Lumberjacks and Jills

It never rains but it pours around here, where posts are concerned. Above is an illo for the McGill Reporter I hope was published yesterday. The usual Freudian stuff going on!

Montreal Monthly Comic Jam

I've got a new toy, a digital camera, so it's not always going to be sketches up here. It'll be pictures of my friends and my cats, that sort of thing. Actually, it will still be sketches most of the time. But I took the camera to last Wednesday's Montreal Monthly Comic Jam, and took a few snaps. Sorry, I just went around my table. There were two other tables of people busily drawing, who are missing from here. But they can be found here.




This is Jesse Bochner's friend Megan, and I. Megan's doing her best Tintin impersonation. I'm without my long hair or beard.



People can request to have these taken down. This is Sully 'enjoying' a Schwartz's smoked meat sandwich. I thought he was vegetarian, somehow.



This is Jesse, "Young Adonis" himself. Check his web comic!

Now I'm just being artsy:




Max (Salgood Sam) will soon be doing a podcasting thing on his blog, interviewing people such as Sully about cartooning and things. Good luck, Max!

TV Reporter

Here's a glamourous TV reporter, who's pretty, but looks a little scary in her new "punk" style. I don't know who that is with her. Some tuxedo guy. I drew this while watching the Canadian election results.


I did another McGill illustration, which I will put up when the paper comes out, later in the week. Busy boy again, after a long Christmas hiatus. "Hiatus" is quite a word! It sounds like a 1920s-era dance craze, or a disease you can catch.

More digital drawing

It's not going to replace watercolour, but it's an interesting medium. Just like ink or anything else, with this detailed kind of idea you can work for as long as you want, thinking of things to add.

Wacom Tablet

Bought a new toy. A graphics tablet. This is actually worked up from a sketch of two guys at the blog meeting earlier this month. It's of course too busy and worked, and crude besides, but fun to have a new medium. And now, of course, I've put it up again, after doing a couple more changes. Plus the girl's head below. Not stellar work, but fun to try, though I think I'm going crazy looking at the computer screen so close.

Guys

Wish I had Photo Shop on this little computer. Now the big computer doesn't have internet, and my pretty schemes for getting pictures from it to here have all come to nought.

Irving Layton Remembered.

http://irvinglayton.blogspot.com/

I just remember that crazy poem about the Bull Calf. Ouch for the Bull Calf!

Kitchen Queen

Bought a big block of watercolour paper for the new year, but haven't actually been painting watercolours a lot, lately. The unfortunate thing is that I have to relearn the "touch," and the first few paintings are crummy, unless you luck into something.

The problem with this paper is that it's pretty big, and so the larger the paper, the more prone you are to making mistakes. I can cut it in half of course, and it's not bad paper. Also, I don't mind doing one or two bum pictures, if I can get into it, and make the rest not so bad. It's a challenge to me with something large to fill in the entire picture area, with a colour scheme that works, not to mention drawing and a subject that I like. Also, no horrible errors. Watercolour is still a real high wire act, unless you plan obsessively, which I don't like to do. (and even then, you can mess it up)

This present picture I sort of abandoned, but it doesn't look too bad. A little rough in finish, which in part is due to the paper. But that's me, I'm rough, even when I'm trying to be meticulous.

I hope this post's not all not so shorthanded that nobody else can understand it. I went to the Montreal Blogger's monthly get together last Wednesday, and they thought I should write about personal things, such as my cutting my hair and shaving off the beard (my mouth looks much smaller now, and my lips look like little naked worms that twitch a lot. I haven't seen my chin for 4 years, and am worried now about incipient jowls.)

Now, see? That's why I don't write about personal stuff here. Not to mention my work, though that's gotten interesting. It's still going to be sketches, and the occasional observation based on them. I could be doing smart things such as putting up links which will increase my traffic, but instead I've got all these rules I'm trying to stick with as to my blogging practice (not planning posts out in advance), so I suppose I'm staying with those.