I made my little owl  buddy out of polymer clay today. He’s tilted at an such an angle that he’s looking right up at me when perched on my tilted drawing board.

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

You wouldn’t know it by looking at this blog, but I’ve been drawing and doodling an awful lot lately. I finished this Stellar’s Jay this morning. I’m not thrilled with how it came out- it’s not bad, but it got away from me in the watercolor portions again. It’s easier to see in person than it is in this crappy camera phone pic. Right now I think I’d rather post to the blog more often with doodles and camphone pics than fuss with scanning and uploading things that aren’t exactly worth the time to deal with that way. Plus, my scanner isn’t scanning clearly anymore, so there’s not as much of an incentive for me to bother with it.

What do you think? Would you rather see more, even if it’s not as clear?

Tags: art, birds, drawing, ink, watercolor, works in progress

It’s too bad- I really liked the pencils for this, but I pretty much lost control of it as soon as I started to apply the color. I had really gotten used to the way I was doing the inks, and watercolor is just not going to behave the same way.

Well, whatever. It was actually kind of freeing to just mess with it without worrying about ruining the painting after I had already ruined it.  This one, I think, didn’t really stand a chance of turning out well- I started working on it pretty late at night, for one thing. For another thing I don’t have the slightest idea how to paint iridescent feathers with watercolor.

However, I’ve noticed that I’m finding ways to avoid sitting down to start another after I finish one, especially if it turned out well. I had been wanting to do a bird all day (look at my Twitter for Sunday to see how early I intended to start working on this), so by 10:30 at night I sat down and said “Damnit, I’m going to do a bird, and I give myself permission to do it badly if I have to!”

And I did. But at least I sat down and did it! And now I’m clearer about a few of the issues I’ll have when I come to do colorful, iridescent birds again.

Tags: art, being blocked, birds, painting, rufous hummingbird, watercolor, works in progress

I’m actually using this as a real checklist. I have pens and paper, but all of the other preparations beyond that need to be made!

Tags: 24-hour comic, checklist, comic, drawing, journal comic, works in progress

I’ve started doing this exercise that sits me down in front of pen and paper every single night. I’m making more drawings than I’m posting on the blog here, and I’m okay with that. I’m making doodles that I can see developing into stuff and that’s good, too. Then I did this last night:

I haven’t forgotten about SnoogleZoo, I just needed to take a break. I don’t think doing a serial webcomic is for me- it’s not exactly the time commitment, like I thought it was, because doing all this constraint-free drawing is taking up the same kind of time that working on SnoogleZoo was. I think it’s more like feeling trapped within a certain framework. It felt like homework and I think it was stifiling the art. Not to mention all my other art that I wasn’t doing.

I’ve been kicking around a couple of ideas of what to do- I miss the characters more than I thought I would, so I’d rather not abandon them to the realm of silent, one-off illustrations. But I don’t want to get trapped slogging through an un-interesting story arc just to meet a deadline. I’m thinking I should just do stories on a whenever-I-feel-like-it basis, which I think will serve my desire to do something of quality, and also prevent me from growing a readership of any respectable size.

But you know what? I don’t really care about that right now. I really need to be making art before I can concern myself with things like making art on a schedule.

So don’t worry, Pan. We’ll be back soon enough, and you can pick on Efram and get extra whipped cream from the Kitties’ cafe and have all kinds of fun and silly adventures with the rest of the gang real soon. But sometimes I will have to give my attention to killer robots and pin-up girls, too. It’s better for everyone this way

Tags: being blocked, comic, drawing, snooglezoo, work, works in progress