Tag Archives: ability

Dragon Comics 110

dragon comics 110_edited-1

I mean, there are options, but not if you’re constructed entirely of pixels and whimsy.

It’s half past midnight and I’m sitting in my car, parked outside of the public library, because Cox Cable is far more vested in sending me almost daily dead-paper communications trying to sell me cable for the TV I don’t own and long distance for the hard wired phone line that’s not connected to my house than they are in maintaining the Internet connection for which I pay them nearly $70 a month. They’re just a massive bunch of Cox over there. It’s incredibly frustrating, how often our Internets simply disappear for no reason–sometimes it’s for 15 minutes, sometimes it’s for 2 hours–and you know they never reimburse us for that lost time, even though you can be sure I’ll be hearing from them if I forget to pay the bill.

Anyway, the library Internet is slow–it took 5 minutes to upload that image–but functional. I’m pretty sure it’s not illegal to park outside the public library and hop on their network at night. This is certainly not as terrible as it was for me to actually use my key (I worked there in the 90s and had to open on Sundays) to go into the library at midnight to use the network and also sometimes to borrow VHS cassettes without checking them out. I probably would have lost my job if I got caught doing that. Probably the worst thing that could happen to me here is a cop telling me to move along.

Not to brag, but The Man and I had a pretty raucous weekend, with multiple pool parties, a vision quest in the desert, and dinner for 16 at a revolving sushi restaurant with no revolving sushi. It was basically nonstop from Thursday night until he went to bed, and even then he kept getting up and eventually ate half my waffles, so I didn’t get to work until after 11. This is my lame explanation for the low quality artwork today. However, the Owl wanted a Dragon Comic, so here it is.

Reaching

Everyone needs a little hand once in a while.

Everyone needs a little hand once in a while.

There seems to be a consensus among a certain group of artists that the measure of your ability can be found in the ease with which you draw realistic looking human hands. Drawing the comic has smoothed this skill over for me. (Yeah, I know the characters in the comic only have 4 fingers. But still.) Hands never seemed that great of a challenge to me–it’s face that give me trouble–and now my brain knows how to visualize the reproduce a variety of hand positions. If I can look at my own hand, or someone else’s hand, or a photo of a hand, then it always comes out right.

This is my left hand, which I did in digital paint as a tiny image a few weeks back. It took only a few minutes. Then I blew it up and smoothed it out just now, which only took another few minutes. Of course, I could have messed with it for 4 hours and made it look even more realistic. I probably could have messed with it for 18 hours and made it look like a some kind of uncanny volar valley, something that looked almost, but not quite, like a photograph. Wherein lies my problem: given enough time, I can draw anything. But then time becomes an issue. In 4 hours I could draw one perfect hand. Or one imperfect comic.

Lately life has been overwhelming and my brain doesn’t seem interested in drawing, or anything at all. It’ll probably pass. But producing new stuff seems just out of reach right now. I do have an article about censorship coming out today on Panels, but the link won’t be up for a few more hours, so I’ll post it later. There’s half a comics script on my desk, and with a little effort it could be a real comic by tomorrow.