was last week's challenge on Ten Ton Studios. I think he turned out OK. Could be better, but that will just happen with practice. What I have been trying to get the energy to do for the last week is start the thumbnails of the Gardner story. We have most of a script. And I basically know how the ending goes. There are a few frames I know almost exactly what I hope they will look like. I need to do character sketches (a lot) of the two main characters.

Finally, here is a color version of the Dino-Vamp cartoon. This is my first real color job in Photoshop, so please forgive.

So this weekend, I also watched Superman Doomsday. I thought it was weird how much he tore up the city when it was completely unnecessary and in a real situation, some of his fighting tactics, like throwing a bad guy through a building so the whole thing collapses (at the end of a work day) would have killed a heck of a lot of people. At one point, he even has the option to move the fight to outside the city and brings it right back to the center. One thing though, I loved was how they animated Superman taking off for flight. I think that is exactly what it would look like and it was so graceful. Make me want to be able to fly. :)

I also watched The Devil's Own. That was pretty good. Not much to say about it though. The description on Netflix is terrible. Has hardly anything to do with the actual story.

And I watched The Sasquatch Gang, which was pretty funny. It has a very similar feel to Napoleon Dynamite, which makes sense, since it is the same director.

And finally, (this is actually in reverse order) I watched School Ties with a young Brendan Frasier and Matt Damon. Matt Damon was not famous at the time and had a main role, but not the biggest role. I liked it, actually. I really like Brendan Frasier. He is usually really funny. This was not funny, but I think he did the part really well. I think he probably could have been a more serious actor if he wanted to, but he really seems to like making dumb comedies, which is not a bad thing in my opinion.

Here are some comics I found recently:

• The Intrepid GirlBot - So far, I like it a lot. It is very cute. Along the lines of Abominable Charles Christopher, it seems to me. Just in orange instead of blue and a girl bot instead of an abominable snowman.
• Gunnerkrigg Court - I love this one. I think it is in print too, but I have to save my money, so I can only read it online for now. Though perhaps I will buy a commission or something. I might start doing that. I was thinking of starting a collection of different characters knitting. :)
• Love me nice - Hilarious. What a funny idea for a comic.
• Heropotamus - I haven't read too far in this, just the new posts for a week or two, but it seems pretty funny. Light hearted. So far.

Don't these look like fun?! Too pricey for me right now, but maybe some time in the future.

Whoops

Well, this weekend was fun. We went to greek and mom and I split the Rack of Lamb again, which is always amazingly good. But I never have clean dishes at the restaurant we went to. Oh well.

This weekend my mom also showed me how to color my comics in photoshop. And I went, "Duh. You should me that last time I was here. I will remember this time." And I did. I have started on coloring the Dino-Vamp. I will post it when I am done. But that will probably be next week. Might have been today had I not been totally distracted by Corgis on You Tube. I looked up Talking Corgis and found this:

That was so funny. Then we finally hooked up the Web cam and started recording the corgis. Not a very good camcorder, but better than none.

Also, our dogs totally do some of that. Nisa also does a funny little growl while she stands up next to Abe. Here is a quick little video of me making Nisa sit up and lay down. You can see how bad Abe's camera work is. And that Nisa moves far too fast for the camera. Watch her tail, too. Very funny.

Monday blah

I got busy writing and doing things around the house and forgot to post. We went to Bellingham this weekend to celebrate Isaacs birthday. It was fun.

Also, Anita helped us to take the inks of "Harrowing tales at the Bus Stop" and turn them into a book. She also printed up like four copies for us. We gave one to her and Jim and one to Isaac and kept the other two for ourselves. It looks fantastic! It was really fun to see her work. I'm so thankful for her help. She made it look so professional. I'm also super proud of Angela :-)

Take a look at this article on zerohedge. It's an analysis of the costs of living in america right now. Interesting reading. Last month 6900 people filed for bankruptcy every day. That's more people than in the depths post-crash madness back in March.

