Sticks and Thorns Mandala

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It’s a prickly situation

I had intended to post 2 comedic drawings of teddy bears tonight, but I was offered the opportunity of a free sitting with a sought-after photographer, one who usually charges a decent amount of money for people who don’t fit his perfect profile in terms of the models he wants to shoot, and nobody has ever mistaken me for a professional model, so in the interest of feeding my midlife crisis, I decided to do that instead of work, and now it’s after midnight and there’s no time or headspace to finish my weird teddy bears, so here, have a mandala.

This is a very desert-y one, all spiky with wild grasses and dry thorny twigs. It appears flammable. Some of the grasses are probably non-native invasives, whose presence tend to change the character of the desert, and make it more susceptible to uncontrollable wildfire. Usually, they’re pretty prevalent at this point in the season, but it’s been the wettest spring I can remember around here and there’s still plenty of green to choke out the brown.

Dragon Comics 103

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Yellow and blue make green, red and yellow make orange...

Yellow and blue make green, red and yellow make orange…

We used to have a concept book about color when we were kids, one with transparent pages that stacked up to reveal different colored animals. There were a bunch of creatures, all in different colors; the ones you saw depended on which pages you looked at and also which direction you looked. That always fascinated me. So that’s a basic visual gag.

This comic is also about The Man’s remarkable ability to fall asleep at any time, anywhere. I have seen him fall asleep in the space of 45 seconds. I have seen him sleep with small children sitting on top of him. I have seen him sleep on the ground. I have seen him fall sleep even though he’s only been up a few hours and slept 8 hours the night before. His happy ability to nap inspires insane jealousy in me, the chronic insomniac.

Anyway, It’s been a couple weeks since I’ve drawn a comic but it was fun to get back.

Color Correction in Photoshop

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I am not going to tell you how to color correct images in Photoshop, because my knowledge is insufficient for instruction purposes. Just starting out: I’m just feeling my way and going about it in a rather haphazard manner. A couple weeks back, my friend the Vampire Bat saw a picture I took of a hummingbird and color corrected it, and the difference is sort of amazing, so we talked for 30 seconds about it and I was inspired. I took a slightly less awesome hummingbird picture last week and decided to give it a shot. After I finished, I did a more subtle correction on a picture of an Arizona cardinal.

Brightening Birds in Adobe Photoshop

Brightening Birds in Adobe Photoshop; originals on left, color corrections on right.

To my eye, the hummingbird might be a bit too bright and the cardinal could be brighter, but they both definitely look better than the originals. I shifted everything blue-green in the first picture, but I only changed the color of the bird in the second.

I also enjoyed practicing that tiny bit of digital calligraphy, which I tried one time when I first got the tablet and then forgot all about as I struggled to figure out how Photoshop worked. Since most people use that program more for the color correction and less for drawing horrible webcomics, I was really feeling my way and probably not learning things in the same order as other people.

The Man also required some brightening.

The Man also required some brightening.

Here you can see some sort of over-the-top work I did for The Man, who wanted some professional head shots. I made a few mistakes, including causing the tree to look sort of unrealistic, but he liked it well enough to use it. It’s interesting to see what details pop out; I definitely have many sky photos that could use this treatment. Not sure what to do about his skin, though. For this image, I selected the sky first, played with that, then selected the inverse and worked with that section.

Anyway, like I said, I couldn’t exactly tell you what I did to achieve these results. It was sort of random button pushing, but I think I’m learning.

Summertime and the Cuttin’ is Easy Bulletin Board

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Summer sunset bulletin board

Summer sunset bulletin board

It’s the last week of school for Arizona kids, at least the ones attending TUSD and Amphi, and I put together this dazzling summer sunset bulletin board to send them off (and for the summer staff and camp kids to enjoy). Up until about 90 seconds before I started making it, I had no idea what I was going to do.

This one took 2 days; the first day I just put up the background. There was nobody else around and I had a couple hours, so I thought I’d attempt a rainbow sunset. If I were to do this again, I think I might try to cut all the layers of paper at the same time. It felt a bit lopsided to me. For whatever reason, the school doesn’t stock purple butcher paper, so I had to tape a few pieces of construction paper together to do that layer, and it was harder to work with.

