Category: PerCaDraMo

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ACW Episode 186 – Bath Time!!

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Click on the thumbnail to see the full-sized webcomic!

Yes, this actually happened. No, I did not kill the small child. And yes, I am counting this as 4 points for PerCaDraMo because I have a bum knee and it's slowing everything down!!! So there!

I have no idea how Pixie managed to spill that much water out of the tub, but when I went screaming upstaris, there was more bath water on the floor than in the tub. In fact, there was almost more bath water in my yarn than in the tub. Almost, but fortunately I was able to move very fast in spite of my screwed-up knee. Frighteningly fast.

Speaking of my knee, I found out on Friday that I tore both the meniscus cartilage and the ACL in my right knee. So I will be having surgery in two weeks and then I will be on crutches probably for… Weeks? I dunno.

But before the surgery, I'm going to get up into the office and scan in plenty of Rats! comics as well as plenty of art for the Very Scary Art website so I can get back to posting on a regular basis.

Anyway, that's what's going on around here.

 

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PerCaDraMo for 14 November 2012 – Meet Foxy Moxy!

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Hey! I know I missed yesterday's PerCaDraMo. This drawing was in progress but it wasn't quite ready, and I needed to get some sleep so I finished it today.

Anyway, here is Foxy Moxy. I drew her in Adobe Ideas on my iPad. The idea was to create a cute little fox with a lot of personality and I think I succeeded. I have ideas for this character, so that indicates success to me anyway.

I'm hoping to be back to the regular blogging schedule next week, meaning Rats! will return along with something for Friday. I may go back to Flashback Friday, or I may do something new. I'm toying with the idea of turning Fridays into a new art day, and showing off a new sketch or craft item each Friday. We'll see.

Anyway, this is Foxy Moxy!

 

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ACW Episode 185 – Lean on Me?

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Click on the thumbnail above to see the full-sized webcomic!

Well, having an injured knee has certainly slowed me down in some ways. I am very reluctant to climb the extra set of stairs up to my office, which means I'm working entirely from my iPad and my laptop. It also means I can't scan anything in, since the scanner is in the office with the desktop.

BUT! This week's webcomic was done entirely on my iPad using Sketchclub to draw the individual panels and ComicStrip to assemble them into the final strip. And I gotta say, this one turned out just as good as any comic I've hand drawn and then colored in Adobe.

This week's comic also counts as 4 entries in PerCaDraMo, since each panel had to be individually drawn. (Yes, that is sort of cheating, but since it took me quite a bit of time to figure out how to make these 4 panels look so good, I'm declairing it 4 seperate entries. So there!)

Just to clarify, I injured my right knee while camping with Girl Scout volunteers, but drew it as the left knee since that looked better in the comic. I did get rid of my old crutches back in August during my manic garage cleaning fit, and I knew when I did it that a knee injury wiuld be coming soon thereafter. That's what always happens whenever I get rid of my crutches. In fact, it's happened 4 times now! You'd think I'd learn.

I had an MRI today. Most miserable medical experience I've had in a while. I'll know the results on Friday. It's possible I've torn something this time. If so, I'll be looking at surgery and more time on the couch. But ya know, I'm okay with that. I have recently discovered the joys of watching NCIS marathons on USA. They're fun to sit and draw to.

Tomorrow, something rather different for PerCaDraMo. Good night!

 

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PerCaDraMo for 11 November 2012 – Franken-Kitty

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Lately, I've started blurring the lines between crafting and cartooning. More and more I see crochet and embroidery as ways of taking my weird little sketches and bringing them to a new sort of life. For instance, this sketch…

…became this amigurumi…

Please note, I didn't accomplish either the sketch or the amigurumi all today. The sketch was done two weeks ago when my oldest told me she wanted a Frankenstein kitty. I drew a quick thumbnail and showed it to her, then began working on the actual character in yarn. I finished off the head and legs last night (after many days of experimentation and unraveling) and did the rest of this little guy today. In fact, I just finished sewing on his arms thirty minutes ago.

