Kid Logic III or Seriously, When Does School Start?

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In the next panel, the kid puts on winter pajamas, wraps herself in a quilt, and goes to sit in the stuffiest room in the house, and we’re back to the situation in Wednesday’s comic. It’s a vicious cycle. 

Whew! Better late than never. Part III in the continuing saga of children in the summertime. The temperature actually dropped almost 20 degrees since I had the idea for this comic, and it’s only in the 90s, but it’s getting humid. Soon the monsoon rains will come.

I wanted to draw and post this comic last night but it was really kind of a delirious day and I didn’t get to the computer until after 11, at which point I couldn’t focus on drawing, so I put it off and put it off. I wanted to have it up by 2 pm today, at least, but then the Fox wanted to buy us chicken and waffles and then go swimming and hang out and The Man wanted to talk and my parents called, la la la.  I’m supposed to be at the Misseses Kitty’s house in 4 minutes, which obviously isn’t happening either.

There are highs and lows, but ultimately, I have to admit that my life is pretty blessed. In terms of privilege, I’m probably in at least the top 10%. Things are going to be OK.

Kid Logic II, Simple Solutions to Complex Problems

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It’s like walking in a winter wonderland in June. With strawberries and organic greens.

Kid Logic, part 2, the sweatening. Pretty self-explanatory. This would have been the segue if I had done an 8-panel comic. The punchline didn’t come to me until after I had drawn the entire thing. Originally, it was just setting up the next part of the comic and less funny. Personally, I don’t like going into the walk-in fridge at Costco at all, but at least in the winter I’m dressed for it.

Today the heat backed off and it was only 103. They’re predicting the monsoon will start this week, 2 weeks ahead of the historical schedule and probably 3 weeks earlier than it’s been since I’ve lived here. We haven’t even turned on the air conditioner yet; we’re still on evaporative cooling, which you usually can’t use during monsoon conditions. Weird summer.

Kid Logic I, or Same Planet, Different Worlds

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I get chills just thinking about it. But that’s probably just this fan blowing over the sweat.

Originally, this was panel 1 of a much longer comic based entirely on actual things that the Girl did/said this week, but the day got out of hand and it would have been hubris to imagine that I could complete 8-panels in the time allotted, especially since I had already been to the Fox’s writing party and gotten 1500 words out.

The point is, it’s hot. Like, sick hot. Well up over 100 degrees hot. And despite the fact that they have lived here their entire lives, certain children seem constantly surprised by desert summers and repeatedly ill-equipped to deal with them, which is hilarious if you can remove yourself from the situation of being the person in charge of helping those children deal with them.

This hypothetical little person didn’t actually think that Frozen pajamas were cold; I suspect she was wearing them for more idiosyncratic reason, probably connected to a desire to wear all her clothes equally, in their turn, but she was wearing long sleeved flannel pajamas, and she did complain that she had trouble sleeping because she was too hot, and she does habitually wrap herself up in a warm blanket, regardless of the ambient air temperature. She also willfully fails to comprehend the use of evaporative cooling, despite the fact that we’ve explained it to her 100 times. Ergo, she never, ever considers opening her window, even when we tell her to open the window, meaning she is deliberately keeping her room 15 degrees hotter than the rest of the house. No matter how many times I outline the process by which she could end her suffering (wear less clothing, use less bedding, open the freaking window), she continues to act as a fully autonomous human, choosing to create an uncomfortably warm environment, and then complaining about it and ignoring any real solutions.

She did have her own solution, though. She got a fan and pointed it at her bed. So she could blow hot air at her heavy quilt and winter pajamas.

Stigma and Anthers

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Macrophotography of flowers on days equal parts scorching and windy in the high desert. Click here to embiggen.

One of the top shots from Sunday’s drive over Mount Graham. Been wanting to photograph this plant for a while: it’s the desert poppy, a showy white blossom that stands on a tall stalk and develops a thistle-like pod when the petals fall off. As I mentioned yesterday, they’re ubiquitous in the high desert, but I live in the low desert and only see them on road trips.

All day long I was thinking of various comics a person could draw about life, stuff about kids and summertime and introversion. Normal comic fodder. But my brain was on a short fuse all day, and just before dinner, when I went to get the mail and found we had received a single letter, from a medical facility threatening to send us to collections despite the fact that we made 3 separate attempts to pay the bill in the last 3 weeks and their billing department was apparently not competent enough to do something as complex as run a credit card or return a phone call, and my head basically exploded. I didn’t even make an effort after that; feeding the children took all my remaining willpower and I knew there was no chance of accomplishing anything else.

