Work-a-Doodle Art

I have always enjoyed anime, but I've rarely ever had the opportunity to stick with a show watch it from beginning to end. Up to now my exposure to anime has mostly been limited to the shows and movies that cross over from Japanese broadcast to American audiences. Dragonball Z was a big one for me while I was in college.

My introduction to anime was Akira, a movie I saw at 13 and was definitely too young to be watching. It was rented from a local video store, and I think I must have watched it three times before returning it. That anime, the film adaptation of Katsuhiro Otomo's incredible manga, is a formative memory for me because it changed the way that I think about animation. Keep in mind, this was when I was a kid at the very end of the 1980s. To most people back then, animation was Saturday morning cartoons and musical adaptations of fairy tales with talking animals courtesy of Disney. I grew up on those, and I still love them, but the point is the vast majority of animation at the time was for kids. The idea of animated shows or movies for an adult audience was just starting to emerge. Akira, blew away everything I thought I knew about animation. It's also incredibly violent with some other mature content, and my parents hated it. That didn't hurt.

Since then I've watched a lot more anime, but not nearly as much as serious fans. For the most part that's because it was kind of hard to find until a couple of things happened. The biggest of which was the Internet (back when it used to be capitalized as a proper noun) and the other was Netflix. Love the company or hate it (and there are plenty of good reasons on both sides of that argument), it made it possible to explore content like anime in a way than might not have been available otherwise. Now my wife and I have both found shows we like through Crunchyroll. I know that Crunchyroll has detractors with some fair criticisms, but it does have a lot to offer and gives a casual fan like me an opportunity to get caught up on some of the greats.

All of which is to say art in this post will be very anime-centric. Enjoy.

Say that again. Mirajane dares you

Fairy Tail is, if not my favorite anime series of all time, pretty close to it. Through eight seasons I grew to love the characters and their adventures. I haven't seen season 9 yet. I was waiting for the subtitled version to be made available. It is a great found family story, which turns out to be something that resonates with me for some reason. It also has a fun mix of goofy humor, and emotional depth. When my kids were very small I would watch episodes of Fairy Tail on my tablet while waiting for them to go sleep. The moment Mirajane unleashes the power she's been suppressing for years is one of my favorites in the entire series.

INUYASHA!

I'm getting to this one pretty late. Inuyasha was first broadcast in 2000. Even so, it holds up very well, even though there are some dated elements, such as the 4:3 aspect ratio of the original broadcast and the animation is all hand drawn and painted. That last is more a point in its favor. While it is more of an Isekai story, it still has elements of found family, goofy humor, and emotional depth that I liked about Fairy Tail. I have become similarly hooked to this one.

KAGOME!

Despite the name of the show, I think of Kagome as the main character of Inuyasha. I really enjoy her spirit, and her growth throughout the show from tentative fish out of water, to confident...not exactly a warrior, but coming into her own as a very capable young woman who is at home with powers she didn't know she had. The will they / won't they between her and Inuyasha is fun, too.

Lookout everyone, it's undead priestess Kikyo!

Wow. I really like Inuyasha. This is Kikyo, the priestess Inuyasha fell in love with, before they were tricked into fighting each other by the demon Naraku. She is a very interesting, complex character that I am still figuring out.

My new favorite poison loving gremlin

There are too many good things for me to say about The Apothecary Diaries than I could possibly fit here. That's not true. I probably could, but you'd get bored with it by the four or five thousandth paragraph and click over to something else. This is Maomao. Watch the show.

A multitude of Maomao's

More Maomao from The Apothecary Diaries. The show itself presents as a mystery of the week with Maomao solving each one through a combination of observation and encyclopedic knowledge of plants, poisons, and various traditional medicines. She is an apprentice apothecary who is abducted into the rear palace of the forbidden city of Imperial China, where she enters the service of the emperor's current favorite concubine. The show offers court intrigue and is an exploration of the role of women at the time, and how they navigated and survived a system that saw them as useful, but ultimately disposable. The writing is phenomenal, with some of the most well developed and authentic portrayals of women you will ever find in anime. It could almost be studied as a master class in writing believable women.

Maomao and...pretty boy...

The other character here is Jinshi, a pivotal character and love interest for Maomao. The anime is based on a series of light novels in Japan written by Natsu Hyuuga. An interesting thing about the writer and these characters is Hyuuga has gone on record saying she hates the character of Jinshi. She introduced him as a side character, but the fanbase latched onto him so completely she's been forced to keep him going. A good example of how the characters you create can take on a life of their own.

