I have no idea when or why I drew this. It’s just something I had in an old sketchbook. This is definitely something drawn in the last 15 years, judging from the other sketches in the book. And it’s done in ball-point pen, my favorite medium for doodling and sketching. I love ball-point pens. One day, I may finally get a bunch of colored ball-point pens and do a “serious” work of “art” with them.
I’ve been posting images from the same sketchbook for several weeks now. A lot of that sketchbook was just random scribbles and doodles. I hated that sketchbook at the time because I thought there was nothing significant or worthwhile in it, but looking at it now, I actually like it. Even though this sketchbook is perhaps 15 years old, I can see a certain development in my cartooning style.
Also, I realize just by looking at this page that I ought to randomly doodle and scribble more often. In fact, Mich (she who is my brain) has insisted that I start spending a certain amount of time everyday drawing and sketching to improve my skill and drawing speed. The last 2–3 weeks have been too hectic to start a new habit like that, but hopefully I’ll get started on this soon. Or I may have already started, since I wrote this blog post more than a week in advance. I guess we shall see, huh?
No idea when this page was drawn, but the character in the lower left corner of this page is who I wish I could be. The character in the upper right is who I’ll probably end up being in another 15–20 years. Strangely, not a fate I am unhappy about. If I can’t be beautiful, at least let me be scary! Or, you know, let me be that big fluffy cat in the upper left corner of the page. I could deal with that.
I posted the finished B5 cartoon a couple years ago. Just last week I found the original sketch. The character in the lower left is my version of Scully from the S-Files. Delen is in the middle, obviously having a bad hair day, and I have no idea who that sinister employee from Mickey D’s is supposed to be. Why I drew that guy, I’ll never know. He vaguely reminds me of cartoons I’ve done of the Hubster, but the Hubster worked at Burger King, not McDonald’s, when he was in school, and I worked at Hardee’s. So, who knows! But I do like the B5 sketch. It’s one of my favorite cartoons.
I’m at Balticon this weekend, mostly likely doing panels on web comics, writing, erotica, new media and podcasting, digital art, and whatever else is on my schedule. Check the program book and look for a blue-haired woman with horns!
“X-Toons (Rough Draft)” by Helen E. H. Madden, date unknown
A long time ago, some time in between when I drew the “Rats!” comic strips for the Virginia Tech Collegiate Times and when I began drawing “The Adventures of Cynical Woman” webcomic, I did a very short series of comics called “The X-Toons.” Basically, it was comic fan art for the X-Files. I drew them by hand and then colored them in Corel Photopaint. I uploaded them… somewhere online. I can’t recall where I might have posted them, or who I might have shared them with. This was before blogs were popular, and before the term “webcomics” even existed. I think I drew a grand total of five of these comics, and I’ve probably got them tucked away on a disk somewhere. I’m just not sure where. The above sketch is an early rough draft for one of those comics. If I can find the final product, or any of the other X-Toons I did, I’ll post them here.
“Still Life with Oranges” by Helen E. H. Madden, colored pencil
This was probably done during my grad school years, early 1990s. What’s fun to note about this one is that the blue gingham fabric in the foreground eventually went on to become this costume. Ja!
“Cynical Woman (with Pookie)” by Helen E. H. Madden, Sharpie pen on sketch paper, July 28, 1993
Long before Cynical Woman became me with horns, I drew her like this. And I think when I’m older, this is exactly how I’m going to look, so consider this a prescient self-portrait. The bug in the picture, Pookie, is a Madagascar hissing cockroach, a nod to the original Cynical Woman, Joelle. Joelle studied entomology and wrote her master’s thesis on cockroaches. I remember sitting through her presentation. I didn’t understand any of what she said, but she did mention the word “ootheca” an awful lot.
Anyway, sorry for posting this late today. I’ve been busting ass on my current commission, a book cover for a publisher I work with. I’ve been posting screen shots of the work-in-progress on Twitter and on Facebook, so if you follow me on either of those, you may have seen what I’ve been slaving over the last couple weeks. (If you don’t follow me on either Twitter or Facebook, why not?! I’m a perfectly nice social media person, and I haven’t bitten anyone on Twitter in days, and the guy on Facebook that I did bite did NOT contract rabies, contrary to popular belief. He was already rabid to begin with.)
But I’ve been working very hard on this digital painting and staying up way too late too many nights and today it really caught up with me. After the Hubster left to take the girls to school, I went back to bed and had nightmares for the next few hours about Hubster switching out our phone for a complicated media center remote that I couldn’t operate to save my life (don’t laugh, he does this to me in real life all the damned time!) and it was very important that I call 911 because an undead Anne Romney might or might not have invaded our home and I was not putting up with that.
Needless to say I woke up in a cold sweat and all the coffee in the world cannot help me feel normal and fully functional today. Oh well. Back to the digital painting.
Work-In-Progress by Helen E. H. Madden, Photoshop, 26 April, 2012
I’m not sure I can really explain the above drawing. This was done while I was in college, maybe while I was in grad school. The three characters in this piece were all friends of mine, especially “Natasha,” who’s real name is Joelle. Joelle originally invented the name Cynical Woman, although at the time that name did not refer to moi. Cynical Woman was just that inner voice Joelle claimed she always heard when things were going just a little too right. You know, everything would be all hunky dorey, and then Cynical Woman would raise her ugly head—!! (Insert scary alien-bursting-out-of-your-chest sound effect here…)
So anyway, the above drawing was a very inner joke, so inner that even I can’t remember it. I can only remember sitting and laughing over it with Joelle as we waited for Cynical Woman to rise up and smack us in the face with something else gone wrong. A lot of things went wrong back then, but somehow we survived.
Or did we?!!
I’m going camping! Sorry I haven’t posted most of this week! I’m in a big hurry to get out the door! Be back Monday if the bears don’t eat me!!!!!
“Phoenix” by me, age ??
It’s been a few weeks since I’ve done a Flashback Friday post. Sorry. Girl Scouts, as always, is the reason why. First it was cookie season, then it was training, and now I have to take 10 little girls camping in a couple weeks. So I’ve been a bit busy.
Anyway, about the drawing above. I don’t like it. I did this in college, I think. I remember I took a course on creativity and the teacher urged us to draw mandalas whenever we had the chance. This was my version of a mandala. It was circular, at least, and colorful. But looking at it today I also think it’s blurry and messy and I really could have eased up on how much oil pastel I ground into the paper. I used to do the same thing with pencils and crayons too, until I learned better. Shading and coloring take patience. Color has to be built up slowly over time. I’m learning that lesson all over again as I work on a digital painting for a client. Easy, slow, take your time building up the layers of color. I’m sure I’ll keep learning this lesson many times before it finally sinks in.