On the plus side, The Man fixed the problems I was having with the Wacom tablet/Photoshop for the last 3 months. I spend weeks with tech support working on the issue and never got anywhere close to figuring out the problem. The Man fixed it in 5 minutes. “Oh, CAD has that feature,” he said, once he understood the problem and considered possible solutions. He also fixed the scanner, which stopped working thanks to my implementing the aforementioned tech support’s unhelpful suggestions. So we’re back in business. If only the artist were competent to write and draw today.

The Fox invited me to a writing party tomorrow (yes, I know that’s a drawing party, but it’s a metaphor and the same basic concept). Maybe I can write and draw in the same day.

Hot Sun Rising Mandala

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Maybe it’s not the mandala that’s hot. Maybe it’s the state of Arizona. There is no way to tell the difference.

One thing’s for certain, and that is that it’s imperative to fix my scanner. Ever since I updated my OS, it doesn’t seem to like its own drivers that came with the device and were running fine before I started running Jackelope or Elephant-Bird, or whatever the heck they call this operating system. Puma. Adidas. No idea.

I got Comiconned out, or maybe I was just Phoenix-ed out. At any rate, I need to get out of the city and be someplace without other people, so The Man drove me the VERY long way home–as in, Phoenix is northeast of Tucson, but by the time we got to Tucson we were approaching it from the southwest. We turned a 2-hour drive into a 5-hour one, counting severals stops for me to tromp around the desert taking pictures of flowers and birds. Got some great shots, like this one of a red-tailed hawk leaping into the air. Finally had the macro lens and the elusive desert poppy in the same place at the same time, too. Well, the desert poppy actually isn’t elusive at all. It’s fairly ubiquitous in the spring and summer in certain parts of the state, but it tends to favor the high desert, and I tend to exist in the low desert, so this is the first time I’ve documented its fabulous insides. Will share soon.

I did have a good time at Comicon, but it was so huge and I didn’t have a good plan of attack and it was overwhelming. I met some really cool artists and writers, including the inimitable Phil Foglio (Girl Genius) along with Larry Welz (Cherry), along with some less famous dudes, most notably this guy Russ Kazmierczak, with whom I randomly got into a massive discussion about Alan Moore, the history of comics, and the deeper meaning of superheroes. He was so pleased with my conversation that he gave me his comic for free. He said it was because I saw graphic storytelling in the same way he did, and I’m going to believe that it was for that reason, and not because I was wearing a media badge.

ETA: WordPress just informed me that this is my 500th blog post at QWERTYvsDvorak. And all I got was this stupid virtual trophy. Plus a massive portfolio of ridiculous art.

If You Need to Stick Butterflies on Things

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Time for you to fly?

Yesterday’s comic had a positive reception, which is really all you can ask for. Today all I have is this sweet butterfly sticker, but who cares because we are going to Comicon! I got media passes for being a contributor to Panels.net, which means free media badges for me and my photographer’s assistant, aka The Man, and I got paid for the wedding shoot, which means, for the first time in my history of going to Comicon, I’m actually going to be able to buy comics.

Every year we say we’re going to cosplay but I never get it together. Mrs. Kitty thinks I should do Garnet from Steven Universe, which would be fun, but the character I’d most like to cosplay would be Agatha Heterodyne from Girl Genius. Alan Moore’s Promethea would also be a riot, but no one would know who I was. Or I could just be Poison Ivy like everyone else in the world. Except, no, I’ll just be wearing my Comic Book Legal Defense Funds T-shirts and probably skorts because this is Phoenix and it’s likely to be very hot and somewhat sticky.

As for the butterfly sticker, it is available in 4 sizes, from small to really rather large for a sticker, prices ranging between $2.40 and $14.00. You can check out the various options and acquire your own Blue Morpho Butterfly sticker (seriously, the extra large one is 14 inches across, pretty stunning) or some other product with the Blue Morpho Butterfly design, in my shop. I’m not sure why I haven’t sold more of these stickers; I’ve sold a ton of Blue Morpho Notecards. Anyone wanna show this sticker some love?

Return of the Helicopter Kids

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In case you’re wondering, the book in panel 1 is Fifty Shades of Gray. There is way better bdsm literature available to satisfy your prurient interest.

