Tag Archives: drawing

Dragon Comics 73

2 Replies
Choose your friends wisely.

Choose your friends wisely.

This is part of the child mind, the beginner mind, to approach the task with a sense of innate wonder. Every time, there exists a moment of awe and a feeling of newness, a joy in the process and another at the outcome. It doesn’t matter what anyone outside of that experience thinks, and anyone inside the experience will witness it with the same breathe of amazement. What comes after, when the internal, made external, moves through the rest of the world, does not change these sensations.

What comes after, when the world passes judgement, has no impact on the artist or the creative process.

Another night when I started too late and my head has gone all swimmy such that the screen is blurry. Comic: that’s all.

Dragon Comics 61

Leave a reply
Seriously, read M'naghten. It's the only way to successfully plead the insanity defense. And read the DSM-V, so you can discuss antisocial personality disorder without resorting to false binaries.

Seriously, read M’naghten. It’s the only way to successfully plead the insanity defense. And read the DSM-V, so you can discuss antisocial personality disorder without resorting to false binaries.

I really like that butterfly, visually as well as psychologically. It’s based off one in the butterfly house at the Tucson Botanical Gardens, and there will be a more detailed version on a T-shirt, most definitely. The way Dragon creeps after it in panel 4 is pretty adorable as well. In real life, you can’t really follow a butterfly. You’re better off sitting very still and giving it the chance to to come to you. It helps if you wear bright colors.

That always reminds me of a coyote story, which explains why butterflies fly in such unpredictable zig zag patters. It’s because once, the butterflies played the same trick on coyote 3 times in a row without his noticing, and they can’t stop laughing about it to this day.

This butterfly could be on a mission though. It might have a purpose.

Dragon Comics 53

1 Reply
One thing I learned from drawing this comic is that owls IRL cannot wear big floppy hats without covering their entire faces. Through the magic of cartooning, the owl's floppy hat levitates about an inch over her head to allow for maximum visibility.

One thing I learned from drawing this comic is that owls IRL cannot wear big floppy hats without covering their entire faces. Through the magic of cartooning, the owl’s floppy hat levitates about an inch over her head to allow for maximum visibility.

Happy New Year!

Sometimes, scripting comics comes easily. Monday’s comic sprung, fully formed, into mind, every word in place. Today’s comic script came after a difficult labor, one panel at a time, with no sense as to the outcome. Even after panel 4 was completed, I spent hour staring at it looking for a punchline. The owl asking if this was better and the dragon concurring. The dragon stating that waiting was actually pretty nice if you knew how to do it. In the end, I’d like to believe that panel 4 is drawn with such palpable joy as to render words unnecessary. The reader can see that the situation has improved; no words are needed.

As the year winds down, it’s hard not to reflect. I quit my job at the beginning of 2014 and began drawing all the time. I started this blog and the QvD T-shirt shop. I sold a few T-shirts and a few copies of an embarrassing book whose authorship I don’t like to claim even though I totally wrote it. Finally, I’m living my life in a way that feels more or less authentic. According to the laws of the New Age, the money should follow, right?

Not that you go into the arts for the money, but it’s also nice to earn your keep.

QWERTYvsDvorak is going on winter break as of now. We’ll be back January 5 with new comics and drawings and T-shirts and hopefully a dragon hat. Have a great holiday!

3-Dimensional Dragon!

Leave a reply

One of the obstacles I must overcome as I learn to draw is that I personally lack almost any true form of depth perception. Most of my life, I’ve exhibited a condition known as strabismus exotropia; I am typically either seeing through my left eye or my right eye, but, as a general rule, not both eyes at the same time. Whereas most people receive stereo data from two points, which are combined by the brain into one three-dimensional picture, people with exotropia lack binocular vision and tend to perceive the world as being somewhat flat.

Although I wear rather extreme prism lenses for this condition, they only really work to a distance of a few feet, and then only rarely, when I’m well rested and looking intently at something in ideal lighting conditions. At the slightest hint of eye strain, one eye will bow out and let the other soldier on alone, only shouldering the burden when the other eye throws in the towel.

I get a lot of headaches.

More to the point, this means that I have to work extra hard to understand depth. Dimensionality takes a lot of extra effort.

In order to draw yesterday’s comic, I wanted some way to be certain that what I guessed Dragon’s front view would look like actually reflected what Dragon’s front view would look like. To that end, I made a 3-dimensional Dragon in Sculpey.

Look, Ma! No eyes!

Look, Ma! No eyes!

There’s the proof. No eyes.

I wanted this model for other reasons as well, to help me begin experimenting with dimensionality and perspective in this comic, so I could see Dragon from various angles and understand how the body would appear, and how the different parts might move.

Well, hello there, gorgeous!

Well, hello there, gorgeous!

This model is just under 3 inches high, which is fairly big for a baked clay model. In order to create a figure of this size that could stand alone on 2 legs, I needed to prop it up with a scaffolding (eventually, 3 unopened bars of Sculpey) as I was building it, and then offer it some extra support in the oven (provide by a small glass dish and a strategically placed knife and spoon).