Komi wants you to be her friend...sign her book...

This last entry is now what I think of as my favorite anime and manga to date. Like Fairy Tail this is one I can go back to over and over again. The main character, Komi, is afflicted with extreme social anxiety and a communication disorder that makes it very difficult for her to talk with people. Another student at her high school, Tadano, is very gifted when it comes to reading people and interpreting expression, body language, and non-verbal cues. He is able to forge a connection with Komi, becomes her first (and best) friend, and promises to help her achieve her goal of making 100 friends. Along the way they not only meet a host of quirky, fun characters for Komi to befriend, but a lovely, slow-burn romance develops between the two of them. The anime is great, and I can't recommend it highly enough, but the manga is almost complete, and is a must read for any fan of the slice-of-life genre. The story touches on themes of found family (again), friendship, first loves, and some things that don't start with 'F' like overcoming obstacles, self acceptance, and the quiet strength of perseverance.

It is sometimes astonishing the degree time slips by. In recent days, weeks...hell...months, I have reached a point where I've been revisiting some things I used to do fairly regularly that I enjoyed quite a bit. This blog was one of them. What I did not expect to find was the most recent post goes back all the way to 2019!

Wow. The world is such a different place now than it was when I put up that last entry. While many things have at least been consistent, if not the same, I feel like I'm also a very different person that I was six years ago. My job hasn't changed, I'm living in the same town, I'm married to the same woman I have been for 25 years as of this July, and I still work from home. Even so, it feels like the person who wrote that last entry about drawing a romance book cover would be unrecognizable to me now. His hair was a lot shorter to start with. I let my hair go long during the pandemic and decided I like it better this way. I'm due for a trim though. My split ends have split ends. Split end inception. Splitception?

So much has happened in the intervening years. Some good, some very sad, and so much of that time felt like an interminable, never-ending slog. Living in interesting times has been an eye-opening experience, to be sure, but I could use some mundane times, now. A little boring would be a treat. Now here I am looking back on something I did in 2019 and feeling like it was only last week. In the words of The Doctor our perception of the passing of weeks, months, and years is all wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey.

Anyway. Though I've been super, super busy for much of that time, I have been drawing a bit here and there. When I sat down to do this I had thought I would post some of my more recent drawings. Recent is suddenly a very relative term. Instead, here is a selection of my sketches from the last several years.

Sometime in 2020

In 2020 I was following, and really enjoying Critical Role's second D&D 5e campaign taking place in Matthew Mercer's homebrew wetting of Exandria, The Mighty Nein. All of the characters are enjoyable. My particular favorite was Laura Bailey's character, the chaotic cleric of the mysterious figure known as The Traveler, Jester. Although not my favorite, I am a practitioner and fan of martial arts, and was drawn (so to speak) to Marisha Rey's character, Beauregard, or "Beau." It's just fun drawing badass martial artists doing cool things in cool poses.

The Beau regards

Sometime in 2021

I love this one. I don't recall exactly when, but at some point in 2021 the gaming group I was playing with fairly regularly finished our play through the Descent Into Avernus D&D 5e campaign, and we started playing Spelljammer. Our crew had an astral ship with a galley and cook. Our cook was a minotaur, and I want to say his name was "Cookie." The image of this huge minotaur delicately stirring a pan of some kind of sauce, using utensils and cookware that look tiny in his hands really tickled me. It still does.

He's making a rue

Sometime in 2022 (but probably November or December-ish)

It's been a while since I've drawn a winter holiday card. This was the last family holiday card I drew that actually went out to friends and family. It was also the first one drawn using a dedicated display tablet and Clip Studio Pro. I was ok with the results then, but looking at it now I'm really happy with how it turned out. It's nice when you look at things you did years later and can say, "Damn. That's better than I remember it being."

This holiday is going downhill fast

Sometime in 2023...or maybe not

I know I was drawing in 2023. I have sketchbooks full of doodles, sketches, and drawings that testify to my artistic activities. Apparently I didn't scan anything. Since there's nothing more to say here, we're moving swiftly on to...

Sometime in 2024...and I couldn't pick just one

In no particular order, here are some of my drawings that actually paid a visit to my scanner at some point in 2024.

