Fun Fact: I am using the same ink-and-brush combo to ink my comics as I am to paint my birds. If anybody tries to tell me that comics aren’t hard, I have a portfolio full of wobbly-lined comic pages and sharply detailed birds that prove otherwise.

I’m lending Scruffy MacRuffin my birds for his field notebooks, so I thought I’d include a closeup of that panel here. Anyway, new page is up, and it’s glorious! Why not go check it out?

Tags: comic, comics, snooglezoo

I also did a bunch of drawing for SnoogleZoo today.  I have a one-off, and part of a longer story arc in development, and I just need to get them out on paper. It’s hard starting over, but I’ve missed those little guys and I only ever stopped because I set the bar a little too high to begin with. So I’m taking more of a quality-over-quantity approach this time, which means I probably won’t manage a regular update schedule for a while, but at least each strip will be something I can be proud of. I’m working on drawing everybody consistently, and trying out a couple of different ways of inking- I think it’d be neat to ink SnoogleZoo with a brush because it seems like all the fur on the characters would work well with a fluid line, but then there are small details like the little round eyes that I’m worried I won’t be able to pull off with a brush. Plus, technical pens are just so darn comfortable. But really, how am I supposed to get comfortable with a new tool without using it?

I have to be careful about letting all this noodling get in the way of my actually moving forward with the project. I can keep practicing forever and never get a strip together If I’m not careful. So I’m aiming to at least start posting little paintings, if not a proper strip, by May 3rd. Yep, that’s  a week from tomorrow! I’m going to be pretty busy this week making that happen.

Tags: art, comics, doodles, drawing, owls, polymer clay, snooglezoo, works in progress

Argh, two days into Holidailies and I’m already lagging. My connection to the internet was bad yesterday. I’ll have to post a make-up soon. Anyway, this kid (I’m guessing he was 3 or 4 years old) just stared and stared at me, and I think his mother was embarrassed because he kept walking in front of me to get a better look. I thought it was adorable.

Tags: comic, eccentricities, holidailies, journal comic, kids

Hello, Holidailies crowd! I’m back for another year (technically my fifth, although as I say in the comic, I haven’t finished yet.) This year would be the year to make it through, though. I’m older, wiser, and blogging a lot more often. I’ve taken on a number of Big Projects this year, and gotten more work done on my own than I ever have before.

I’ve been out of my usual routine for the last couple of weeks, so I haven’t been posting, but now that most of the Holiday Madness at work has been put to bed, and all the traveling is done for me and mine (Brad and I went down to LA for Thanksgiving), I should be able to hunker down and get to work. At the very least I’ll be doing one-panel daily comics like this one through the end of the run.

The little owl in the comic is sort of the embodiment of my work-ethic. He first started appearing in my comics earlier this year, and co-starred with me in the 24-hour comic I did back in July. He appears from time to time to help me break up what would otherwise be giant walls of text in my comics.

I started drawing myself with the pudge I’ve put on in the last couple of years, but I noticed that I’m drawing the owl a little fatter than he was over the summer, too. We need to lose some weight. Christmas time is a great time to get working on that. Not.

Tags: holidailies, journal comic, work

It must be the beginning of Fourth Quarter- the weather has turned cold and everybody and their grand-pappy wants a new commercial RIGHT NOW OMG in time for the Christmas rush. I’m busy, and cold, and grumpy. Happens every year.

Tags: comics, journal comic, monsters, work

It’s nothing serious- just the usual quarter-life menu of Things to Worry About: money, and the general what-am-I-doing-with-my-life anxiety that I’m starting to suspect never goes away.

Tags: comic, journal comic, quarter-life crisis, worrying

The irony of the whole thing is that I produce video for broadcast all day long in my dayjob, but I have always, always had problems with stupid things like programming a VCR, and I can’t, for the life of me, figure out how to use Windows Movie Maker (What do you mean, you can’t add tracks!?)

I have an old student copy of premiere, but you can’t really capture from a webcam (which, apparently drops frames as a matter of course, and Premiere doesn’t like that). I got the the point where I started digging around in Brad’s old video stuff, and he has this funny little Hi-8 with Svideo, only my Svideo jack is output only! Argh!

…And that’s why there was no comic yesterday!

Tags: comic, computers, journal comic, post-it notes, video

Tags: car, journal comic

Tags: comic, journal comic

Tags: comic, post-it notes, work