Day 1: just the sky, mountains, and sun

Day 1: just the sky, mountains, and sun

The next day I sketched out the cactus and the birds on black paper and cut it all out as a single piece, mostly using scissors, but getting the scalpel in there for some of the fiddly bits. I used my wedding invitations as a reference. A designer put the image together for me from a few pictures; this was before I knew Photoshop, or I probably would have done it myself and been even more impressed with the result, but we were pretty happy to get invitations that more or less looked the way we wanted.

Detail from our wedding invitations.

Detail from our wedding invitations.

The next day I sketched out the cactus and the birds on black paper and cut it all out as a single piece, mostly using scissors, but getting the scalpel in there for some of the fiddly bits.

I used my wedding invitations as a reference. A designer put the image together for me from a few pictures; this was before I knew Photoshop, or I probably would have done it myself and been even more impressed with the result, but we were pretty happy to get invitations that more or less looked the way we wanted.

Anyway, the silhouette was simple to draw; the hardest part was actually making out the pencil marks on black paper so I could accurately see what I was cutting. It all came out nicely and actually took a lot less time than many of the less complex bulletin boards take, about 4 hours max, although part of that is because there isn’t any text on this one. As per usual when the bulletin board is cactus themed, I used a lot of staples for spines, and also to keep the thing in place. It needs to be extra durable to last through the monsoon.

The silhouette.

The silhouette.

Last I did the stars, which would have been a lot easier had the principal not kicked me out of the library so she could hold an interview there, because it was super windy in the breezeway and I spend half my time chasing bits of paper around, but in the end it seems to have worked out pretty well.

Dragon Comics 102

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In reality, no force in Equestria could have compelled Spike to return those birthday presents.

In reality, no force in Equestria could have compelled Spike to return those birthday presents.

This sequence amused me to no end. I’m hoping for another 3-strip inspiration over the weekend, but if it doesn’t come I might take some days off from blogging next week to get caught up on some writing projects, specifically a couple longform book reviews for the Best Children’s Books website and a couple of comic book articles for Panels. Plus, I’d like to start another big project I’ve been wanting to do for a couple years. I’ve set a deadline for myself on this one, so there’s a good chance that it will actually come together. Especially now that I’m learning Photoshop, ideas that seemed really complicated to execute feel much more manageable. Everything erases in Photoshop, and when you put things in the wrong place, you can just pick them up and move them. I wouldn’t even have to sketch out a separate rough draft.

Pretty in Punk Mandala

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My love is amorphous, like a single celled organism dropped in a vat of acid.

My love is amorphous, like a single celled organism dropped in a vat of acid.

What’s black and red and pink and spiky and full of love? This lopsided septagonal mandala which potentially looks like a Hot Topic exploding over an Orange Julius stand at the mall. It appears to be comprised of equal parts death, hearts, and sugar. It looks sharp. It will probably cut you if you try to pick it up. And it’s probably ornery, too. I bet the tips break off in your hand and you have to dig them out with a sterilized sewing needle.

On a wholly unrelated note, if you like webcomics and/or binge-reading, and you haven’t already, why not head over to Panels and check out my new article about webcomics you can read straight through, beginning to end, online?

Dragon Comics 101

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Because seriously I will know if so much as a single cup is removed! And just because I'm feeling super-nerdy, that was NOT an LotR reference. My guess is that Tolkein was undoubtedly foreshadowing Oakenshield's death by referencing the act that led to Beowulf's death in the Old English epic of the same name, which predates The Hobbit by roughly 1000 years. Nerd cred!

Because seriously I will know if so much as a single cup is removed! And just because I’m feeling super-nerdy, that was NOT an LotR reference. My guess is that Tolkein was undoubtedly foreshadowing Oakenshield’s death by referencing the act that led to Beowulf’s death in the Old English epic of the same name, which predates The Hobbit by roughly 1000 years. Nerd cred!

While the comic Fox would naturally be the one who couldn’t understand why Dragon wouldn’t buy chicken and waffles if Dragon had the capital to do so, the real life Fox and I share similar views on cash: it is a thing you acquire. It is not a thing that you dispense of without great forethought.

The majority of people don’t sit down and puzzle out their opinions on how to establish wealth once they finish high school (although I imagine that the few people who do this manage to succeed in acquiring wealth). Rather, we inherit our attitudes about money from our parents. If our parents live on credit, we’re more likely to function under the assumption that borrowing is the best way to get what we want, and that we deserve to get what we want, and we deserve to get it right away. If our parents teach us to spend what we have when we get it, we’re not likely to think about future finances or consider why saving is a good option. If our parents exhibit extreme frugality, we learn to be suspicious of conspicuous consumption and to stack rather than spend.