This is one of my favorites. Once or twice a week I find myself in the lobby of the dojo where my kids and I take karate, waiting for them to finish their private lessons or group classes. When I'm not on my company provided laptop trying to finish up work for the day, it's a good time for things like drawing, writing content for my D&D 5e game, or locking myself in the changing room where no one can se me cry. On one of those days I had the thought, "what if 'chicken fingers' come from birds genetically modified so they have hands?" This was the result. I laughed at this way too long, drawing some strange looks from other parents in the lobby.

Chicken Fingies

This is another one that made me laugh. It's been a while since I drew comics featuring my cast of characters who are all office workers for a big company of some kind. The world in which it exists is a weird one with superpowers, talking animals, and (apparently) multiversal, eldritch salespeople.

They are paid in the maddened screams of broken minds

For about a year I have been trying to watch more anime. It started with paying to get a Crunchyroll account so that my wife and I could watch Suzume. From there I started looking for recommendations and paying attention to anime clips and references that popped up on Insta and other places. That eventually led to me consume (so to speak) the first season of Delicious in Dungeon. It was a tasty treat. I really like all the characters, but decided here that I wanted to draw Marcille. I'm very happy with the clean lines of the inks in this drawing. This is pen and paper, not digital. I think this was the first ink drawing I did with my new Sakura Micron pens.

Serving piping hot magic

Another anime that got me hooked into watching more was Komi Can't Communicate. This darling series is about a high school girl severe social anxiety so severe that it prevents her from speaking with others. Then she meets Tadano, a boy in her class with a talent for reading people, whether or not they are able to speak. He connects with her and inspires her to make more friends. With his help Komi challenges herself to make 100 friends. It's a sweet slice-of-life comedy, with a cast of quirky but lovable misfits, and a beautifully done slow burn romance between Komi and Tadano. Based on the manga of the same name, it and the anime are full of humor, heart, and healing. It has become a comfort show for me. The moment I've drawn here is from early in the show and manga both when Tadano and Komi "speak" to each other by writing on the big classroom blackboard.

Them big eyes, it's impossible to not love Komi

One of the very first anime I ever watched regularly was (like a lot of people my age) Dragonball Z. I know the show revolves around Goku, Gohan, and, to a somewhat lesser extent, Vegita, and we're supposed to be cheering for Goku, but Piccolo was always my favorite. It occurred to me that I'd never ever drawn him, so I set out to fix that.

Mister Piccolo!

I play a lot of Dungeons & Dragons, and I thought it would be cool to draw a death knight. Turns out, it is pretty cool.

So cool

Every May is Mer-May with an artist challenge to draw a mermaid every day. I have never been able to do that. For that matter, I've never been able to complete an Inktober. Still, I do try to draw at least one Mermaid a year. When I draw mermaids I usually veer away from idealized, Disney-fied mermaids who are beautiful young women with the lower half of a fish. Two dimensional caricatures of young women wo are either obsessed with the surface world, or smitten with love for a surface dwelling man (or both). I try to draw mermaids as monsters and predators who lure sailors close to the water so they can kill and usually eat them. If not that, then as proud people and warriors in armor fashioned from coral, or metal forged in underwater volcanic caverns. In this case, I went with something undead blended with the alien and monstrous appearance of an anglerfish.

So...yeah, it’s been a good long time since I posted anything here. I’m not really sure what to say about that except...damn. In the plus column, if you could call it that, while I’ve been away from posting here, I’ve filled something like four small sketchbooks and two or three larger ones with drawings. In short, I have plenty of material to talk about. 

In scanning through my drawings I found several that were running on a bit of a theme. A while back a friend of mine started publishing her...very adult stories about a woman and her special friend who is a...yeti. Okay, look, it’s erotic fiction featuring a woman and a yeti. She has always enjoyed my drawings, and I offered to try my hand at drawing a book cover for her. Then a lot of stuff happened. A lot of it bad. Most of it I’m still dealing with, and I didn’t finish the book cover. 

Fast forward a year or two and my friend has to go into the hospital to address some health issues. As a way to cheer her up during her recovery I picked up her characters again, and started researching cover art for romance novels. The idea being to take existing romance novel cover art, and insert her characters into the scene. 

Now, I had always been kind of dismissive of romance novels. They seem like the perfect thing to pick up at an airport bookstore. Cheap, disposable, short on substance, and a guilty pleasure, even for those who follow a favorite author. The covers were the best/worst part. Cheesy images of muscular men looming over busty women who seem to be having a kind of wardrobe malfunction nightmare scenario. 

