click to visit larger image Prototype for basic Grass Dog UBS pouch. Hangs off the upper corner of the back of your drawing board. From Grass Dog Studio

I need help with sewing the binding. Probably by using pins and an iron, I bet. Also, I need to figure out a more efficient set of stitches. But I've got a week and a half to do that. Should be enough time.

This prototype, however, is good enough that I can actually use it!

You will note that there is a new DR_SPIN up today! As well as three full pages of It's Easy at Grass Dog Studio.

Of course, you can get these delivered to your friends page through grassdogcomics.

Thanks!

So, today is a production day. By 5PM I intend to have accomplished the following:

1. Scanned and uploaded 2 issues of DR_SPIN, one of which updates today.
2. Inked, scanned and colored tomorrow's issue of It's Easy
3. Colored, lettered and uploaded tomorrows issue of Harmless Free Radicals!!!
4. Cut the pages for Friday's and next week's comics and get them ready to print on my dad's big printer.
5. Put more ink down on this awesome commission I'm working on.

But first, I'm going to do a little warm up exercise. Maybe I'll start by broadcasting that.

Today, I'm scheduled to finish inking a page of It's Easy. I'm about to start broadcasting that at 3:05pm today. In a minute or so!

You can view it here:

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/the-fenworks

click to visit larger image Tree in a style similar to Mercer Mayer's From Grass Dog Studio

I still don't know how to get the coloring done right. I'm rushing it for now, and not really trying, but there needs to be some kind of texture (the kind you'd expect from charcoal and the kind you'd expect from watercolor kind of faintly mixed together). I expect I should just watercolor this stuff, but for various reasons I'd like to do my coloring on the computer.

( Oh, but hey! Look what I found! )

And just like that, in one day's work, I've got a little bit of a buffer again!

I'm not going to keep posting here about It's Easy absolutely every time it updates, so if you'd like to follow it via LiveJournal, I suggest either subscribing to grassdogcomics for the weekly one page update or to sirregmusic for the daily feed! If you subscribe to grassdogcomics, you'll also get my other comic projects. If you subscribe to sirregmusic you'll also get the occasional update about the actual band, Sir Reginold Cosgrove and His Nighttime Singers, like show times and cd releases!

I hope that maybe tomorrow I'll feel like writing more about The Adventures of DR_SPIN, but that kind of depends on whether or not I do anything new with it, I guess.

It may be a little early to be asking this question of either of these comics, but I've been getting scant little feedback for either of them and I'd like to know if I'm on the right track. It occurs to me that polls seem to get pretty quick and fairly honest responses around here.

Poll #1385271 New Comics
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 16

Do you like my new comic It's Easy?

Do you like my new comic Adventures of DR_SPIN?

Grass Dog Studio is one of those businesses that never needs to go out of business, but it ain't exactly in business right now, either. Although I've got a couple of jobs I'm working on, I'm in a market that is over saturated with independent designers at a time when work is more scarce than ever. And even though I'm well positioned to stand out among the rest of the amateurs, the established designers aren't really threatened by my expertise at the moment. Businesses need artists who are reliable more than anything right now, and they've got a proven track record. I don't.

Needless to say, I'm working on all of that, and given time I see myself up there in the ranks. Perhaps.

But I don't have that time any more. Without going into unimportant details, our household is facing a hit to our income and I need a day job.

I've been looking for a new day job since before I got laid off at the Indy (I suspected it was coming). But it hasn't been official.

I've got one prospect now for a well paying, but very tempory job with the government, but I have no idea if I'll end up getting it.

It seems like now, when almost any local job opening has 100 applicants within the first three days, a simple resume just isn't going to cut it. So I'm making this clear: I'll take just about anything.

Full time, part time, overtime, service, food, sales, manufacturing, etc.

If you know of a job in the greater Whatcom County area that I should apply for, please let me know!

And good luck on your own endeavors!