I started working when I was 11; my parents almost never gave me cash, so when I did buy frivolous stuff, it was always balanced by the knowledge of how much time it had taken me to earn that stuff. My own parents didn’t make large purchases lightly or buy useless things, ever. Their tastes were never influenced by fashion or indeed the possibility of upgrading. My dad bought an Apple IIe in 1980 and I’m pretty sure he was still using that machine when I graduated high school more than a decade later. He still has the same stereo–the same speakers–in the same entertainment center–he acquired in 1987.

Admittedly, there’s a part of me that really really REALLY wants to upgrade my 4-year-old MacBook Air, but I can’t justify it. This one works fine; I don’t really have any income. Even though I could easily finance a $1,099 computer out of my savings, or with my excellent credit, rationally it’s a terrible decision, and I would never make it, even though I really really REALLY want a new computer. (The new ones have better batteries! And yes, I recognize that I could have a non-Mac laptop for 1/3 the cost, but then we’re in an entirely different discussion about money and possessions and why we make certain decisions.) Because there are just better things to do with $1,099, including leaving it in the bank, and I don’t have an immediate plan for raising another $1,099. Ergo, buying a computer is short-sighted.

And that’s the secret to how I’ve been able to spend so much of my life focused on art: I don’t spend money. During the 6 years I made bank as the Lead Copywriter for an international Internet company, I did get used to having discretionary income and being able to get whatever I wanted, but it didn’t change my overall attitude toward money. (Toward the end it did make me realize that the more money I had, the more money I needed, and the less joy I felt in that money.)

If I had a hoard, my attitude wouldn’t change. I’d fix the house, pay off the mortgage, travel more, and yes, get a 2015 Air. But I would probably still buy my clothes at Target and drive my mom’s old Honda. It’s just a matter of figuring out what’s important to you.

Something to Squawk about…

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This T-shirt has the pre-school seal of approval.

This T-shirt has the pre-school seal of approval..

Another satisfied customer models the Punk Rock Raven kids’ T-shirt size 7 in green.

My thoughts on the magnificent corvid being well-documented, there is not much more to say about this shirt other than it’s adorable, almost as adorable as this kid. Especially adorable on this kid.

I took another stab at using Photoshop to color correct an image today. It didn’t come out bad, except that somehow I managed to make a tree in the background look completely fake, and by the time I even noticed, it was too late to undo it, so I had to go down to the pixels and fix it up by hand. As this was only my second attempt, we can call it a qualified success. Will continue to learn.

Dragon Comics 100!

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And the next thing you know you're lying at the bottom of a lake with a black arrow sticking through your chest and there's 5 armies shoving each other around your front yard, and nobody wants that.

And fifteen minutes later you’re lying at the bottom of a lake with a black arrow sticking through your chest and there’s 5 armies shoving each other around your front yard, and nobody wants that.

I’ve published 100 4-panel webcomics! That means I get to recycle this panel:

Ooohh...cake...

Ooohh…really old recycled cake… 

It’s even more relevant now than it was the first time around, because the snake is well and truly vanquished.

For a while it seemed like I should end this experiment with a big bang on the 100th comic, but it seems like there are other places to go with Dragon. At the same time, there are a bunch of other projects that are calling my name, too. So the best course of action seems to be that I will work on whatever I feel like when I feel like it: do some Dragon, but not as much, work on old projects, and start new project. There will probably come a point in the near future when I’m not drawing Dragon Comics 3 times a week or updating this blog 5 times, but I’m not going to stop entirely, either.

One of the other projects I intend to get going this year is going to be a big one, something a lot more serious and considered than what I’ve been working on this some, something that will hopefully interest an audience outside my friends and family and the few people who have randomly stumbled upon and then managed to appreciated my casual late night humor. Believe me, I appreciate you guys too. But badly drawn comics, however amusing to me, are not my final aim, and some of these panels take a couple hours. I want to do something in a very different style, something that’s more story and character driven than a webcomic, and more lovely and detail oriented than this artwork.

I’ll probably take a vacation from QvD in the near future, but I’ve already got a couple more comics scripted as well as a super-cute photograph of a little kid wearing my merch, in addition to a scanned mandala, so this week will be business as usual.