I was wrong. The authors who are responsible for these are serious writers. There are awards for romance novels and novelists, and it is a genuine literary category. I was also wrong about the cover art. There are some great covers by very skilled artists, and there is a distinct style to the cover illustrations. I found this as I did essentially master studies of their work. 

The funny thing? Doing studies of the work of the artists who illustrated novels for romance covers helped boost my own artistic abilities to a new level. 

As I was going through and scanning some of my recent drawings I found that I had enough for a bit of a themed post, so here they are. 

To get the style, I started out looking for photo reference of romance novel covers. My search history, recommendations on Amazon, Instagram ads, and Pinterest notifications got...real interesting around this time. 

To continue learning the style, and to figure out what I wanted the final piece to look like, I tried studies of a few different covers from different artists. Here is another one. The cartoonist (or smart ass, I never can tell) in me couldn’t resist adding some word balloons here. 

It’s around this time I was starting to recognize that the artwork adorning these covers was no joke, and the illustrators were legit artists. Once I started to appreciate the style, and I’ve even come to enjoy it a bit, things started to click. Here’s another sketch from around that time. 

About this time I had what I needed in terms of an understanding of the style, composition, and tone. It was time to start trying to tackle the characters. Here’s one of the first concepts I did including my friends original characters. 

I still like the one above, but ultimately I wanted the interaction between the characters to be more personal and intimate. I wanted them facing each other. So here is a sketch where I’ve gone through and started inking. 

And here is the final, which was NOT done in my sketchbook. I used Strathmore marker paper and copic markers. I’m not usually a huge stickler for the kind of paper I’m working with. Different papers have different qualities. In this case, I wanted to use marker paper because I would be working in grays, and I didn’t want the already muted tones to become muddied because they’re bleeding into the paper. 

Or as close as I get to it, at any rate. It’s been a long time since I put anything here. For anyone who is following me, I apologize. Mostly that can be attributed to life stuff, and wanting to do important things like, maybe, sleep a little, just here and there. The first part of this year was a complete shit-show, and coping with it has mostly been what’s kept me away from putting up a new post. Even so, in the time that I’ve been away, I’ve completely filled up two more sketchbooks, so it’s time to post up some selections. 

I have been listening to the Critical Role podcast ever since accidentally finding myself in their panel during WonderCon 2017. They were up in the room schedule ahead of “Quick Draw with Sergio Aragones,” which I try to catch every time I make it to WonderCon and/or Comic Con. Rather than wandering around for an hour and hoping to get a seat I thought “what the hell, I’ll sit in on this until my panel starts.” Quick Draw is always fun, but I don’t remember who was on the panel that year, other than Sergio, or what they drew, but I do remember the Critical Role panel. They made me laugh as hard as anything else I saw that day. This drawing is Caleb from Critical Role’s current campaign, “The Mighty Nein.” Caleb is played by voice actor Liam O’Brien. 

I’m proud to say that, not only does the oldest of my offspring enjoy reading, but they have begun to share my passion for comic books and graphic novels. There is a great series for younger readers, called DC Super Hero Girls, Super Hero High. It features a huge number of DC’s stable of heroes, but much younger and attending a high school where Amanda Waller is the principal, and Grodd is her assistant principal. I know, it’s a weird idea, but stay with me. The stories mostly center on a group of young female super heroes that includes Wonder Woman, Poison Ivy, Bumblebee, and Katana. My oldest really likes Katana, so I drew this. 

Just a picture of a small owl. I like owls.I almost exclusively draw people and the human figure. Every so often it’s good to stretch myself and practice drawing something else. I do all right with animals. Where I really have some work to do is still life and perspective. 

This was drawn while I was staying at a hotel for work. I don’t always draw nudes, but when I do, they are really shy about it. Seriously, there was a time when I thought that to draw nudes wasn’t that important at all. I mean, if you’re going to be drawing a comic strip like I still (sometimes) do, you’re almost always, around 90% of the time, going to be drawing people wearing clothes, right? So drawing nudes is maybe a nice thing to do sometimes, but it’s not really important. If Snopes were to pick that up it would be “Mostly False.” It’s true that drawing a comic strip doesn’t often call on me to draw my characters in the buff. I think if it did, that would be a totally different kind of comic strip. What I have found since drawing nudes both from photo reference, and especially from live models, is that the way you interpret a person’s body when it’s covered with clothes is way, way different than when it’s not. Our clothes obscure, lift, restrain, tighten, and otherwise shape our bodies in certain ways. Before I had drawn a nude model I couldn’t appreciate how much this had thrown off my understanding of anatomy and proportions, but it had.  

