No pneumonia

Went and had a chest x-ray today as my illness hasn't gotten much better. Everything was normal, so it seems I've just got one real nasty chest cold. I felt up enough to it to tackle the remaining panel for assignment two. Not the greatest panel on the page, but it's done. The lettering of the sound effect is horrible, but that's what computers are for nowadays, so I'm okay with that aspect. I'll be shipping this puppy off tomorrow and once I get comments back I'll post 'em and we can all have a good laugh. Okay, time for Day-Quil and a nap.

Last panel pencils

Again I went real loose on the drawing. Basic shapes and whatnot. Not really pleased with the gesture of the figure, but I'm done this assignment. It's taken me way too long and I really want to move on. Not the greatest position to be taking, but I gotta do what I gotta do. I'll ink it up tomorrow tonight as I'm beat and running a fever of 101.8 at the moment. Hopefully, I can break the fever tonight, if not I'll be inking tomorrow afternoon. Think it's a chest cold from all the smoke at the Ween concert Thursday. My lungs don't do well in those kinda situations. (Small venue with smoke machines and nicotine fiends.) The concert was excellent though. Hadn't seen Gener and Deaner since Atlanta and it was a welcome reunion of sorts.

Also saw CLOVERFIELD Friday. My first thoughts walking out weren't kind. I was looking for more information and closure, but as I mulled it over after talking to Mafus, it began to grow on me. Maybe it wasn't so bad that everything wasn't spelled out for us. Your mind gets to wander and come up with its own conclusions and horror stories. I'll definitely give it a second viewing, if not DVD purchase when it hits the shelves. I just wish Mafus had told me about some of the things to look for. Lousy...no good...rassin'...frassin'...

Took some shots of Lilah after we returned from brunch this afternoon. This one was my favorite. Can you guess what she's really doing at that moment?

Panel 3 inks

Okay, sat down last night and spent an hour and a half with this puppy. Had THE MONSTER CLUB on in the background and tore through this panel o' mine. Not the greatest, but fun nonetheless. I still will probably go in and add some slight texture to the bricks, but overall I'm ready to move on to the exploding fountain panel with our mysterious hooded figure recoiling from the mighty "KRUMPF!" (yes, that's the sound effect I have to letter in the panel) of the demolition. Should be easy (I hope). I've got plenty of reference via a Hitch page and an Igle page that both sport excellent explosions. (They're also inked by Neary and Stull respectively, too, which helps incredibly.)

Therapy for my bootleg knee starts today. My patella tendon is so tight that it's causing the kneecap to grow more bone where they attach. I've so far developed a spur and ridge, which cause a whole lotta discomfort after any exercise involving legwork. I'm also on Relafen during this treatment, which means no drinking. Ugh. As a Swede (get drunk, go sailing) and an Irishman (get drunk, well, you know) it'll be rough at first, but will pay off in the long run. Hope to have a very productive month as well as slimming.

Back to THE MONSTER CLUB...I haven't seen this flick since I was in the single digits. The camp feel still made it bearable to watch, but most of it was painful. Of course, as a youth it was great fun, especially the last story about the Humghouls, which is still my favorite. The stories also seemed a lot shorter than I remember. The Shadmock story was still unique, but the second story with Pleasance and the B-Squad seemed very out of place. A little too campy, whereas the other two tales actually had a macabre atmosphere. Still worth a Netflixing though.

Until next time, amigos.

PT UPDATE:
Therapy went well. It wasn't much since it was a first visit. Tomorrow's session will probably be more grueling. I even got homework exercises to do. The real good news was they've got their own treatment for inflammation/pain. Some kinda crazy device that forces the medication right to the source of the problem through my pores, taking away the risks of the systemic problems attributed to Relafen. So, it's good news that I don't have to worry about the myriad side effects associated with the drug, which were rather substantial. Plus, I can still have an occasional brew. (Gonna try to not imbibe regularly even with the good news.) Of course, I may end up taking the Relafen anyway as my knee is killing me today. I'm hoping it's just the cold weather affecting it.