And, unless something dramatically bad happens, the comics will continue.

click to view larger image

It looks like there will be 18 pieces in the show. 9 of them will be available as large prints, five of them are only available by purchasing the comic book, and five are not for sale. The last one (not pictured here) has 2" by 3.5" prints available for free! Some of you already have one.

To sell my posters properly, I should probably have ordered 50 18" long 2" white shipping tubes. I need 10 of them for this show, plus any extras I might need if I over sell.

An order of 50 comes to about $36 if I get them directly from U-Line.

An order of 10 comes to about $25 if I get them from Kinkos.

I'd like to have 10 of them by Monday (today or tomorrow if possible).

Anybody got any leads on any deals out there?

Shrink wrap tubing would also work in a pinch (and may be better for a show anyway). And I already own a gun for shrinking it.

Thanks!

More and more, it's looking like I won't have everything I wanted put together for my art show. I've got a long wish list.

But it is going to be complete! From the looks of it (and I am keeping my fingers crossed here), I'll have prominent contact information, things of various prices to purchase and walk away with, possibly some press, the largest list of invitees I've had yet, and presence in a gallery walk to boot! Oh, and a release form all filled out and ready to hand to Teri at the Drop.

Also, I've got enough pieces to seriously cram those walls with art, and more stippling than is right or healthy.

NOTE

Things I need to finish before I go to bed Friday night (whenever that ends up being):

1. Print, trim and frame all of my art.
2. Finish next week's HFR *
3. Layout and print all the labels for the art.
4. Fill out release form
5. Print 5 copies of "Previously! On Harmless Free Radicals!" *
6. Design and print cover for "Previously!" *
7. Dig out post card printer
8. Set up post cards for printing on Saturday *

Most of this stuff is really easy, actually. Some of it will be ridiculously time consuming, however. And I've got that dental appointment at 9:30 in the morning. Typically, my face won't stop being numb until 4pm, and I'll want to sleep. The more I can do while on my back with my laptop, the better, most likely.

* These can and will be put off, and/or may not happen.

I'm not really ready for the week to be over. But here's what I've got to get done today so that I can sleep over the weekend:

1. Finish some comic panels
2. Work on my commissions
3. Lay out the next Harmless Free Radicals book (to be published on my laser printer)
4. Program a PHP day planner script for myself

So, while running around downtown doing various bits of business, I stopped by a couple of tattoo shops and had them critique this while we talked shop:


click for larger image

I got two totally different styles of critique, and two totally different takes on the industry. I mean, like polar opposites.

I'll relate more, later, when I have a better idea of what I'm talking about.

But it looks like I might have a new place to hang out downtown for drawing and writing when I want to make room at the Drop after my hour and a half there.

This may result in some interesting things. No promises yet, but lots of promise.

Stephanie, this is part of my research for your project!


Edit: Tattoo parlor C suggested that I drop almost all of the lines from it, and even get rid of the flames, just using a flame colored background (totally new school), and they were very positive and helpful. Tattoo parlor H was stand offish at first, then cautioned me about designing stuff when I haven't been a customer before let alone a tattoo artist, then cheerfully told me it needed more blood, like a severed hand holding the ball. Also, Tattoo parlor H loved it the way it was and said they could easily do it well (totally old school). I'm actually likely to have a good and growing relationship with both places and I look forward to building that!

click to visit larger image Symbolic Coffee Cup From Grass Dog Studio

That's my warm up drawing for the day. The original is for sale, just click on the cup to buy it if you like. No prints, so there's only one!

I now have a whole mess of posters available for sale on my site!

I've got a few more old designs I need to dig up. Nothing a trip to my dad's computer (where the original files are stored in one place for printing) won't fix.

My drawing, of course.

Let us first get out of the way that I will always need to work on my hands. I can draw good hands. But I can't always draw good hands. I cheat a lot. Hands have nearly an infinite number of shapes, given how posable they are and that basically there are an infinite number of angles you can view them from (because of infinitesimals). I will always need to work on my hands. Let's move on.


Foreshortened circles

I really like the drawing I did yesterday, it is cute and honest and true to its intent and I have no trouble selling it, but...