Even so, Dragon does seem a bit off kilter, weaving to one side like a drunk college freshman walking into a big dance. Plus, those finger nails are off the hook; I gave up on keeping them straight long before Dragon got in the oven. I’m frankly amazed they’re still attached, considering how all the little details fell off my last set of Sculpey models. Although it’s easier to work with, in many ways, than real clay, it’s not as strong or sturdy.

Can I help you?

Can I help you?

I tried to make both sides a little different, but the way the figure settled in the oven pulled it lopsided anyway. Still, this should be an effective tool.

 

 

 

Dragon Comics 33

2 Replies

I suspected this would become a problem early on, no matter how great Dragon looks in profile.

Professional comic artists, people who draw better than I do but perhaps not quite as well as they’d like, typically maintain massive clip files of art, so that they always have references for whatever pose or setting they’d like to draw. Fine artists usually spend a lot of time with live models, again providing them with extensive data on which they can depend when sketching. At the very least, many artists make use of articulated wooden models, which help them understand how the human body is put together and able to move. Barring that, today, if you’ve got a good connection and basic Google-fu, there’s a decent chance that you can find a photographic example of whatever’s inside your mind, if what you want is a fairly common thing from a fairly ordinary perspective.

Even so, you can’t find everything. Certain angles are just not represented in GIS. For example, in Dragon Comic 29, panel 3, I knew that I wanted to draw The Man squatting as he picked Dragon, and I was easily able to find many visual examples of this pose online, but most of them were intended as instruction for athletes, and for educational purposes shot either straight on from the front, or slightly angled from the side. There weren’t as many direct shots from the side, which is what I needed, so I had to extrapolate. And even so, The Man still curves his back in a non-ergonomic fashion. I image that he straightened out before he began lifting, so as not to hurt himself. He’s bigger than Dragon, but Dragon’s no featherweight, either.

Sometimes, I take pictures of myself in certain poses to help me see how to draw them. The more comics I draw, the less I have to do this.

The thing I couldn’t imagine, or Google, or photograph, of course, was my main character’s head. I could guess how it might look straight on, but I couldn’t be certain because there’s no frame of reference and my relationship with perspective is tricky. When I had the idea for comic 33, I needed a way to double check that what existed in my mind made sense in the reality of the comic, which I will discuss in tomorrow’s post. Like the smashing of the fourth wall, I think this new technique in my arsenal will help add more dimension to what the rabbit correctly asserted is a rather two-dimensional set of illustrations.

 

 

 

Dragon Comics 31

1 Reply

This is something I’ve been looking forward to doing for weeks and weeks, almost since I started drawing Dragon Comics. Are you not amused?

In my defense, the rabbit is definitely getting cuter. And cut and paste is easier than trying to make the characters looks like the same characters every time.

In my defense, the rabbit is definitely getting cuter. And cut and paste is easier than trying to make the characters looks like the same characters every time.

More or less, I was basically able to recreate what appeared in my mind when the idea came to me, which is progress. Still not perfect, but the main idea is communicated by the illustration, I think. I’m fairly pleased with the shattered glass effect in panel 4. It could use some more work, but, once again, the witching hour is at hand and the terms of my agreement with myself say that the comic goes up, perfection be damned.

This kind of playing with meta perspective pleases me greatly, and it’s so well-suited to comics and cartoons. Probably the most extreme and well-known example of 4th wall breaking in animation would be the 1953 Chuck Jones Looney Tunes classic, “Duck Amuck,” in which the animator spends 7 minutes torturing Daffy Duck with inappropriate scenery changes, repeatedly erases him with a giant pencil wielded by an unseen hand, and, since this cartoon relies heavily on the viewer’s knowledge of trope, replaces an (open, functioning) parachute with an anvil. There’s always got to be an anvil. For an added bonus, the sketch ends by doubling the self-referential nature of the narrative while pushing it firmly back into place by revealing that the sadistic cartoonist is actually Bugs Bunny, screwing with his old nemesis Daffy. After establishing a refreshing commentary that reflects the separate world (reality) influencing the cartoon, the end sequence encloses the entire story back in the cartoon world.

I could never be so cruel to my characters who, as you may realize, represent my actual loved ones, none of whom have even tried to convince a hunter that it was Dragon season. I just like to play. In fact, as I get older, that kind of classic cartoon violence-for-the-sake-of-violence makes me more and more uncomfortable. Apparently, some of us become gentler with age. That kid of cartoon violence is funny. It’s just not fair. I would rather wait 3 seasons to watch Aang spend 8 minutes fighting Firelord  Ozai before defeating him with compassionate nonviolence than see any number of falling anvils. Don’t get me wrong; falling anvils are still hilarious. Epic storytelling is just more fun.

Please note that even after the fourth wall has been completely shattered, The Man goes right on breaking it. He’s funny like that.