I wasn’t even going to draw a comic today, but then I wrote one by accident, and it seemed silly not to finish it. It’s fun to revisit certain ideas. Revenge of the Helicopter Kids from last year is still one of my favorite comics. Hopefully the sequel lives up to the original and stands the test of time. There are probably more of them in my head. But now my hand is all stiff and achy.

Banking fees are bull. I’m letting you hold all of my money, on which you are paying me basically no interest, something like .01%, but you’re loaning it out to other people–at 13%!–and then you’re going to slap me with a fee for automatic transfers to cover overdraft? You have the money. It’s right there. You’re not even doing anything; a computer is moving it. Why does that cost $13? Don’t even get me started on the number of times we’ve been assessed monthly fees just for having accounts. Accounts that we were told were free.

I don’t know about the drunk painting classes. I’ve never been to one, but I’m not much of a drinker and I don’t really care to paint the same thing as everyone else.

 

The Blink of an Eyelash

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If I were a character in a movie I would be very wary about opening this chamber.

I keep coming back to this image even though I’m not 100% happy with its clarity. I did sharpen it up a bit in Photoshop but there aren’t really any simple fixes. This is a flower I shot in San Francisco, but beyond that I know nothing about it, except that it looks like it’s full of eyelashes and I wish I knew how to get the entire thing more focused. There’s so much going on in this flower, but not all of it comes through in the photo.

(Click here for full sized, enlargeable version.)

It’s not perfect, but it’s still cool.

WordPress seems to be doing everything it can to prevent people from viewing my images at full size. It used to be that you could just click on them and get a version that could be viewed at high resolution in great detail. Then it changed so you had to right click and specifically tell it to open the image in a new tab. Then even the new tab seemed stuck at 680 pixels wide, but I could set the width to anything I wanted in the URL and then give that URL to people. But today, that trick failed and I just got “file not found.” For the full size version of an image I had uploaded 15 minutes earlier. And I know its exact size: 5184 pixels wide. But WordPress is just blithely pretending that I’m not being penalized for using too much bandwidth because people want to see full size versions. So I uploaded that one to imgur but it still doesn’t look like 5184 to me. Whatevs. What the hell do I know about art, right?

Delivered the wedding photos today; hope the brides think they’re worth the money they spend. The Man and I are exploring alternate income streams. Would be nice to get regular photo gigs, I think, even if having someone’s memories in your hands is a bit nerve-wracking. Two shoots a month would make a huge difference.

All the Colors of the Whine

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If you think that’s colorful, you should see all the purple prose I left out.

It’s weird how dialog is always full of swear words in my head. Like, it seems funnier when it contains f-bombs. But I edit them out anyway. If you depend on that kind of language for humor, you might start substituting shock for actually being funny. This is still cute when it’s rated G.

This comic was fun to draw. I had to go back and put little faces on all the natural wonders to anthropomorphize them. And then I had to write about it so I could use the word “anthropomorphize” in my blog.

Also, I really like the white test on a black background. I have an entire story I want to tell that way. Realizing that doing all the letters in all caps would increase readability.

Weird Wide Web Mandala

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Gonna be honest. It’s not my most coherent work.

Originally, we were planning to go camping over Memorial Day weekend, but then we realized we were invited to a wedding, and also that I was supposed to be the photographer for that wedding, so we did the wedding instead. I’ve heard some horror stories from the Vampire Bat about the trials and tribulations of being a wedding photographer, but the brides were pretty laid back about it, and the only one coming remotely close to freaking out about details was Mrs. Kitty, who was the wedding planner. It’s a little nerve-wracking, because wedding picture are a big deal to the people whose wedding it is and it would feel terrible to mess them up. And of course, my camera did jam a few times, probably due to the intense heat, so I was only able to get a single shot of their first kiss even though they were kissing for about 30 seconds. Plus, when I got home, the computer starting seizing up and I was terrified it was going to begin deleting photos (this has happened before) but after an hour of messing with it, things were set to rights. There were some pretty good shots. And I got paid. So all is well. Now I am eating leftover plantains (the wedding was potluck) and trying to think of a comic for tomorrow.

That was my third paying photography gig and people are starting to ask me if I am going to start a sideline business. On the one hand, money. On the other hand, every time you take a hobby you love and start exploiting your talent for money, you have one less hobby you love.