It highlights something that, like hands, I can draw well but not often. Cups. I draw a lot of cups. I do so because they are symbolic of a lifestyle that is at least a little absurd and definitely worth commenting on. And I do so because I need the practice!

Now, I mostly have trouble with cups, or rather the foreshortened circles that make up a cup, when I'm inking them. When I'm penciling I don't seem to have as much trouble. I think this is because when I'm penciling them, I can erase and redraw the lines until they look right. I could use whiteout while inking to have the same effect, and I shall one day do so.

However, I'd really like to to find some sort of tool or trick or method to draw a perfectly foreshortened circle in the mean time. I'm thinking I need to use Google for this one.


The Tree

My current favorite project is a commission that involves the illustration of a tree. It's going to be an ash tree and drawn rather large. It's likely to be viewed only occasionally at a full distance, but usually the viewer will catch glimpses of portions of it. So while it has to be strong as a composition, every detail is important.

For dynamic purposes, I intend to draw it as if the nearest lower branches are touchable by the observer. But I'd still like the viewer to be able to see every portion of the tree, from roots to top-most leaf, so it can't be too fish-eyed.

Fortunately, I've seen a photo that is pretty close to what I'm looking for, and I think I know where to find it. However, I don't want this to be a copy of the photo. Every branch of the tree is going to be appropriately placed to the best of my ability.

It will be an exercise in abstract aesthetics as much as it will be in inking details.

This is where foreshortened circles come in.

I'm going to draw the tree from back to front (well, actually I'll be starting with the center, but I'll go back and the come forward). But I'll need to plan out the rough aspects of the whole thing before I do that. Once I get the central trunk worked out, I'll need to sketch in some reasonable decent foreshortened circles to act as guides for the outermost edges of the tree.

All of this is part of why it is my favorite project! It sounds like fun to me.


Other Projects

Things I'm not really thinking about but cannot forget are a drawing of an eagle holding baseball equipment, a caricature of a friend for his business, and several WoW character sketches.


Coming up

My next post will be sketches of these things.

So, my dad's printer is borked. It's having a problem with its ink. Either some of it is empty and the printer doesn't realize it, or the nozzles have dried, or the problem is even worse than that. It's probably dried nozzles. We haven't been using it much.

It's really a good think I tried printing today, because I'm going to need the printer by the end of the month if I'm to hang my show! Or I'll need to take my prints to Copies Now.

But this does put a crimp in fullfilling any orders I might get between now and then.

Well, I just spent the lion's share of the day updating the blogs I'm responsible for and putting this meager page together:

http://www.grassdogstudio.com/thumbs.php?comic_id=10

It's a listing of all the 16" by 20" prints that are available, and it's not complete. I have to give most of those posters PayPal buttons, so people can buy them. And I should probably include some sort of explanation as to what it's about.

Actually, what that page really is is a basic thumbnail page for flipping through an entire category of my archives. Not something I want to encourage, but it is definitely needed sometimes. So it's going to get a link from somewhere in my webpages, but I haven't figured out just where quite yet.

Most of the work, however, was in prepping the 14 pieces of artwork I needed to add to the posters category.

Anyway, I did this because one of the emails I got this morning requested it and it was something I've been meaning to do for a while.

I've got some drawing to do, and some email correspondence, as you can see if you check my todo list. Some of that stuff is just going to have to wait until tomorrow.

My god, I'm actually busy. Really damn busy!

I just received my order of 80 sheets of 16" x 20" paper! It's stuff called Cougar Natural, and I'm told that it makes excellent drawing paper. I know I do love it for the printing.

Anyway, most of my frames are 16x20, so what this means is that I can do a bad ass drawing and just frame it, all ready for a show! Also, I can draw a whole comic spread on one page (and scan it using Keffy's scanner - or reduce it on a copier). It'll take two scans but each page can be scanned whole. And for getting scans of whole pieces, I can use my camera and lights (because I'll only be doing that for my portfolio, not production).

Now, all I have to do is get a whole bunch of other shit out of the way so I can sit down and start drawing!