--Abe

Queen of Beads resurfaces

This weekend I lost the pattern for one project I am working on and got mad at the other one, so I needed another project to work on. So I finished the Queen of Beads (rav) from the Rockin' Sock Club January 2009 kit. You know, the one that Nisa promptly chewed a bunch of the beads of one of the ankles of. Remember this?

Well, anyways, I worked on that Friday night and Saturday morning. It was really fun. It was nice to remember what a clever little pattern that is. Anyways, first I had to find everything and it was all over the place. The two socks had finally gathered together on top of my dresser under a bunch of other clothes. The remaining yarn with some beads was in the dining room. And it turns out there were more beads in the little package they came in in my knitting toolbox. Which is good because it looks like the cat ate a bunch of the remaining yarn and beads. Stupid cat.

So first, I removed the ankle starting from the lowest existing hole. I just wiggled that strand out until the ankle was detached. This was mostly easy though later it seems I lost a row somewhere.

Then I realized I didn't have enough beads so I ripped back the ruined ankle to get all the beads. I stopped ripping when I had all the holes, which meant I basically just had to start where the beading started so I used the existing topic and didn't have to cast on and work the 10 rows of rib. Which is always nice.

I picked up the stitches and started the ankle. I didn't find the extra beads until I had already started so I had to cut the yarn, thread on the extra beads and then I started up again. I didn't think I would have enough beads, so I left off the first row of beads, which is a pity. Oh well.

Once I had knit the ankle down to the length I had removed it (I just looked at the existing sock to tell how far to go in the pattern), I use Kitchener stitch to attach the ankle to the foot that was awaiting on stitch holders. I was hoping to attach it on an all knit row, but too bad, I guess. It was on a row with knit and purl, which was easier to do than some other rows. So I had to do the Kitchener stitch backwards at times, but that wasn't too hard.

Once I had it all attached it looked like this. Not too bad, I don't think. Considering. The colors are a bit off because the original sock had been washed, but one wash and I don't think you will be able to tell. I am pretty pleased with my darn clever self.

(that's LnO: CI in the background)

In other worlds, yes, Lost kind of freaks me out. I like to watch an episode of Star Trek: TNG before we got to bed after lost. That always cheers me up. You know what else cheers me up? The Highlander series is available for instant view on Netflix!! So I am about 3 episodes into that. It is pretty bad - early 90s clothes, grainy filming, and bad acting - but I do love it so. Connor MacLeod reminds me so much of Booth, too. Weird. So I watch an episode of that sandwiching a billion episodes of Law and Order: Criminal Intent. Which I freakin' love. Goren and Eames are my favorites, but I worry that they will be gone. Season 6 started without half the cast from the previous 6 seasons and only 1 of their exists was explained. So weird. It isn't even mentioned.

I would just like to point out that when I saw Abe installing Linux, I told him he would be back on Windows in a week. Every 6 months to a year he switches to Linux and then gets all annoyed and switches back to Windows. He really should just listen to me. :)

Finally, here are some pics. This is a couple of doodles I did at work while waiting for meetings to start. They almost always start late for one reason or another and I am always there a little early because I don't want to be late. You think I would learn. I just really don't want to be late though. The other is the pencil I drew for the DinoVamp comic. As a side note, some day I will try to color it in photoshop, but I think I really suck at it. I did have fun with that comic.

'Cause all vampires wear capes

I drew this from this comic from Hijinks Ensue. This is the DinoVamp combo. All he wanted was a little elephant blood to go with his awesome cape and look what happens.

This took two evenings. Probably 4 hours or less. Also, the first drawing I have done on bristol board and the first one I have inked directly over my pencils. I had to look up a T-Rex online because I only new the most generic sense of what they look like.

This is on the Bristol board for comics with the non-reproducible blue lines at the edges, that I didn't really follow because I am a spaz. And I used my new Davinci #2 round brush. Which I absolutely love. Really my favorite brand so far.

Ooh la la Iron Man

From one of the people I watch on deviantart, I found this thing on Awesome Iron Man covers. The first two are my favorite. The first one, because it is Art Nouveau. The second because it is Skottie Young. Which I could tell without reading the name of the artist.