Again, working a little outside my comfort zone and drawing a gray kitty. In the case of cats and owls, I have a lot of fun with the eyes. Both animals have gorgeous eyes that let you layer color, on color, on color and play with all kinds of highlights. It’s fun. Though, somehow, my owls always look like they’re scowling. My cats always look like they know many things that you do not. Which, I guess, just makes them cats. 

Another character from Critical Role’s current campaign. This time it’s the tiefling cleric, Jester. All of the characters are great, but it’s hard not to love the youth, joy, and humor that voice actor Laura Bailey brings to Jester. I forgot to mention this about the drawing of Caleb, but for both I’m experimenting with adding the solid black inked lines after adding the color. The result seems to be a much bolder drawing, and cleaner lines because my markers haven’t leached away some of the ink. 

The last four months have been busy. I think I mentioned in my last post that the company I work for had been acquired by another company. Work on integrating the two organizations is well underway and finally starting to find its stride after getting off to a rocky, rocky start. In the midst of that I took the family for a weekend in the mountains so my wife and I could celebrate our 17th anniversary. The week after that I went San Diego for Comic-Con, which was weird. I had fun, but the shine has come off of it a little bit. I think attending as a fan is becoming less interesting, and I need to start working on attending as an exhibitor, and having a table in artists alley. Maybe not for the San Diego Comic Con, but possibly for WonderCon, or Long Beach Comic Con, or Emerald City Comic Con, or even the Denver Comic Con. Just depends on where I can get the most bang for my buck. 

Anyway, while work has been extra stressful it has become more important to find a way to connect with the things that make me feel good. Drawing being a big one. Most days I get home from work, eat dinner, talk with the kids a little, then pull out my sketchbook and start drawing something. Usually I’m drawing a panel of my comic Geek Speak, but I’ll also pull up photos of models on my computer and draw those, or draw something from fandom of some kind. Every so often I get a request from one of my kids or one of their friends, and I’ll spend some time working on that, too. I’ve basically filled two sketchbooks in the last three months or so.

Here are just a few of my recent drawings. 

Wonder Woman is a terrific movie, and a real breath of fresh air in the world of comic book movies, which are dominated by hyper-masculine male hero stereotypes. As amazing as Gal Gadot is in the lead, I was really drawn to Robin Wright as Antiope. I could happily spend two hours watching a spin-off movie about this character, where Ms. Wright gets more to do than lecture her sister about training Diana, and then die fighting Germans. 

I draw a lot of things that are cool-looking, or sexy, or scary, or badass...or at least I try to. Every so often it’s good to draw something cute, or happy, or whimsical. Not everything has to be dark, or brooding, or violent...I’m looking at YOU, DC Cinematic Universe. I drew this from a Funko vinyl figure of Twilight Sparkle from My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. 

I really like Doctor Strange. The recent Chris Bacchalo run on this book is excellent and well worth picking up. Much of it is in trade paperback editions now, so it’s possible to get the full story without it taking up a bunch of space, or having gaps because issues aren’t available anymore. I was lucky enough at comic con to get a blank cover of Doctor Strange #1 illustrated by the amazing Juan Gedeon. You can see it on my instagram feed by clicking here. 

Just remember, if you venture into the world of Strange there are things you will see that can never be unseen. For your own safety don’t look at anything for too long, and, for God’s sake, stay away from his refrigerator. 

If you’re a fan of action films (I am) and you haven’t seen John Wick or John Wick 2, shame on you. I will admit, neither movie has much in the way of story or character development, but who cares! Both are two-hours of unbridled, no-holds barred awesomeness. Both also have a fun, dark sense of humor, which the second movie indulges much more so than the first. You won’t walk away from either movie feeling like you didn’t have a good time. 

So, in my last post I swore “to God I will get better about this!” The almighty is probably almighty disappointed in me. Here’s a brief recap of the last few months,

The company I work for announced that it was in the process of negotiating with another company to be acquired, that deal was finalized on the 18th of this month (April). 

At the end of February I got into a car accident and broke my hand when the other person involved in the accident turned left in front of me. 