 

It’s comically dragonalicious

Leave a reply

Frantically uploading blog pages while my horrible cat (not to be confused with the amusing cats in my comics–this cat is truly a trial) tries to sneak her little furry foot onto the keyboard. She’s sort of languid and lackadaisical about it, as if she either doesn’t notice she’s doing it, or somehow thinks that I won’t notice she’s doing it, even though I’ve removed her foot from the keyboard 20 times in 5 minutes. She knows very well what she’s doing. Now she’s purring atop a mountain of junk mail.

Good grief.

As an antidote to all that, here is a humorous dragon, whose sole purpose in life is allowing me to gratuitously use the word “flocculent.” Look it up.

img052

Capricorn, a flocculent dragon

Beyond dragons and mandalas, I’m at a bit of a crossroad here. I have tons of T-shirt ideas, but I’m spending 10 or 15 hours a week on the comics, and my tendonitis can’t take that much more time on the table. I’ve got about a month to get the shop in order for the holidays. I don’t want to give up anything. But I can’t do everything.

I may try cartooning with pencil and paper on vacation and see if I like the results. It might be a little faster, if less impressive and less colorful. Anyway, just going where the road takes me.

Quoth the Raven, “Shop My Store”

Leave a reply

I overheard Fox telling Otter, “Dragon draws these T-shirt designs but they’re all for girls so we can’t get any.” Gah! Gendered much? OK, fine. I drew this freaking raven, based on a photograph I took at the Grand Canyon. There is nothing girly about this raven with his weird punk rock mohawk head feathers, all right?

This raven is not interested in your problems.

This raven is not interested in your problems.

He’s all dark and brooding and mysterious and whatnot, sitting high above you, looking imperiously down like a king on his throne or something equally majestic.  Ravens are bigger than crows, and somehow more dignified, and they’re so dark that they seem to almost swallow the light into them.

Of all the designs I’ve done so far, this is the first one that really seems to look good on a cell phone case.

Mythologically speaking, Raven is the bringer of knowledge (in the form of light) to mankind; he literally steals what belongs to the gods in order to make it public domain. Raven is a friend to people, and a force to be reckoned with. If you’ve never gotten close up to one of these birds, you’ll be surprised at how large and sturdy they are, almost like raptors in their muscularity. They’re also, when they feel like it, extremely vocal. I believe they can be taught to mimic human speech, but even in their own tongue, you can get a conversation going. I’ve had long back and forth exchanges with chatty ravens, some of them rather far away. If you hear a raven, call back and pretty often it will answer you, even if you can’t see it.

Dragon Comics 13

2 Replies

Number 13: I’m feeling pretty lucky right now!

In reality, Fox explains that he can eat no more than 1 entire pizza pie and drink no more than 1 gallon of milk. This is purely comic exaggeration.

In reality, Fox explains that he can eat no more than 1 entire pizza pie and drink no more than 1 gallon of milk. This is purely comic exaggeration.

This week Dragon is moving into a deeper realm. There’s a couple weeks’ worth of story arc outlined as Dragon begins to ask the deep, penetrating questions. These are the thoughts that have, in the past, held me back and prevented me from devoting as much time to visual arts, or from feeling as if my ability translated into anything worthy of the hours devoted to it.

In conclusion, look at Fox’s mouth in the last panel! Look at those tiny little teeth! Tee hee. This page is best viewed at 125% or greater magnification, so zoom in if you can’t see. If you enjoy the adventures in Dragon’s cave, please like and share these links.

Substance is what you make of it

Leave a reply

Before the Wacom tablet, when I was just writing novels, an extra four hours a day working on the computer didn’t really affect my brain, because I touch type, fairly accurately, at around 70 words per minute, and didn’t have to actually look at the screen. When I first started learning digital painting, staring at the monitor for hours on end gave me constant headaches. Eventually, my eyes seemed to adjust to the strain (plus, as I improved my control over the stylus, I didn’t have to work on the pixel level with the screen 8 inches from my eyes.

I’m starting to wonder, though, if staying up all night on Photoshop is contributing to my insomnia. It’s been pretty bad for the last couple months.

That is my excuse for not having anything really pithy to say about art, beauty, creativity, or writing at this time.

I do however, have your weekly dose of mandala and fanciful dragon, all rolled into one!

This dragon looks like she would make a good friend.

Wyndolyn, a cheerful, airy dragon, looks like she would make a good friend. She would totally take you on magical rides to fantastic lands, or, if you were just looking for a sympathetic ear, would be willing to listen to all your problems. She would never even complain about the fact that she was born without arms or legs.

That is a good-looking dragon.

img043

This mandala was drawn for Rabbit, who, in addition to kale and organic carrots, is also fond of textiles and cottage industries associated with women. For example: quilt making. This design is based on common quilting designs. I have tried my hand at quilt making in the past, which resulted in 5 broken sewing needles and very lopsided, unsymmetrical blanket, which fell apart in a couple years. Rabbit made me a quilt once as a graduation present and the angles are brain-breakingly perfect. Some people just have talents and skills.

And that is a pretty mandala.

Honestly, I did have some pseudo-pithy words about art, but I put them all into next Monday’s comic, so no need for redundancy. All I need is regular sleep. Which I can’t have.