Kid Sketch

Healthy Cartooning

I try to draw several servings of fruits and vegetables each day.

CTE

Girl Sketch - Animation Style

Sketches

Sketch

Pencil Sketch

Working on the car

I messed this up when I laid in the watercolor, but here's the b&w version.

Tornado

This is the pencil of another painting for the picture book. It seems it's become my goal to try to make each page remarkable. Easier said than done, but the more fun I have with it, the closer I come.

Sketch

A pencil sketch.

Sketch

This is something in a bit of a different style. Doing some experimenting.

Mystic Woods Sketch

I'm doing some more work on Mystic Woods this week in hopes of developing it as a junior graphic novel. This was drawn in Sketchbook Pro. The little guy's name is Boo.

Today I spent time working with the kids on their cursive lettering, and then to make things a little more interesting we did some calligraphy. They really pick things up quickly.

Penciled one Sunday strip and began another. I ran out of caffeine-free Mountain Dew and had to drink the hard stuff. The new Mountain Dew logo sucks! It is one of the worst I have ever seen. What happened to all the great logo designers? They've been replaced with people who fiddle around in Illustrator and never sit down with pencil and paper, using good design principles. Even my 9-year-old son thinks it's awful, without any prompting.

Talked with a really nice newspaper publisher today who said their readers are enjoying Grubbs. It's nice to have actual contact with newspaper people.

Just finished reading Steve Canyon book 2, 1948. Milton Caniff was a genius. I've never seen better storytelling, and its awesome seeing his art at its peak. He was so heavy with the brush, at least 50% of the space in his strips was black. A little too heavy at times, but mostly to good effect. It's almost as if he was painting with ink rather than drawing. Highly recommend it.

It's been a challenge keeping my basement studio warm. It takes two space heaters on the coldest days. I don't mind it being cool that much except it is harder to draw with cold fingers. I have some animator gloves but just can't draw with 'em. Last winter I was doing a lot of work on my tablet PC, so I worked upstairs more, and anyways, the computer is a source of warmth. Good in winter, bad in summer.

I got a little disgusted yesterday reading about a company that is laying off thousands of workers, and upon making that announcement, its stock price rose considerably. It's hard to tell which companies are really hurting and which ones are taking advantage of the economic climate to expedite cutbacks.

Burn Notice is back on. I love that show.

Mystic Woods - In the Garden

Superboy Redux

If Michelangelo was a comic book artist.

Resting Elephant

Couldn't sleep, so I decided to play around with Sketchbook Pro on my Cintiq a little bit more. I'm still loving the pencil tool, it's fantastic.

Mystic Woods

I am attempting to create some comic books that are for beginner readers, but who are older than the age for which most early reader books are made. There are millions of kids and teens who are

The Princess of the Woods and her best friend, Boo.

at a low reading level, for various reasons. Comic books can be a great resource, and finally we are seeing some folks out there making comics for kids again... Great cartoonists like Scott Sava (The Dreamland Chronicles), Andy Runton (Owly), Art Baltazar (Patrick the Wolf Boy), and others.

My intention is also to adapt these books for children with autism. People with autism can have difficulty with the way words are grouped into word balloons, and I plan to address that issue in these books.

Here is a sketch of the characters from one of the books.

Faun Sketch

Pencil, ink and watercolor on 140 lb. Aqvarelle Arches, hot pressed paper, 9" x 12"

Obama: Lay off my wife

The Tennessee GOP stooped to dirty politics by posting a video on YouTube, questioning Michelle Obama's patriotism. Says Barack, "Lay off my wife."

Ya gotta defend your lady.

Manga Supergirl

This drawing and the preceding ones are part of an effort to update the ol' portfolio with illustrations of older kids. I don't know if this pic of Supergirl is manga necessarily, but it has a hint of it.

Manga seems to be mostly in the eyes. I've seen stuff that is supposedly manga but is nothing more than the usual superhero stuff with big eyes that seem out of place. The only other strong visual characteristic of manga I can identify is Catholic school mini-skirts.

There is a strong, important stylistic aspect of manga that seems to originate with Osamu Tezuka's Astro Boy, which I was familiar with as a kid back in the seventies. There's a nice dynamic of foreshortening, line economy, and the odd melding of cutesiness with semi-realistic violence. When done well it works great. I would like to see more originality in style, though, than copycatting.

Spelling Bee

My nine-year-old son made it to Third Place in his first Spelling Bee! I'm awful proud of him.

Stitches

Somebody had to go get stitches today. Five, I believe. I'll verify the number another day. Not today.