I started drawing comics about food and drink and the love between a hot dog and a ketchup bottle. This is one of them.
Hello blog friends! Since many of you are coming here from Becky and Frank’s Tiny Kitten Teeth, I thought I would post the guest comic I did for them a couple weeks back. I believe it’s been removed from the archives temporarily, so viola:
El Pelo Del Mar is a 19-page comic I completed at the very end of 2008. This is the first time I’ve put the whole thing online. Check out the rest of the comic below the cut.
If you want to see the comic in full screen, head over to my Flickr, and click the slideshow button on the top right of the screen.
Sketchbook prep-work for The Three Youths and the Fiery Furnace. I like that little flowery thing.
There’s an interesting discussion going on at the political cartoons community on Livejournal. Regarding these cartoons by Roman Genn:
A lot of people think they are racist, and while I do generally agree there are some questionable things about these drawings, the arguments deserve to be much subtler than RASCIST VS. NOT RASCIST. Here is my response:
“I drew theme park caricatures for several years, so I’m pretty familiar with the line one needs to be mindful of when dealing with race. My opinion is that in most cases, it really isn’t the caricaturist’s responsibility to be nice or sensitive. All an artist should worry about is getting a good likeness.
For the most part, it works itself out. Stereotypically racist features tend to take away from a good likeness, because they are drawn from preconceived notions about what a person looks like, and not what they actually look like.
In short, if an Asian woman has slanted eyes, then the artist has every right to exaggerate them, so long as they serve the likeness of the face.
With regard to those caricatures: proportion-wise, the first three are pretty brilliant, no one can deny this guy is a great draftsman.
I don’t have a problem with the Sotomayor cartoon, but the others give me pause. To use the Arafat cartoon as an example: The problem for me is that Arafat didn’t have teeth like that, the man had a full set of chompers. Why then did the artist choose to render his teeth in this way? I don’t know, but I think personal hatred is the most plausible answer, followed perhaps, by racism.
In the end though, I think it is far more useful to discuss these things as: good caricatures vs. bad caricatures, and not: racist vs. not racist. We can’t know the artist’s intention until he tells us himself.
So while aesthetically, these caricatures are impressive and pretty funny, there are some very puzzling (and subtle) design choices that give me pause.”
Page one of a six page story, SNEAK PREVIEW. I really like the color yellow.
El Pelo Del Mar page seven of nineteen. I’ll be posting the entire comic here soon. This page in particular is very special because it is in color. The comic is black and white, but I colored this page as an EXPERIMENT.
This is digitally colored using the Photoshop channels method, which I have come to love. When I was coloring in layers I would usually have at least a dozen layers in any given piece and I would spend tons of time just trying to find the right layer to color on. In channels that problem doesn’t exist, because it pretty much forces you to color on one layer.
Click me for large view!
This is a crocheted cactus. I made this thing about a year ago. The cactus itself is made out of a really nice Icelandic wool, using a modified curlicue stitch. The pot is a real pot that I wet felted around using red and orange wool. I also stuck some T-pins in it to make it prickly. I haven’t crocheted in a few months but I’m itching to do something new. Maybe another plant so it can have a friend? Any suggestions?
Close-Up!
With its family:
Oh it’s Hootenanny.
This was my first try drawing him. Why is Mewsli so hard to draw, but Hootenanny so easy? Answer me Becky!