Now, I am trying to remember to just do it with this new comic thing I am working on. It is hard and intimidating. Right now I am just drawing the foreground. The main character and all that. Then I will draw the background and secondary characters. Which there are a lot of. I have the layout of all the pages done. I just need to fill them in. I am having a hard time with the profile, but he looks fine and consistent in 3/4 and straight on. I guess he, who we have called Aaron, though he has no name in the comic, is consistent in all the profiles, but not really the same from profile to the others. Oh well. Practice, practice, practice.

Last night for St. Patty's, Abe and I have some of the best potato and bratwurst thing ever. The bratwurst must have been completely utterly fresh. I don't think I ever had bratwurst that good. They are made right at teh grocery store we go to and wow. Yum. We also had some beers. I have a Guinness Smithwicks Irish Ale. Those are yummy. I can't decide if I like the Buffalo Bill's Brewery Pumpkin Ale or that Irish Ale better.

Goblins and ECCC

Here are some colors of some drawings. Neither of these were in photoshop. The first one is a water color version, which I think I prefer. I did it on printer paper though, so it bled a lot. I fixed that in photoshop.

Second, we have the color pencil version. I think I would use the color pencil to choose the colors I want and then do the water color for the final piece. I am not sure if I should do the water color on the same piece as the original ink or print it and then water color it. If I do that, I would certainly need to use different paper in the printer, I just don't know what.

I have also inked a lot more. But all stuff that isn't mine. I did one of the pages from the Art of Comic Book Inking. Such a good book. And I did Wonder Woman by JMan-3H. That was a blast to ink. Took forever with all that detail though. And I inked Batman - Dynamic Trio by cinar. Very fun. Also took a very long time. I started that Batman one when we got back from ComiCon. I was too tired to do anything else. I am still tired. The combination of daylight's savings and a day surrounded by that many people really has me worn out. I wish I had taken Monday off instead of a half day Friday. I took a half day on Friday because I was so freakin' tired from learning to sleep with a night guard. It didn't help right away (still had the nerve pain in my neck or whatever it was), but it seems to be gone now. I just need to wait and see if it comes back.

Anyways, I am working on a new story by Abe. I have the guys head down well, but his body. Arg. I need to practice that. It is really fun to work on though. I hope to have the whole thing done and printed in a tiny chap book by Stumptown Comic Fest. I think we are going to that in April. Sounds like a lot of fun.

Speaking of, ECCC was a lot of fun. We started by looking at the exhibit hall. Meh. We looked for Skottie Young and Ben Templesmith. Found Ben Templesmith, and Skottie Young (deviantart) was supposed to be next to him. Turns out Skottie Young's flight was canceled and there were no others from that airport. Maybe next year. :'( Then we went the Wil Wheaton Awesome Hour, which was pretty awesome. He read from some of his books and took about 7 minutes of questions at the end. Idiot Abe didn't get a picture of him because we were too far away. Then we stayed (same room) for Leonard Nimoy, which was awesome. I liked that one more than Abe did. He seems like a really cool guy. Passionate and thoughtful. And just the best voice ever. He liked the new Star Trek movie, which is good, since he was in it... And you know what? There were more people for Wil Wheaton the for Leonard Nimoy. Crazy, right?

Then we ran downstairs for the Image panel. I thought they would go over taking submissions, but instead it was a review of their upcoming projects and then a Q&A. Which was still a good time. Ben Templesmith was on the panel. When the first Choker collected book comes out, I think we will get it. The ECCC special cover of the single comic book was $10. Abe absolutely refused to get that.

Then we spent some time being annoyed and wandering around the booths. I was thinking of buying some Wormwood Gentleman Corpse and getting Ben Templesmith to sign them, but there was too much noise and too many people to allow for adequate thinking so we gave up after wandering around with scowls on our faces and went to the room the next panel we wanted to see was. Turned out to be the Oni Press one where they review what they have coming out and they also sound like a good company. So Abe ran out and bought the first Ghost Projekt.