The other person in the accident tried to claim I was running a red light, then lawyered up to the point that not even her own insurance company could get a statement from her. The whole claims process dragged out from February to April before my insurance company had finally had enough and determined she was at fault for the accident. 

My car was a total loss as a result of the accident so I had to buy another car. I’d been meaning to get into a new car for a while anyway, I just wish I’d had a little more control over the timing of actually going out and doing it. 

I was in a cast for a month which made it...difficult...to draw, but I still managed it. In a weird way it helped. It forced me to use a looser grip on my tool (heh, heh, I’m twelve), and to draw more from my shoulder than my hand. As a result my drawing and handwriting have improved. All it took was breaking my hand.

I’m now in physical therapy, which is going well and have been drawing up a storm

...Yeah...That’s about it. How about some drawings?

I tell my daughter a different version of Snow White. I don’t like stories that portray women as simpering victims waiting for a (generally white) prince to come along and save them. A princess who knows her way around weapons, and is as comfortable in the wild or on the battlefield as she is in a ballroom sits better with my sensibilities. 

Spawn is just fun to draw. I love the cape, the chains, the spikes, and the weird green glowing shit that seems to emanate from his pores. 

Witches really do have the best school supplies. 

Whenever I feel down I draw one of the Animaniacs. There is just something about the characters from that show, and the memory of watching it after school every day, that makes me feel better. 

I swear I’m going to get better about this! Promises I will likely not be able to keep notwithstanding, here are some of the things that have happened in the two months since my last post. 

I spent most of November at work in a bubble with various colleagues doing user testing on solutions that are being launched in our workplace. In the plus column, the company I work for paid for a lot of lunches to be brought in so I saved a bunch of money in November by not spending it on lunches. In the not so great column, it is really exhausting to be in user testing for an entire month. I’m spent most of last week working from home, and this week is pretty light, comparatively, so I’m starting to get back to where I’m feeling human again. 

Trump won the general election despite every established, reliable indicator pointing the other direction. Everyone freak the fuck out.

I managed to get a couple of comic strips online, and have mostly migrated my comic strip, Geek Speak, off of a Blogger site. It is now hosted on a site built in Wordpress, that I’m hoping to update and tweak continuously as I learn more about it and about developing for the web. It will be a long process. 

Now, let’s get to some doodles. 

I used this charming little trouble maker from the excellent Halloween anthology film Trick ‘r Treat as my Skype for Business profile photo on Halloween. It got a lot of comments. 

A picture of Wonder Woman I drew for a friend’s daughter. The colored version turned out awesome. I made sure to scan it with just the outlines done so she could use it as a coloring page, too. 

This is from another art project I’m working on for my nephews. My sister sent me a message to tell me that her boys like My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic and they like zombies, so she asked me if I could draw ponies for the boys, but make them zombies. Yes. Yes I can. 

Zombie Rarity. This is substantially restrained, considering my original concept. I was going to have her wearing a pony flesh cloak, made from the skins of the cutie mark crusaders. It occurred to me that might be a touch too far. 

Zombie Rainbow Dash. I’m not sure she’d still be able to fly with her wings decaying like this. 

My personal favorite is Twilight Sparkle the undead necromancer. This is the only one that really looks like a monster. When my sister originally asked for this I told her she would need to help me calibrate the final product. I can do scary, but still cute, or I can go all the way to Walking Dead and the stuff of nightmares. At first she said go for it, then she saw this. After that it became “It would be nice if they still have their personalities, but they’re zombies.” Message received. Stuff of nightmares is off the table. 

If I could put a subtitle to this post it would be, “The Best of Intentions are Complete Bullshit.” Even so, I have been doing quite a bit of drawing, and I have some fun things to share. Here we go! 

I’m with Hiro on this one. I fail to see how Baymax fails to see that it’s awesome.

I was at lunch and thinking about my wife when I drew this. With two kids it’s rare to get time to draw. Want to find time to snuggle AND draw? Forget about it. 

This might be my favorite drawing of the last couple of months. I love the colors. The kimono looks great. From an emotional standpoint there is a solemnity to this that I find...peaceful. I should do more like this, now that I’m reflecting on it. 

The Netflix remake of Voltron, Voltron: Legendary Defender is incredible. Hunk is my favorite character, and indisputably the heart of the show. He’s big hearted, strong, funny, and smart. He does the right thing, even when it scares him. Hard not to admire those qualities in a character. 