He still needs more work. I need to figure out what to do for the neck bolts and then make him a little vest and add some more stitches. I'm contemplating stitching on a small felt heart, too. Once all that is done, then Franken-Kitty will be finished and Princess will run off with him and I'll never see him again, I expect. Not much escapes that kid's room once it enters.

I can't honestly say if today's entry qualifies for PerCaDraMo or not. It wasn't started today, and it wasn't completed today, but I put in a lot of work on this little guy today, and it's my personal challenge (thus the per in PerCaDraMo) so I'm adding it to the list.

Besides, he's a cutie. He deserves his fifteen minutes of fame on the internet. And I'm going to bed now. Good night!

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PerCaDraMo – a preview for Monday

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Tonight's PerCaDraMo entry is a preview for Monday's webcomic. I used SketchClub on my iPad to draw this. I'm loving the pen tool in SketchClub. The latest update includes a smoothing function and tapering for pen strokes. This makes the pen tool a lot like drawing with the actual pens I usually use.

Another thing I like is that I can export the SketchClub file as a PDF. So now I have these really nice line drawings that I can use in Photoshop or convert to vectors in Illustrator. So I'm loving this a lot!

Going to bed now. More PerCaDraMo tomorrow!

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PerCaDraMo for 9 November 2012 – Princess Yum-Yum

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Princess Yum-Yum Finds a Snack by Helen E. H. Madden

Here is today's PerCaDraMo cartoon. Honestly, this one, like yesterday, is more a painting than what I typically think of as a cartoon. I had meant to keep things simpler, but I got carries away playing around in SketchClub on my iPad, and now here are the results.

This drawing, in part, is for Princess who loves cats and princesses (obviously). But it's also for NekoMich who says I never use enough yellow in my artwork. Is this yellow enough for ya? 'Cause I'm thinking this is pretty danged yellow.

Anyway, it's late so I'm going to bed. Good night!

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PerCaDraMo for 8 November, 2012 – The Rock God

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The Rock God

The Rock God by Helen E. H. Maddeb

Here is today's PerCaDraMo cartoon. I consider each panel of today's webcomic to be individual entries for PerCaDraMo, since they're each individual paintings and they each took a looooooong time to draw.

So with those four panels and today's cartoon, I'm three cartoons behind. That's what happens when I end up being gone at the very start of the month. I would love to be able to get ahead on my cartooning, especially for webcomics. Doing that would mean drawing comics every day, and drawing them quicker than I currently do. I have gotten quicker in the last year or so, but then when I add in scanning and coloring the comics, that slows the process back down again.

So I'm looking into ways to get faster at this. Today's cartoon, The Rock God, took an hour and a half to do. I'll see if there's a way to get faster at this.

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ACW Episode ?? – Oh, the horror!!

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Personally, I think this is one of the best self portraits I've ever done.

I apologize for the lateness of this week's webcomic, and for the general lack of posts this week. Last weekend, I went camping with several volunteers for outdoor training with Girl Scouts. While participating in some adventure games, I hit an uneven patch of ground and my knee went “POP! POP!” And that was that. Yours truly went down like Moses in the fifth.

So this week, I'm hobbling around the house on crutches. I'm avoiding flights of stairs as much as I can, which means I'm not getting up to the office where my scanner is. So everything on the blog is going to be dne in the iPad for a while.

Anyway, about this week's webcomic. I love candy, especially chocolate. Especially peanut butter cups. In fact the only thing, I love more than peanut butter cups is very fancy dark chocolate. So every year at Halloween, the Hubster buys all this candy. And then he goes off trick-or-treating with the girls while I stay home with this big bowl of candy that I HAVE TO GIVE AWAY TO ANY YARD APE WHO SHOWS UP AT MY DOOR!!

So. Now I have a bum knee and no candy. Except for the stuff I managed to stash away before the trick-or-treaters showed up, and that stuff is all mine. Isn't that right, my precioussssssss…

Hopefully I'll be back to regular posting next week. Until I am, it's Personal Cartoon Drawing Month (better known as PerCaDraMo) again this month, which means I'm drawing cartoons every day, so those should show up here. Enjoy!

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PerCaDraMo Day 30 – Fin

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Here it is, the last PerCaDraMo cartoon. I kept it simple, yet I think It’s appropriate. The month is finally over and I’ve got 30 cartoon sketches to show for it. Some were very simple, others quite elaborate, but all 30 are done now.

