dosomecats

[dosomecats]

Goodbye and Hello

2019/05/30  Moved back to the ancestral home, ahhhh, the heat!  The humidity!  Really I’m not kidding I love it but, anyway, to commemorate the event and to get away from the inadvertently sexual connotations of the current title I’m starting up a new blog, Drawing Tallahassee -- 

See you there!

John

[dosomecats]

One of Twenty-Four

2018/10/06  Liberty Station Comikaze.

Twenty-four Hour Comic Day!  Is a dumb idea.  But, I’m supportive!  So I stopped by on hour 22 to support, and mock a little.  I had intended to come with baby-vs-skull stamps and do 24 pages of comics in as many minutes -- BAM! BAM! BAM! DONE! -- but that would be mean and besides which aligning the stamp body parts into well-fitted figures is much more fiddly than I anticipated.  Instead I did the levitating baldy thing above, which is just the one page but done in much less than an hour so by extension I totally aced the challenge.  After panel 3, vertical zoom, there should be an empty one, just the horizon line, or maybe two of them and THEN the surprise close-up HAH!

[dosomecats]

Phone-checking, Brain-sucking

2018/10/05  85C

Unintended knock-on effect of anti-straw environmentalism, without disposable plastic ones everyone will carry their own, non-disposable, lifetime-approved, of case-hardened steel.  Every tool demands its use, leading to an inevitable spree of skull-piercing and brain-sucking.  They say it extends life, clears the pores, hones aesthetic appreciation.  It doesn’t, of course, don’t be silly.  But just on the off chance...

[dosomecats]

More Fairy Tale

2018/10/02  Coffee Bean?

Here the Old Peasant Woman composes an ode for the upcoming Toastmasters dinner while Volcano Gnomes, hair high and morals low (volcano visible in background) sneak up, perfidy no doubt in mind.

And then there’s this Disgruntled Man Bear and the woman has done or will do him some favor and in return he gorily disposes of the Volcano Gnomes and is her date for the dinner and everybody applauds if they know what’s good for them.

The End.

[dosomecats]

Slowing the Wheel by Biting

2018/10/04

Yeesh, okay, lot of stuff happening in the non-tumbler world -- who cares, right?!? but even so I am gonna slow the posts down to once a day.  Three is just too much, doesn’t allow time to produce a carefully-curated experience -- specifically the text that goes along with.

[dosomecats]

Two-handed

2018/10/02  Coffee Bean

Doing fill-in blacks with the brush after linework with pen.  Pen sucks for solid blacks so if I want to go full-on Eisner this is necessary even if, for some weird reason, it feels wrong.  Still fascinated with the hunched-over guy.  Aside from the fucked-up spine the poor bastard is also some kind of crazy -- muttering, rituals, occasional bursts of cursing -- and not terribly kempt, but seems not entirely homeless?  Although, I guess, with physical and mental disability maybe there is *some* kind of shelter system here?  Or enough assistance that he can afford a place?  Or even with his difficulties he still manages to eke out an existence sleeping rough?  So many questions!  And a couple weeks back the place was packed so I had to take one of the side tables, and happened to be one behind his.  He was playing some clip on his phone, just the sound, someone cursing angrily, about breaking heads.  Sound quality was bad, couldn’t make out the words, but definitely Hollywood, some kind of crusty cranky character expressing probably-impotent rage, so, role model maybe.

[dosomecats]

Fish God is Merciful

2018/10/01  KFL

Or just full.

[dosomecats]

Getting the Sin Out

2018/09/30  Lestat’s

Should have been “Here I GO!”, as it is it sounds dirty.

[dosomecats]

Finger Action

2018/09/28?  Home?

So, with ink salvaging is a thing, and you can only add, so a couple blotches and what started out to be a guy stretching his lips out into a smile turns into him ripping his eyes out.  But that’s cool, right, it implies a narrative.

And yeah, gotta work on meshed hands. 