Slow weekend, but some progress

I've found that trying to become an inker I've gotten to be a lazy penciler, as witnessed by the last panel here. The assignment is to draw a stone fountain in the courtyard of the castle with a mysterious figure approaching it. Not that tough. Don't know why it's taken me almost a year to draw it. At least it's drawn. Tonight I'll ink it and post it as an update.

In anticipation for our "snowstorm" Saturday I picked up a few trades since it was a lean week for my pull-box. Grabbed the last JLA of Mahnke and since I could find any FLASH trades by Kolins I decided to go with some Garth. In other words I grabbed PUNISHER: MOTHER RUSSIA. I've been slowly getting back into Castle's world ever since I picked up BARRACUDA. Goran didn't draw this trade, Doug Braithwaite(sp) did. His style looks familiar, but I can't place it. Sez he drew HULK, which may have been where I last saw his stylings. Excellent, gritty work. It was the one aspect that made me pick this particular book over the others on the shelf. Still have issues with the cover artist, Tim "I photograph my friends and then trace 'em" Bradstreet. Kinda Vanilla Ice, if you ask me.

Slow day

Nuthin' much going on today at the old office. Crappy weather. Had some snow earlier, which has turned to rain, which is supposedly turning to ice. This was about as exciting as it got. Tonight though I'll be penciling and posting some art for you.

Getting off me arse

All this talk about the Kubert correspondence course and the accompanying shame of my progress got me thinking. So's last night I dug out the unfinished assignment page and threw it on my drawing table. I'm still a little loopy due to some super antibiotics the doc gave me for a throat issue and got sent home from work. Figured that be a perfect time to start back up and the second panel on the page is rather simple. A long shot at night of a Scottish castle on a foggy moor. I'll try to ink it tonight, but we're having company this evening, so's I kinda doubt it. Tomorrow would be a safe bet, set your watch and warrant. Until next time.

UPDATE: Here's the rough inks for it. Still gonna go back and do lots of retouching, but I'm gonna wait until I'm off me antibiotics. Messing me up a bit still.

Stand back 10 ft. from your monitor...

...and this might actually look respectable. I did have fun with this page and thoroughly enjoyed shaking off the rust, but will admit I did get lazy in some areas. Mainly, I chose the wrong quill and kept going with it even though I knew I was shooting myself in the foot. And, like I said in an early post, I didn't darken the pencils up enough to fully see what lines I should be laying down. Kinda frustrating, but it's the learning process and they call it practice for a reason, right? Could I have done more clean up on it? Sure, but I'm tired of looking at this page for now ready to move on to the next one.

Stuck mainly to the old school tools with this. The brush, a 102 and the 512. Sure I probably could've done a better job by using markers, but I'm adhering to the roots I'm "supposedly" learning from my Kubert course. I say "supposedly" because I've slacked on my assignments and haven't turned one in in almost a year. (I hope to change that in the future though, if you're reading this Mr. Kubert. The fault's all mine.) Enough of my insecure artist psychobabble though. Here it is. I tried to go Sinnott in some areas and Leaf in others. Sometimes it worked, most times it didn't. The next one will be better though. That's all I can hope and expect.

Here are Byrne's original pencils:

Slightly as promised...

...here's a partial of the Demon page I've been inking by Uncle Byrnie. Still have a long way to go with it as witnessed by the "ink in" X's, weak lines and other smears that need attending to, but I promised to post something creative by Friday and the hour is nigh. Especially with the kid in bed and the wife looking to hang out with a comedy (Superbad) and a bottle of wine (and several bottles of beer). I made the mistake of not darkening the original pencil page in Photoshop before printing for the light-table and some of the line work didn't show through, making my job a little harder. Lessons learned and all that rot. Hopefully tomorrow, during naptime, I'll finish this brute and post the whole kit and kaboodle. If not, Sunday at the very latest. (I'll say Sunday as I'll probably won't be able to do clean-up on the page until then.) That said, enjoy your Friday nights, my friends.

