Tag Archives: dragon

Ensomnus, A Wide Awake Wyrm

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Someone read me a bedtime story? Please?

Per usual, the very idea that I have to be up early in the morning turns me into wide awake wyrm, no matter how tired I might actually be. In fact I’m to exhausted to even bust out the tablet and draw a Dragon Comics that’s already written. All I could draw was this armless, legless, wingless wyrm while doing 12 other things and thinking about 27 ways I could forget something important in the morning. Today was really another artistic bust. It took 3 hours to fold the laundry; that takes a good chunk out of a dragon’s day. And soul.

The next 3 weeks are going to be even more unpredictable and out-of-reality than last weekend was. Blog posts may be spotty.

Happy Halloween!

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Sadly, I will be eating sushi and watching Frankenstein with the Fox during trick or treat, so the children of our fair city will be missing out on this flaming pumpkin action this year. 

Behold! The Ultragorgon!

No, it isn’t a confused tribute to Stranger Things, but rather to something that actually happened in the ’80s: The Jim Henson Hour. In this episode, “Monster Maker,” a kid visits a puppet shop and sees this half-finished dragon puppet, the ultragorgon, which later comes to life and teaches him things (bad things, I seem to recollect). The ultragorgon is massive. In real life, it took 8 puppeteers to animate him. Looking back, I don’t really remember The Jim Henson Hour and seemed to recall this as being associated with his previous project, The Storyteller. Much like Jim Henson, that project was wonderful, and ended way too soon. The Jim Henson Hour wasn’t terribly successful, and the network pulled the plug on it instead of giving him a chance to get it right, and Henson died about a year later. But “Monster Maker,” as a stand alone story, is a lot of fun.

I loved the design of the dragon, and thought it could be adapted to other things, so I’ve had the picture for a while, and when I decided to make the most elaborate jack-o’-lantern I’ve ever made, I pulled it out. It’s not really an exact match or anything, but it did come out pretty interesting for a misshaped pumpkin with a face cut into it. The nose was originally more complex but I accidentally punched it out. Oh well. You always have to do the smaller details first. Once you’ve made big cuts, you don’t want to mess with what’s left or you can knock the pieces out. The eyes are nice, and the ridges at the top of the head and down the center of the face. You can’t really see the horns that wrap around the side The thing about pumpkin carving is that you only do it once a year. If we did it once a month I bet I’d be much better at it.

Tn the right you can also see the edges of the cat pumpkin that the Girl carved mostly by herself, after spending 45 minutes staring at her pumpkin and talking about what she wanted to carve. She accidentally punched her whole design out, so The Man had to pin it back in with toothpicks. You can also see a bit of the Boy’s “derp” pumpkin. I guess it was supposed to look goofy but actually it looks worried and scared. It reminds me of my paternal grandmother, whose catchphrase was, “Oy vey, I was so worried.”

Next year, I will allot myself more than 90 minutes to carve a pumpkin, and get better tools, and work in a spot that isn’t completely full of flies, and I will make the greatest dragon face pumpkin the world has ever seen.

Dragon Comics 143

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Of course, Monster Bomb (TM) is effective on demons, but the axe is more satisfying.

Normally, I don’t feel good about killing things. Once I smashed a cockroach shortly after hearing some Buddhist lecture about how every living creature is a reincarnation of your mother and it almost made me cry. But some things are disgusting to begin with and intolerable once they get inside of your home. Some things need to be dispatched with extreme prejudice. But I still don’t like doing it, which is why it’s nice to have The Man around, because he’s much more efficient and confident about exterminating vermin.

3 Polymer Clay Dragons Just Hanging Out

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Life is good, here on the edge of a discontinued Woodeye glass. 

I made these little guys a couple days ago, in the midst of the BJC project, on a night I couldn’t bear to pick up the Wacom tablet. Apparently, I don’t know as much about Sculpey as I thought I did, because the blue dragon’s wings fell off the minute it came out of the oven, and it doesn’t really stand by itself, even though it was totally designed to stand by itself. Maybe it’s a pendant that’s meant to hang by the loop in its tail. I had The Man glue its wings back on, because his hands are much steadier than mine. I don’t think I’ve ever crazy glued anything without also gluing my fingers together.

The braided dragon reminds me of Celtic knot work, and also, it’s a dragonicorn. A unidragon. He’s got a single green horn.

The third one is my little sigil I use. It’s a dragon, but it’s also a monogram. Sometimes I draw a little arrow at the end of its tail, and give it an open mouth, but you can see how it’s a dragon, and a cursive M, without the extra details.

Will make more tiny polymer clay dragons soon. I bought all these materials for myself for my birthday last year, and the Girl has used more of it than I have.

Dragon Comics 141

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I got so distracted I forgot I was too distracted to work.

What’s really funny about this is that The Man could no more ride a unicycle or juggle clubs than I could program a CMM machine or pass the real estate exam. However, he is excellent at providing distractions, and he was very distracting today.