[dosomecats]

Dragonfly Reference 2

2018/09/27 Coffee Bean

[dosomecats]

Dragonfly Reference 1

2018/09/27  Coffee Bean

I agree, in general photo reference sucks, but for close-up dragonfly work it’s essential, those are top-of-the-pyramid predators man and though tiny are super-fast and maneuverable and highly territorial maybe they see their reflection in your eyeball and rip out your retinas before they realize their mistake and your dragonfly is one of your more sincere insects but apologies no matter how heartfelt won’t matter then will they.

[dosomecats]

Weaponizing

2018/09/23  Home

First, a print of the uncut block, as seen previously on this very site.

Once cut they’re a pain to use, little rubbery bits, inky fingers, need a handle!  But a handle for each takes up too much space, would require a special carrying case, foam cut-outs, yeesh, so folded and glued a handle out of heavy cardstock (remnants from sketchbook covers) and stuck magnetic tape on the business end and the backs of each of the stamps. 

Here we have the handle in construction, glued and trussed for drying.  Started with a single strip of the mag tape but you need continuous pressure across the entire back to print evenly, and then more magnetic power so the stamp doesn’t adhere to the paper when you lift it up (especially if you’re using a brayer with thick paint instead of a stamp pad) so I later added the mag tape across the entire back of handle and stamps.

The handle loaded up and ready to stamp skulls.

Or ribcages as required.

And the whole rig, handle and skeleton fits in a ziplock(tm) bag.

[dosomecats]

Baby and Skeleton 3

2018/09/27  West City Campus printmaking class

Skeleton progressively assembles bodies from surrounding bones, making skeletal figures, human, animal, mechanical, each one scattered by baby-attack, spin that out however long.

But finally baby itself is disassembled in some joint massive sound-effect-obscured explosion, resulting in the cute little head tumbling happily along.

And finally, there is reconciliation, and happiness and skull/baby love.  Kids!  Don’t do drugs!

[dosomecats]

Baby and Skeleton 2

2018/09/27  West City Campus, printmaking class

Pretty typical slapstick chase thing.

There’s a pile of bones, minding it’s own business --

And then the baby comes and does all kinds of awful tricks to the skull, kicking, dribbling, drumming on it with its own femurs, and the skull, startled awake, protests ineffectually.

[dosomecats]

Baby vs. Skull 1

2018/09/27  West City Campus, Printmaking Class

More stamp mania.  Skeleton needs a friend, so, baby bits stamp design.  Different requirements for baby limbs, I can make more bits, upper arm left and right, lower arm left and right, etc or I can go for less articulation, head, torso, four limbs, but each one upper and lower, with hand attached, dunno.  Anyway, also a word balloon open on both sides, tails to be added with ink after.  Added a left foot, figured that would be easy, just stamp the right foot on the SpeedyCarve, then cut around the blacks, BUT, I put too much ink, and didn’t let it dry so there was smearing, ick!  Just free-handed it, much quicker. 

Anyway, here we have our protagonists, the baby still in design phase and the skeleton, now with left AND right feet.  Probably the limb bones could be shorter, three-head figure is a good size, and giving it greater height by gaps between bones looks better than squashing it by making them overlap.

[dosomecats]

Wash is hard.

2018/09/27  UCSD Geisel, Audrey’s

Eh!  Stiff figures sloppy wash!  BAD John.

[dosomecats]

Rancho Penasquito Lean

2018/09/24 Rancho Penasquito.  Bad Ass Coffee and Saigon Grill.

Up to Rancho Penasquito for a meet-and-greet, left early to beat the rush hour traffic and to sample the local shopping plaza fare.  Customer ink-and-wash at the coffee place, eh, more fun at Saigon Grill, good food, recommended, plus it’s across the way from a gym, lots of manly men grunting at their machines, or standing by their machines, or sitting quietly on their machines, in rapt contemplation of the universe, or maybe a hamstring pull.  This was the first of the day, very stiff, and attention fragmented by the bbq pork sandwich and the rare beef plate, mm!  Good food undercuts good sketching.  Worth it.