UPDATE: Friday night didn't go as planned. Angie severely scalded her hand/finger Friday night and I came down Saturday with a throat thing. Needless to say we've swapped caring for each other. Almost done the page, but will still need another night for the fine tuning and clean up. Found that Sumi ink will melt and smear when used with a light table. There'll be plenty of white opaque on this sucka.

Worst lunch of the New Year

Things are a little slow at work this week so I thought I’d take a long lunch and do some work on my novella. I packed up my first draft and headed over to Chipotlé for a burrito. My first mistake was deciding to try something “new,” which meant steak instead of my usual chicken. Might as well have ordered a gristle burrito for what it was worth. Horrible, but I got my revenge by using a fat stack of napkins spitting out bits of fat. Kinda messed up my literary aspirations a bit, but I got back on track. My second mistake was in thinking I could get any writing done there. I swear I’m a magnet for the most deficient people. No matter where I sit, invariably, the most obnoxious of people locate themselves next to me and today was no different. Two college girls plop themselves at the table right next to me in a vacant seating area. (See what I mean by the magnet thing?) They then delve into the most vapid conversation I think I’ve ever heard at a volume normally reserved for rock concerts. Here’s a smattering of the thought provoking conversation that derailed my rewriting:

“So, like, nobody, like, likes her, ‘cuz she’s, like, a total tease.”

“Are you, like, serious?!”

“Totally. She was, like, at this party, like, New Year’s with, like, four guys.”

“Are you, like serious?!”

Obviously these young ladies were English majors. I hope that when Lilah grows up she doesn’t talk that way. Depressing to think such thoughts, but such is the life of a Dad.

In creative news...my Friday deadline for ear boxing will hopefully be met, but it might not be until late, late Friday night. Figured out I’ve been using the wrong quill. For some reason I was so focused on using the Hunt 102, which was frustrating me to no end last night with its unwillingness to lay down a line, that I forgot about my fave quill, the 512. Laid down as many lines in ten minutes this morning as I did in a couple hours last night. Ugh. Looking forward to diving back into the page this evening and hope to knock out the lion’s share of the remaining art tonight with fine tuning and clean up tomorrow.

"In brightest day...or year"

Figured we're already into the new year and I'm behind on my posts. (Hopefully everyone had a safe and enjoyable New Year Eve's, too.) Above is the wonderful ring Angie had made for me for Christmas. I haven't taken it off since, which accounts for all the scratches to it so far. I'll have to invest in polisher of some kind to keep it looking shiny and new. Needless to say I've also been saying the Green Lantern oath at strange hours of the day (and night). I was tempted to scan in the NEXTWAVE page that Mafus hooked me up with for X-Mas, but was both lazy and afraid I might do something to damage it. Mainly, I was lazy and that last bit is balderdash. Perhaps this evening, but I'm really hoping to polish off a DEMON page I started inking over the long holiday. The rust is still abundant on my inking skills but every now and then I feel a little of the magic come back. Hopefully '08 will be a better year creatively. If I haven't posted any art by Friday, you have permission to box my ear and steal my lollipop.


As it was a long weekend and I decided to grab a few trades along with my long list of singles. (Floppies, I believe is what the kids call 'em these days.) Originally I was looking for a trade of Uncle Byrnie's latest DEMON series, but switched it up as I had started watching Season One of JUSTICE LEAGUE UNLIMITED. Now I’ll openly admit I’m pretty ignorant on the DC side of the pullbox. I know all the big-hitters, but once you get outside the original pantheon I’m clueless, so I scanned all the DC trades, but couldn’t really decide on anything. Then this Mahnke cover caught my eye. I believe I even might have muttered, “Oh hell yeah.” Picked it up and gave it a flip through. “Awright, looks to be a solid amount of Mahnke’s art. Sold.” I then noticed that it was the second book of an arc and there was the first book right there on the shelf. All I can say is that I’m glad I got paid the day before. A very interesting story with great art to back it up. Well worth the price of admission and another stepping stone in coming back to some old friends at DC.