And Now a Word From...

Our Mayflies are Huge Because They Come in Late June...

...And you should see our june bugs. They get here in December.

More the Man

I got to use a chainsaw yesterday. I could feel the testosterone surge as the wood chips flew.



Had to watch chick flicks all night just to bring me back down.

WARNING: IMAGE ONSLAUGHT!

But, first, a brief explanation. These were done for my pastor, who is speaking at a children's church camp this week. In the mornings, he is teaching them a system for remembering the books of the New Testament (that's the second part...not half...of the Bible which is occasionally distributed by itself with Psalms and Proverbs as bonus books).

I don't understand the system at all. I think it's going to confuse the crap out of them, but...I had fun drawing it all. So, here they are, in order of appearance...




























I could try to explain some of them, but the explanations are flimsy. Like I said, the kid's will probably just be confused, but at least they'll have some funny pictures to see.

C'est Fini

I managed to complete that massive project Saturday night around midnight. Actually, I think it was afterward, making it, technically, Sunday, but that may've been when I finished taking pictures of the drawings

Drawings, I might add, which are NOT feature on this post.

Instead, I have a picture of my son contemplating the wonders he might find inside the large beverage container in his grasp. I am sure he was unaware of the possibility that he would more than likely be wearing the contents if he attempted to partake of them, but since he didn't try, he didn't find out.

That may be because I took it away from him. After the picture, of course.

I'm a little nervous about the drawings, though. Not only because I'm not 100% thrilled with them (I could've finished more faster and with better quality if I'd been able to do them on the computer), but also because, as it turns out, I may've gotten carried away and drawn one TOTALLY wrong. I'll find out when I get home and compare what I know I drew to what the list says I was supposed to have drawn and then see how I can cover my butt. If I can get the computer to cooperate, I'll have an image heavy post with all of them here in the next couple days.

Let's just get it out of the way now, though. I am not happy with the cow in the least. That was one of the victims of working on such a large scale in such a short time. There are others, but I think it is the most glaring.

C'est la vie.

P.S. French is a stupid, stupid language. It's like Spanish, only unnecessarily complicated.

Fashion

Dressing, for my mother, is a marathon event. It requires training and self-discipline and denial of all else in favor of it. She can be so late to an event that she misses it entirely because she was fine-tuning her outifit.

This seems like a colossal waste of effort to me.

This morning, she was 15 minutes late to work because she couldn't get her outfit perfect so that she could secretize* for a handful of science professors who, other than covering their nakedness, have no idea how to use clothing.

Thank God they got that much.

.....Eughhhh....

This isn't to say that I can fault her for caring about her appearance. I mean, a little moderation would be nice; a little recognition of the fact that nobody really cares 99.54% of the time, but a lot of people don't really put much effort into looking like they WEREN'T just backed over by a dump truck. Of course, this has made its way into my life, as well. I don't know that I've ever been late because of getting dressed, but I don't like going out in public if I haven't shaved, for instance. There have been a few odd mornings lately where tiredness and time worked against me and I went to work without combing my hair (good thing it's really short), and I'd fix it at lunch time. Mostly, I'm just especially self-conscious about my thinning hair. I don't at all relish the prospect of being bald. Most guys who look young do not look good bald. Ron Howard has only recently aged into his baldness, for example.

I do like wearing fashionable clothes, though. Granted, the fashions I tend towards are usually those of a high school kid, not that I wear that stuff that often, but I've always been a t-shirt and jeans guy, so it only stands to reason that advances in that area would pique my interest.

I guess this means that if you ever see me wandering around in a bath robe, the world is probably going to end.

Unless someone buys me this bathrobe, which I would gladly wear even to work.


*Secretize - What one does when they are a secretary

Panictown

I mentioned in my previous post how I'd gotten an order for some paid art. The order is for 27 pictures conforming to specific concepts (though the layout and style is all me) on a very, very large flip-pad. And to have it done for the Monday after Fathers' Day.

Holy crap.

Since he may be leaving on Sunday afternoon (I don't know for sure), plus the fact that I don't want to spend my first Fathers' Day as an actual dad working (even if it is drawing), I have, from the point that I got all the materials from him, 12 days to finish. That works out to at least 2 pages every day with three others to be done at some point in the midst. Essentially, that means I started out three pages in the hole and, since yesterday I had to do some shopping for things we need for the house which kept me from drawing, to get back to zero, I'd have to draw 7 pages today.

Gah!!!

That's the 3 bonus pages plus yesterday's 2 and today's 2. And since I help out in the youth department at church (and since it'd be bad form to skip in favor of drawing with the commission coming from the preacher and all...), I'll be lucky if I get today's 2 done.

The upside is that I've already got thumbnails of over half of them done, so I won't have to waste time trying to put the concept on paper. That will be a huge time-sink when I run to the end of those. I need to get back on track before I finish...16, I think.

Hoo...boy....I'm in trouble.

Inviso-Monkey

It occurs to me that my presence here is almost as unnecessary as it is unnoticed. I haven't properly drawn a comic in nearly a year and a half now. What I did draw has shuffled off to that place where things go to die in obscurity.

You know, that same place where all the comics I've almost done in the aforementioned year and a half have gone.

I keep holding out hope that somehow I'll start making comics again, but it isn't happening. The only story I'm particularly interested in (working title: The Art of Self-Destruction) really wouldn't work as a comic. At least, not as I've conceived it. For comics, I don't have the time to tell the stories I want to tell. The first chapter (especially) of Troubled Times shows what happens when I try to rush a comic book-style strip.

It's pretty ugly.

That leaves shorter strip-style comics, like Vapor Lock. Except, at the end, I was working VL away from that. The thing is, I know exactly where it would pick up. I knew it a year ago. I even drew up new character designs for the cast reflecting that things had changed in the interim. I don't have time to draw them in that style, though. In fact, chances are that artistically, VL vol. 3 would be a step backwards as far as where I want to go is concerned. The same would be true of almost any strip I could do.

So, I'm still stuck.

Fortunately, I'll at least have something artish to do for the next couple weeks (probably). My preacher asked me to draw some illustrations for a camp he's speaking at. A little short notice, considering how many he wants. Heck, short notice for me, no matter the number, but I think it sounds fun.

Plus, he offered to pay. And, to quote Cutler Beckett, "Currency is the currency of the realm."