Web comics and other cartoons by by Helen E. H. Madden
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Pixie sure does love her pop music! But I can’t help but cringe when I listen to the actual lyrics of the songs she’s trying to imitate. The kid is 8 years old! She doesn’t need to go BOOM BOOM and bring booty back at her age!
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This was part of the Girl Scouts small watercraft test I had to take. After flipping the boat, I had to get back into it. Without anyone pulling me in. Which is actually quite hard. Especially since those flotation vests don’t bend. Do you know how hard it is to get back into a canoe when you can’t bend at the waist? I ended up going over sideways, across the part of my torso that wasn’t covered by the vest, and that’s how I cracked a rib. Fun!
I’ve scheduled more time to draw webcomics, so hopefully I’ll start to get them drawn and posted more regularly. The webcomics have gotten more complicated to draw, as I’ve mentioned. This is because I’m trying to draw more detailed backgrounds and do more technically challenging things (like drawing canoes in perspective). I think it’s been worth the effort to push myself to do these things, but it does take more time. Hopefully, I will get faster at this, and I will definitely be spending more time in the mornings drawing webcomics before I do anything else.
Anyhoo, have fun! Now that I’ve got this posted, I’m going to put down my Wacom stylus and head out to the gym! See ya!
The girls and I decided to make some new Halloween decorations this year. Naturally, because we are who we are, these decorations are somewhat twisted in nature.
First off, mini-coffins. Our local A. C. Moore's is selling small wooden coffins for $1 each. I got 5 of these and the girls and I have spent a few afternoons decorating them. We're using basic craft pains – Folk Art acrylic paint, some glitter paint, a little Mod-Podge. Each of us is deciding what to put in them.
The other half of this project is based on a zombie doll tutorial I found last year. We started with some fashion dolls from Dollar Tree. I spray painted these with white primer, then the girls and I started coating them with craft paint, using various shades of green, grey, black, and of course, red. We took a couple apart, removing a head, an arm or leg as we saw fit. And like the tutorial, I've glued a couple dolls together to make zombie conjoined twins. We've also coated these in outdoor Mod Podge, which gives them a sort of slimy look. And we used the excess limbs and heads to fill up the mini-coffins as well.
Here are some photos of the works in progress.
This is my coffin. It's boring right now, just painted seashell pink and sea foam green.
Here is Princess' coffin. She's stuffed it with some cheese cloth and left-over bits of zombie fashion dolls.
This is Pixie's zombie doll. She plans to hang it off our front porch.
Princess decided her zombie doll needed something special, like a plastic skull instead of a head.
And finally, here is my zombie doll, in progress. I still want to do more painting, and haven't put together an outfit for it yet, but so far I'm pretty pleased with the results.
And that's our evil crafting project!
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Wow! 250 webcomics and I’m still here. Which is pretty surprising considering the above cartoon did happen. Row the canoe out to the middle of the lake… tip the canoe… turn the canoe upright… get back into the canoe… row the canoe… tip the canoe… etc., etc.
It’s taking me longer than I’d like to get the webcomic done. I do work on it every day, usually for at least an hour, more when I can. But I am slow. Script writing goes very quickly, but penciling takes me forever to get done. Inking is a bit faster, as is coloring and adding dialog, but it still all adds up to a lot of work.
I think part of the reason why is because I’ve gotten more ambitious in what I draw. The backgrounds are more detailed. And every now and then I try to do something I’ve never done before, like drawing a canoe in perspective (that was a huge challenge this week). I think it makes the webcomic better, even if it does slow things down.
So I will keep working, and do what I can to get faster at putting out the comic. Hopefully all the time and effort I put into it is worth it 🙂
Click on the pic to see the full-sized comic!
Princess is 11 years old. Seriously. Keeping up with school uniforms is getting expensive.
The kids are back at school, and I’m trying to get to work on a schedule that will let me get comics done on a regular basis again. Of course, I’m once again juggling volunteer work with my own personal work. I’ll have to see how this works out.
I’m also trying to do more blog posts. You may start seeing quick posts that are just shots of whatever my current work in progress is. I’d love to start doing some posts on craft projects, like some of the crochet toys I’ve done, but that means I’ll have to find time to do the crafts as well as write the blog posts.
Anyhoo, if you start to see lots of quit photos of drawings and weird cat or crochet pictures, that’s just me flailing around, trying to do some blogging.
Ya know, strangely enough, it was easier for me to write blog posts when I had a pre-schooler and an infant that it is now that I’ve got a pre-teen and a grade schooler. What happened to my time?!
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At the beginning of the month, the whole family went to a 4-day karate camp in National Harbor. This was a major event, since 4 of the instructors there were from Okinawa, including the son of the current head of our style of karate. We did 3 hours of karate the first day, 6 hours on the second and third day, and by the fourth day we couldn’t move, so we didn’t.
I’m still sort of recovering from that camp. Of course, I had Girl Scout volunteer training all weekend, which has left me exhausted, and I’m trying to get ready for a kobudo (Okinawan traditional weapons) test this coming weekend. I am very, very tired.
Click on the thumbnail to see the full-sized comic!
File this one under the category of “things that really happened.” The lifeguard at our pool is the son of our next door neighbor. I’ve known him since he was about 6 years old. Now he’s in college and taller than I am.
Of course, Princess (who is only 11) is going to be taller than he is very soon.
I was hard at work on last week's webcomic when I had to set everything aside to go off to a karate camp for 4 days. When four of the highest ranking instructors fly all the way from Okinawa to teach someplace you could actually manage to get to, you drop everything and go.
But I am home now and back at work on the webcomic. It's still not ready yet, though, so here's some other artwork I've been working on. Let me know what you think!
(It's BMO, but not exactly BMO. I'll explain it when I finish if, if it needs explaining then.)
“Adventure of the Heart” by Helen E. H. Madden
I finished this drawing a lot faster that I thought I would. I'm still not sure why I decided to draw this or what I was trying to do. Finn looks like he's either been made out of fuzzy yarn or he's been taking a lot of psychodelic drugs. But this is “Adventure Time” fan art, so I guess either would be about right.
This was drawn in Sketchclub on my iPad. I love the brushes and tools in Sketchclub, but I recently discovered that another app, Procreate, has a feature that may soon make it my new favorite. In Sketchclub, you can record while you draw, and you can export that video afterwards. BUT you have to select the record button before you start to do the recording. In Procreate, the recording is done automatically. You don't have to worry about hitting any buttons, it just happens. It seems to work a lot better than the Sketchclub video recording as well, in that it doesn't seem to slow down the app at all, or cause it to crash (I've had both happen in Sketchclub while recording video, though the crashing doesn't happen very often).
If only I could combine Sketchclub's brushes and tools with Procreate's video recording ability. Maybe someday that will happen. Until then, enjoy this very fuzzy drawing of Finn from “Adventure Time.”
Work-in-Progress – “Adventure of the Heart”
I'm too lazy to do much of anything this morning, so I decided to doodle instead. This hopefully looks like Finn from “Adventure Time.” No great dramatic pose, just some doodling and playing with colors and brushes. I'm doing this is SketchClub on my iPad.
Have a fun Sunday morning. I'm finally going to get up and move now.
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