This is a minor spoiler so if you haven’t seen the show, stop reading.

That said, I very much doubt this will be as much a surprise to most people as it was to me, but here we have a strong female character. I like that I can watch this show with my daughter and point to Katie “Pidge” Holt as a fictional role model. She’s brilliant, all-but fearless, and dedicated to both her blood relatives and the adopted family she’s found with the other paladins. If the character were less well written, the reveal of Pidge as a female would have reeked of tokenism, but she was so established as a valuable member of the team before that moment in the show that you as an audience could immediately accept it. The writers were brilliant in their handling of that moment in that, with the exception of Lance, none of the other characters were surprised, and, in fact, all-but completely brushed it off as “yeah, you’re a girl, whatever. You going to suit up and pilot your lion now?” 

It’s been too long since I posted something here. It really, really has. The last ten months or so have been...eventful. I’ve been at my new job long enough now that I can’t really refer to it as a new job anymore. I took my family to Denver for a vacation, to surprise my mom on her birthday, and to celebrate Christmas with my family. That was the intention, anyway, the end result was really a fiasco deserving of a National Lampoons “Vacation” movie. Since then my son has started preschool, my daughter did summer camp and then started kindergarten, and everyone has been sick off and on since March. It’s been fun. 

Through all that, I have been drawing, so let’s skip the pathos and move right to the doodles. From now on, I’m going to try to put up one of these posts a week. I draw to unwind at night, much like some people watch TV, or take a bottle of wine in the bathroom to drink in the bathtub and weep, so it’s not like I have a shortage of sketches, doodles, and drawings to share. 

I don’t doodle much at work anymore. My job now doesn’t present a lot of opportunities for me to swivel over to a notebook or handy sketchbook and put down a few lines in a sketch that develops over several days. Most of my drawing now has been done on lunches or when I get home at night while watching Voltron: Legendary Defender with the kids. Have you seen it? If you have Netflix you should watch it. It’s great.

One of my daughter’s Christmas presents was a giant plush Octavia from My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. To give her something to do one night while we were in Colorado I drew the character from the show so she could color it. 

This year, introduced both of my kids to Disney’s Beauty and the Beast. It’s hard to imagine someone with Belle’s curiosity and sense of adventure settling down to be a minor noble over some small provincial town. I really see her as someone who would seek out a way to have adventure as a way of life. So, why not be a musketeer? Freaking love this. If anyone out there would like to write fan fiction about Belle’s adventures in a historical fantasy version of Europe in the sixteenth century, I would so read that!

Drew the most recent version of Batgirl, also as something my daughter could color. Did this with art pens I got as a Christmas present from my sister. 

The new Batgirl is great. It’s this really interesting take on the character as a realistically written, modern twenty something attending university at a technology institute, who also has to deal with leading a double life, but issues of post-traumatic-stress-disorder as well. Barbara has made an amazing recovery from the events of The Killing Joke, but it’s left scars on her. Really, I’m happy to see the character move on from that story. It establishes her as an independent and capable hero in her own right, and not just a token female victim; one of Batman’s many innocent bystanders. 

My kids both love Star Wars: the Force Awakens. I couldn’t resist drawing myself with a lightsaber. Also, my daughter has learned how to tattle. It’s not a thing we’re encouraging. 

I’m dipping my toe in the pool of Halloween spirit with this Inktober entry. 

Sketch for the day is "Honey Lemon" from Disney's "Big Hero 6." We watched the movie again today, and I think she's becoming my favorite of the six heroes. Hiro is the main character and the one we're automatically supposed to identify with and cheer for, so that's a given. I think I like Honey Lemon because she's putting herself in a situation where, based on her personality, she's completely out of place and at incredible personal risk. Despite the terrifying danger she does it anyway to help her friend's brother find justice. She even manages to save everyone's skin once or twice.

Listening to the Penny Arcade guys play Dungeons and Dragons while drawing a cosplayer rocking a human mage costume. It's possible I miss gaming, maybe just a little.

I've been replaying the excellent Torchlight 2 from Runic and the game does this ridiculous thing where enemies explode into a giant splatter of blood and bouncing chunks of defunct beast if you get a critical hit on them. It's silly and gratuitous, but there's always a little thrill when it happens like, "Awwww DAMN. Call Jamba cause that guy just got JUICED!" or something equally dumb.