I also completed my NaNoWriMo goal of writing 50K words this month. I had not planned on doing both PerCaDraMo and NaNoWriMo at the same time. I just sort of got sucked into doing NaNoWriMo as I realized there would never be a good time to start a new novel so I might as well start now. So far I have 62K words of notes, outline, research, and a small handfull of actual scenes with setting and dialog. That counts, as far as I’m concerned, even though I haven’t finished the story yet. Maybe in another month I’ll have a decent, complete outline of that novel worked out.

But back to PerCaDraMo. I figured out a few things this month. Namely…

I love drawing with brush pens.

I’m actually pretty good drawing with brush pens.

I’d rather draw with just brush pens than start with pencils first, even though I might make a horrible mistake.

I’d rather draw with brush pens on paper than draw on my iPad, because as much as I love my iPad, it’s not as responsive at times as plain old pen and paper, and the iPad 1 severly limits how big an image I can draw.

However, I draw more with the iPad because it’s convenient and because I don’t have to bother with scanning anything in once I’m done because it’s already there in digital format.

And finally, there is something called NaNoMangO that occurs every November (I think) where artists draw a page of a graphic novel a day for a month. Yeah, 30 fully inked pages in 30 days. Think I could do that next year?

All this drawing has given me a serious hankering to draw some more, and maybe even to try my hand at a graphic novel of my own. So tomorrow I’ll be at my local craft store picking up a few supplies in preparation for that. I can’t make any big promises, but I hope to have something in the works soon.

I hope you all enjoyed PerCaDraMo!!

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PerCaDraMo Holiday Edition 02 – All Hand Drawn

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The following cartoons were drawn at my in-laws house over Thanksgiving week. I used a Prismacolor brush pen with other Prismacolor fine point pens for cross-hatching in some cases, and Faber-Castell color brush pens for the illustration of the Empress. These were drawn on Canson Comic and Manga Drawing Pad paper, 9×12 inches. The Canson paper is fantastic, and the Prismacolor brush pen is by far my favorite inking pen. These were all done free hand, no pencilling before hand (as you can obviously tell in one drawing). In order, the drawings are…

Zombie Mermaid, the first one I drew at my in-laws and by far my favorite. I misplaced my Prismacolor brush pen half-way through and had to make due with a Faber-Castell brush pen, which is slightly larger, but I don’t think it hurt the final drawing.

Man in a Tentacle Top Hat. I like the idea of this one, but man do I need practice drawing profile views. His face and head are far too narrow for that hat.

Empress Olgadevy Grants Her Benediction. I don’t know exactly what inspired this, possibly the Ukranian style icons that are in my in-laws house. It has a very Ukranian/Russian feel to me. I also wanted to draw something without tentacles that day, as tentacles seem to show up a lot in these drawings.

The Original Doctor Octopus. I just started drawing this one, starting at the face, and ended up with a mad scientist pretty quickly. I had the brain in the case drawn, but no legs for this guy, when I decided to add the tentacles. I think I should have added something in the upper right corner, maybe a window or some such thing, but this came out okay. The brain case is based on a gumball machine we have in our house. Mmmmm, gumball braaaaaaaaiiiiiiiinnnnssssss…

And that’s the last of the PerCaDraMo images I drew over the holidays. There’s one more cartoon I need to draw tonight to finish off the month. After which I will have 30 drawings, some very good, some very strange, and some… whatever. I’ll sum up my thoughts on this experiment tomorrow or Friday and let folks know what I think was the end result of all this. If you have thoughts on PerCaDraMo, be sure to let me know, either in the comments section of the blog, or by tweeting me (@Cynical_Woman) or you can send email via the contact link in the website menu above.

Don’t forget to buy your Zombie Santa holiday cards!!!

If you like the artwork you’ve seen here for PerCaDraMo, you can have something very similar in style on your holiday cards this year. Zombie Santa cards are available in the Cynical Woman Zazzle shop, so be sure to buy yours today! And if you see something else you like there, buy that too! Trust me, I will not scold you if you do 😉