The final panel was Art Techniques with Todd McFarlane, who was running the meeting using GoToMeeting and he was on the phone which they put up to the mic. That was interesting. He sounds very passionate, so that was fun. Couldn't hear him when he got a little too excited. At one point, his screen froze on our end and his editor was trying to get him to stop talking. He said "Todd" no less than 20 times before Todd actually stopped talking and found out our screen wasn't following his anymore. I was hoping the panel would be more on the tools and less on drawing, but I did finally get the face ratios I was wanting so now I don't have to go to the Face class for $99. Then we went home. And zonked out. Man I was tired. I watched some netflix and inked that batman. I think I might have knit for a bit too. I was pretty tired, so I don't really remember.

And speaking of the face class, which is by Nils Osmar, I found some other classes I really want to take from him this summer: Drawing in pen, brush & ink, and How to make money as an artist. I would like to take How to draw clothing too. Sucks though because The ink one is on a Wednesday, the clothes ones is the next day on Thursday. I would be so freakin' tired. Oh yeah, they are both 7-10. I usually go to bed at 9 or 10. The how to make money one is on a Saturday, which is certainly the best time for me.

You know what else we found out about at ECCC, which relates to the above classes, is Cartoonists NW. They meet on the third Saturday of every month. Looks like fun. That is this weekend, so we are going to go check it out. Last month's meeting was about self publising, so bummer we couldn't go to that. This month is about a graffiti artist. But they will go over more than just that. Looks like fun.

Monsters and Dames ... and snuggies

First things first, a little drawing love. Here is a goblin or something and the Monsters & Dames drawing I did. I plan to try coloring these in Photoshop. I have to be sure to close everything else and save whatever it open because last time, the stupid program kept crashing when I tried to color (old snow white). For the Monsters and Dames drawing, I like everything but the legs of the monster. I think I gave up on them. I do realize, I need more than just a #1 Round and a #4 flat...

I have also inked Hellboy v. The Tentacles by voya and Chakata cover by Thegerjoos. But since they are not mine, I will not post them. Just super super super fun practice. And the actual ink of the cover is better than mine. But I am guessing that one was done at a bigger scale and possibly using more than just a #1 brush. I could only do it at 8.5 x 11 because I had to print it. It was really fun to ink and took about 4.5 hours. Wow. Long time.

Well, we were having t-shirt weather while it was snowing like crazy every where else. Now we are freezing. We had to scrape ice off the car windows before we drove to the dentist this morning (where I got my night guard and lower "retainer"). The dogs are all wrapped up in their snuggies.

Olympic Cardigan

So. I won gold. Check out the medal I won. :)

I like the color a lot and it is comfy other than being a little too short. I find myself pulling it down all day long. When I am not lazy, I will reblock the bottom half. It is not long enough and stretches enough to be as long as I want. Next time, I would also move the big cable towards the center 4-8 more stitches. It is nearly in the middle right now. I like the two cables together.

The other problem is that the sleeves are just a skitch too tight. They fit, I just have to pull the sleeve on a bit. The sleeves are also about half an inch too short.

I got the whole thing done in a week and 1 day (Edit - I mean 2 weeks and 1 day-der...). I think that is pretty good considering I took time out to draw and stuff. I knit more than usual, but not all the time. I didn't take it to work with me or anything. And I was getting all moody because I hadn't been drawing so after about 4 days I took most of a night off to draw. I am pretty please with myself.

So I guess I should take a picture of the shoulder since that was the whole point of the design. Der.

If you have noticed, there has not been much drawing action and that is because I have been practicing inking and that has been involving pencils that I did not draw. If I want to post them, I have to ask the penciller. Which I do not look forward to. Though, I have to say, inking them has been super super fun. I did a Rocketeer and Hellboy. I think they turned out pretty well. And I had so so so much fun. I do have some inks of my own pencils, but they are not as good. I need really tight pencils and I have no idea what I am doing, so I better get practicing drawing tight pencils. Abe and I have a great idea for a way to practice writing and drawing. I think it will be really fun.