ACW Episode 192 – The Return of Move It Mama Monday?

Depending on when you are reading this today, I may be at physical therapy having this very same conversation! This particular exercise is the bane of my existence right now. NekoMich, who has been kind enough to take me to physical therapy several mornings, thinks I make the funniest faces as I try to roll myself around the room, using only my right (injured) leg. I can't do it yet. I still have to pull with the left leg as well. But hopefully I'm improving.

And since I'm injured, and since I'm doing physical therapy, and since the new year is coming up, and since I put on a little extra weight after screwing up my right knee, I'm toying with the idea of bringing back Move It Mama Monday. I don't know how I'll change the rest of the blogging schedule yet. I plan to get back to a 3-day schedule once the kids go back to school. We'll see how it goes.

So anyway, think of me today, dragging my sorry ass along in a rolling chair using only my injured knee and try not to laugh too hard. You might hurt yourself. Or I will, if I hear you laughing at me.

 

ACW Episode 191 – All I Want for Christmas

I don't want much, do I?

Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas, Happy Hannukah, Happy Bodhi Day, and so on. I am slowly getting back on my feet and hope to resume the normal blogging schedule after New Year's. But for right now, I'm spending time with my family and madly crocheting Christmas presents. I know, it's Christmas Eve. I should be done already. But what can I say? I've spent most of the last month on Percoset. Great for pain relief, not so great for productivity.

Anyway, best wishes to you all.

 

ACW Episode 190 – Recovery slowing me down

I will color this later. It has taken me all week to get this done. The doc took out my stitches last Friday and told me to get back to some of my regular activities, so I did and now I'm paying for it. Been in the pool twice this week, plus helped out with an all-day Girl Scout event on Saturday and ran my troop meeting yesterday. And of course, I have physical therapy three times a week. Today was especially brutal. Niw I'm very, very tired. So I didn't even color this strip, just got it inked and threw it up on the web. Sorry, but one day I will eventually get back to my usual routine.

 

ACW Episode 189 – Feed me, Pixie!

Click on the thumbnail above to view the full size webcomic!

Oh Pixie, I love you so much. Thank you for taking care of your poor, invalid mother. And for always providing plenty of fodder formthis webcomic. If it weren't for you and your sister, I wouldn't have anything to draw most weeks.

I'm still recovering from my ACL reconstruction surgery. I feel a lot better than I did last week, but I still have problems sleeping at night. I just can't get comfortable. The physical therapists say I'm doing really well, but it's going to be a while before I'm pain-free. I've been taking percoset to help me sleep at night, but it knocks me out for most of the next day too. And I'm still sleeping on the couch, since there's no way I could share a bed with Hubster and actually sleep. I can't tell you how much I wish that were otherwise.

On the upside of things, I am able to get some work done, though most of what I do is done on the iPad. I've been doing the webcomic on the iPad, and I like the end result. I'm working on a lot of zombie drawings too, plus I've been doing a lot of crochet. But I still can't make it up into my office to do a lot of the things I'd normally do.

So there you go. I'm still alive. We'll see how I keep going.

 

ACW Episode 188 – Knee Surgery!

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

I had planned to post this earlier today, but then I went to physical therapy for 2 hours and when I got home I crashed for 3 hours and then I had to spend another hour doing all those physical therapy exercises again. So now I'm exhausted again and collapsed back on the couch. Fun!

The good news is that I can feel my girl parts again. Yay!

I don't know what I'm going to do about all my other regular posts, including Rats! as I can't get up to my office to scan anything in now. It was tough to deal with stairs before but it's impossible right now. I'll see what I can work out, but you all may just get stuck with whatever weird stuff I come up with while I'm recooperating on the couch.

Anyway, have fun. I'm going to crash again now.

 

ACW Episode 186 – Bath Time!!

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.

 

ACW Episode 185 – Lean on Me?

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!

 

PerCaDraMo – a preview for Monday

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!

PerCaDraMo for 8 November, 2012 – The Rock God

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.