Painting

I've been wanting to paint again for a long time. It's been, well, an embarrassingly long time since I was able to work on a canvas. Years ago my good friend Sunny had posed for me for a series of paintings I had wanted to start, but never got the chance to because my comic work had really picked up.

My schedule opened up a little recently and I decided that now would be a good time to start painting again. I've been working on comics during the day and painting at night. This is Acrylic on Masonite. I wanted to take some baby steps because so much time had passed from my last time slinging paint, and this piece taught me a ton. I can't wait to do more.

A couple of months ago I started a drawing intended as part of an inking lesson for my students. I started the drawing a little too late in the week to have it ready for Sunday's class so, I left it home and re-created the drawing in class and inked it on the spot. The idea with the drawing was to handle it three different ways and then ink it three different ways. The first would be very loose pencils, the second would be very tight pencils, and the third would be in the middle. One drawing would be inked with brush, one with crow-quill, and the third would be a mixture of the two. That at least was the idea. The drawing sat on my board for a period of time as I had other work that required my attention. when a gap opened up I decided to finish the drawing, but just as a single panel. I'd then ink the drawing for my own practice. For a long time I've felt my inks weren't quite up to where I wanted them and this would be a good chance to test myself and see if I could push my abilities a bit further then where they were. Here's the results of this test:

As a drawing I was extremely happy with the composition, figures, lettering, and the inking. Taking my time with this drawing really paid off in the level of quality that I perceive in my work. As I was drawing this I came up with an idea to continue the story of this panel to an entire page. The execution of that page would be handled the same way, with an eye towards maintaining a level of quality. Here are the results of that:

I am quite pleased with the results of this page as well. The composition of each panel is well executed, as well as the composition of the overall page. The level of quality and consistency stays equal throughout, which I am also very pleased with, especially on the last panel, 3/4 of which was completely re-drawn after a good call by my wife who mentioned that something was off with the panel. As I was finishing this page up, an idea for  a short story based around this page came into my head. I'll be working on that and posting pages when they are completed.

A million and a half years ago, when the internet was a young thing barely into its adolescence, I did a web-comic that I would post to my live journal, titled very appropriately, Stumped. Stumped was me having fun with doing single funny (at least to me they were funny, the jury never came back on whether or not they were funny to anyone else) comic strips. It was me learning how to tell a joke using my favorite medium, and on occasion I told them fairly well. I did a grand total of 6 Stumped comic strips, a lofty number back then and I had always planned to go back and do more of them as they were some of the most fun I've had putting pencil to paper and stylus to tablet. Life got in the way of me making any more Stumped comics, at least on a regular basis. My career of comic book artist went from speculative to actual and the free time with which I had in abundance suddenly vanished as I now had people paying me to do what I used to do to get out of doing any real work. 

Skip forward to the current day and age. The internet has left adolescence far behind. Live journal is still there, but the blog has, well, I don't have to tell you do I? In fact if you are still reading this I am completely surprised and flattered. Not so much because it is dull, but because it is far more than 140 characters. As for me, I'm married and careered, and still under deadline and spend a lot of time thinking about that funny strip that I used to do and how much I enjoyed it. This week I was low. I couldn't get my head unscrewed from my rectum and just needed something to make me laugh.  Leafing through an old sketchbook, I came across a page that had eight panels sketched out and found myself giggling. I put the deadlines aside just for a little while and spent time drawing for myself.  I humbly present the results here.

I of course showed it to my wife.  She is a PhD candidate and much smarter than I am, and in her wisdom said I should do more of these. And you know what, that feels right. Like I said she is much smarter than I am.  So expect this to be the first of what is hopefully many more attempts at me being funny, and if you have to blame someone, blame my wife. I'm not guaranteeing any kind of schedule, but I am going to do more of them.  Welcome to Stumped.