It got me to thinking about those adventurers on their first outing, when they haven't seen a goblin go off like a watermelon filled with firecrackers. They're not jaded yet, they haven't built up their resistance to the hard facts of an adventuring party's life. They're still capable of registering horror.

Maybe I'm a terrible person, but I thought that was hilarious. It's where this drawing comes from.

Boy are people who come here looking for pictures of cute baby spiders (no such thing) going to be disappointed. 

Years ago I did a bunch of drawings of tiny heroes based on Marvel and DC characters. I haven’t done one in a long time, so, in a way, this is a return to form for me.

I’m neither opposed to nor a particular fan of DC Comics, but something about Green Lantern really appeals to me. I think it may be the idea that will is one of the greatest forces in the universe, and anything is possible with a little hope (blue lanterns) and a lot of will. 

One thing I’ve never understood is why the Lantern Corps focuses so much on handsome white dudes, with John Stewart (not that John Stewart) being one of the very few exceptions. When a ring chooses a new bearer it goes to someone who possess a strong will, not to the nearest person who fits a specific racial profile and gender.

When I imagine the ring going to someone I take things in somewhat of a different direction. 

Everyone does foolish things when they are young. I was no different.

I was a soldier, the first in my family to carry the title.

It made me proud.

I existed in a fog, my vision obscured by an inflated sense of my own bravery.

My duty required me to face fear and not blink.

My duty required me to fight, and surviving required me to win.

I became good at surviving.

In my arrogance I began to believe that my bravery and strength meant I knew better than those who were my superiors and elders.

I scoffed at their warnings, as children who've never been burned sometimes scoff at their elders' warnings of fire.

We were told never to venture beyond the walls and the glow of the Tezla lamps because the world held things that attacked from the darkness, but would not venture near the light.

I was adventurous.

We were told never to venture beyond the wards for outside their boundaries we were easy prey.

I was brave and fierce and had long ago outgrown my fear of bogeymen and hobgoblins.

Most of all, we were told never venture too far east.

This was the domain of the Great Hunter.

The lair of the Sun Eater.

I should have listened.

It’s been several weeks since those four snowy days in a cabin with my family and the recent change in jobs. Since then I’ve been to Comic Con in San Diego and celebrated fifteen years of being married. That’s to the same woman, not cumulatively.

I’ve also been busily trying to fill up a couple of new sketchbooks. A small one I have that I can just have out to doodle in when I’m in the mood. I’m a guy, so I’m in the mood pretty much all the time. Don’t think too much about that last statement, I clearly didn’t. I also have a larger sketchbook that I use for my comic strips and bigger drawings, though I don’t do many of the latter, and entirely too few of the former. 

Even so I have a bundle of new drawings to choose from. Below are some selections from my newest sketches.

My wife and I started watching Daredevil on Netflix. Then Kingping gave some Russian mobster guy a facial with the door of his Escalade, and that pretty much ended the “watching it together” phase of the series. I enjoyed the hell out of it and I’m really looking forward to season two, and the other shows planned for Netflix from Marvel. I don’t draw anthros very much at all, but something about putting a cat in the Daredevil costume sounded like fun. 

When you draw, draw from the heart.

My posts just aren’t complete without a curvy naked woman, apparently. This was drawn from a photo reference provided by the good people at Pixelovely. I’m getting better with anatomy, especially female anatomy, which is showing up in my original drawings as well. 

Just to make things completely inappropriate, here’s a drawing of wood. Did I mention I’m twelve?

To change things up I took a run at some fantasy illustration. This is a knight of the order of the Sacred Oak...apparently standing on a hill in Los Angeles when the Santa Anna winds are blowing through. I’ve decided that capes are fun. 

Here is an attempt at a much more academic exercise. These were drawn from a photo reference found on Deviantart. The intent was to draw the same subject three different ways. One is very looses and sketchy, more of a warm up than anything else. The second is cartoony. I wanted to draw her the way I might draw her as a character in my comic strip. Finally I wanted to go all out and draw her as realistically as my current skill level will allow. 

Hipster vampires are dicks.

I do occasionally sketch jokes that may or may not end up as a full comic strip. Here’s the basic script so you don’t have to decipher the scribbles that I pass off as handwriting.

Panel 1

Chuck: Where’s Vlad? It’s his turn to do the dishes. 

Mary: He’s still at the restaurant. I ordered him a steak.

Panel 2

Vlad: HSSSSSSSS