The comics I’ve been drawing for the last 2 weeks have taken about 6 hours each, not counting rereading the stories and writing the first draft of the script, and I didn’t even start thinking that I might draw a comic today until 11 pm. And I definitely wasn’t feeling particularly serious. And the story that I was thinking about illustrating was personally serious.

Tomorrow I’ll be more focused. I actually don’t need a distraction.

Just Because We’re Inhuman Doesn’t Mean We Have to Be Inhumane

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Technically speaking, knight errant must be free-range by definition. 

Back when I was single, after the invention of the internet, but before newspapers seemed completely obsolete, I placed a personal ad in the local alternative rag, which included an anonymous voice mailbox where my suitors might woo me by recording spoken word messages, to be retrieved at my leisure. I ended up dating the glibbest of these guys for a year, and still talk to him occasionally, but most of the wooers failed to wow me with their woo. One of them failed really spectacularly.

His message began by saying that he was a vegetarian, which was actually fine with me. At the time, I was a vegetarian, too. But this guy was very passionate about his vegetarianism, to the point that his entire message was about how important it was to him that he never find himself in the vicinity of meat, and how disgusting meat was, and how he could never date someone who ate meat because the smell of it, the idea of it upon his lover’s lips, was overwhelmingly vile. He spent so long complaining about his distaste for meat and meat-eaters that the voice message cut him off in the middle of the sentence. Undeterred, he called back and continued his tirade for several minutes more.

Needless to say, he did not get the callback.

As to this comic, I just keep thinking of Temple Grandin saying, “Nature is cruel, but we don’t have to be.”

If I felt better I would have taken the shading further (like, but making the tower look cylindrical instead of 2-dimensional) but you can see I tried. I really tried.

 

3D Dragon Comics 3

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And if you mess that one up, just turn over a new leaf and try once more. 

Not much to say about this; been in a weird space but didn’t want to write more depressing comics. It’s more fun to play with your toys, sometimes. Dragons need to go on interior journeys. Dragons need to lay their burdens down and only carry magic. Dragons need some empty space. Dragons need to relax.

Dragon Comics 139

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First you go viral. Then the virus kills you.

If you’re asking someone to submit content to your website, and the very first thing that person says in their response is, “Before you go any further, is this a paying gig?” and it’s not a paying gig, then what you should say is, “Sorry, no.” What you should not do is send a poorly worded boilerplate description of your website that doesn’t answer the original question in a straightforward manner, and then, when the person whose favor you are asking reiterates that they need to understand whether or not you intend to compensate them for their work, get all bent out of shape and snarky about it. You’ve wasted their time by not just answering the question.

I’m lucky because I have The Man looking after me, and before that I had a very solid and well-paying corporate writing gig, but I know too many freelance writers getting shafted by a system that runs on their talent but devalues their skill.

Drawing a comic is better than getting riled up about it. So actually, I did profit from the exchange.

Dragon Comics 137

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Because I’m in a hot air balloon! Also, I’m not sorry. 

Turn everything on its side.

Let’s just say that Dragon cannot let anything bring Dragon down. Dragon needs to rise about the trolls. Dragon has buoyancy, and will continue to rise. Today I sold some more copies of my book, just a handful, and also some merchandise in my shop. I made $16, give or take, on my art. If I could do that every day, it would make a huge difference in my lifestyle.

Also, some self-styled art critics on Reddit told me my  book cover sucked, but, based on their non-critical criticism, I doubted they had any idea what they were talking about, and sure enough, today, an experience writer who has published MANY books and does not know me personally or have any reason to offer me false compliments, said my cover was great. So I think I will believe the non-anonymous, non-rude, successful person with visible credentials in the field versus the trolls hiding behind their troll mantles.

That’s why Dragon’s smiling in panel 4. Dragon can’t hear your negativity.

Proud Mama Dragon

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Usually I name my crayon dragons on the drawing. I think this one’s name is Kissa. Should have put her name into the flames, actually.

Wrote  a script for a comic that had been blooming in my mind for a few days and then started to second-guess myself and decided to check my sources, so to speak, before drawing it. Certain recent events weigh heavily. Anyway, I couldn’t have done justice to the subject matter in the time available.

Instead, I settled on something I used to do all the time, and haven’t done in a while: dragons in crayon. And still, you would not believe the tribulation. I wanted to sit on the floor, but had to adjust the lamp to shine on my workspace. But somehow, I knocked the lamp over, breaking the bulb. Fortunately, although it cracked and no longer emitted light, it stayed in basically one piece and was easy to remove.

Then I went to the closet and got another bulb, but it was so well-packaged that I had difficulty getting it out of the protective packaging. Eventually, I dismantled the entire box, but the bulb was still secured in the cardboard. So I gave it another tug, and it went flying across the floor, shattering into a million pieces. Now I had to get another bulb and install that just so I could see well enough to sweep and vacuum the broken glass in order to safely sit on the floor. Probably end up mad as a hatter anyway.

Finally, I was able to draw this majestic mother dragon guarding her precious egg atop a golden hoard. Classic.

Per usual, I would be eternally grateful if you considered supporting QWERTYvsDvorak by buying my book, supporting my Patreon, or ordering my merch.