Gimmie all those hats!

Most definitely, I have the greatest friends in the world. I know, I know, EVERYONE has the greatest friends in the world, but... well.... So do I, is the point. Here's an example of why:

I was talking to my friend Ren about when we should get together and paint something because our schedules were kind of misaligned. When it turned out that she had Saturday available, I said "Yeah, I can do Saturday. I just have to meet this wedding planner and work some stuff out with her."

This was the point at which Ren lost her shit in the most glorious of ways.

"WEDDING PLANNER?!??! OH MY GOSH, DID BILLY PROPOSE?!?!? YESSSSSSSSSS!!!!! I'VE BEEN PLANNING YOUR BACHELORETTE PARTY FOREVER!!!!! IT'S GOING TO BE AT THE REN FAIRE!!!! COMPLETE WITH STRIPPER KNIGHTS!!!! I WANT TO KNOW IF IT'S EVEN POSSIBLE TO STRIP OUT OF SHINING ARMOR!!!!!! OH EM GEEEEEE" At which point I think she started foaming at the mouth, and I could not stop myself from laughing. I mean, really? Stripper knights? I must admit, once she brought up the physical complications of gettin' your groove on while in full plate armor I, too, became morbidly curious as to its doability.... But gettin' assaulted by somebody else's junk just ain't my style. Still, absolutely HILARIOUS.

Apparently, though, I had forgotten to mention that I'd started working with a wedding planner as her graphic designer/assistant. Whoopsies. Here's a sample of what I've been doing for Terri over at Wedding Fairytales:



Very suddenly, I have become the go-to gal for event invitations... Which I'm totally cool with, actually. ESPECIALLY wedding ones, because I jump at any chance to sneak hearts into my work.



In other news! I've decided to take on a lottttttt of different projects. On top of working on The Many Faces of Mister Bubb, I've started a cooking blog called Biscuits-n-Crazy, and begun work on a card game! (The concept of which I'll share once I've sorted out enough images. I've already got almost a hundred ready! Whoo!)

As always, dear reader, I hope you're having an amazing day. However! If you find yourself feeling a bit down, here's a clip of the Jim Henson puppet stage show (Called Stuffed and Unstrung) that... if it comes to your town, you should IMMEDIATELY buy tickets for. I promise you, you'll love it.

Welcome to the world of tomorrow!!!

'Allo blokes and blokettes! It's been a refreshing sort of holiday-time for me, given that I took a full and total week off from work and life and ran away to the strange and mystical country of "New Jersey" to learn the secrets of Christmas! Oh, what a glorious time was had by all.... except for the bit towards the end where I got the flu and then had to go back to work and life and reality and long for the days of freedom. Ah, freedom. Anywho! I finished the comic the week before Christmas and sent it off to the publisher, so I'll keep you lot updated on when that'll be available for public consumption. In the meantime, here's something I couldn't share with you before because it was a gift for someone!



Sadly, the other things I made either weren't photographed [the Cut the Rope-based ornament I made for Billy and the series of portraits I made for Brandi and Jimmy], or haven't been given to their owners AND haven't been photographed [the painting I made for my youngest sister, Nanners.] So hopefully, some day, I'll have photos of those and be able to share them with you lot.

In other news, I've been watching a lottttttttttttttt of Doctor Who lately and have officially decided that David Tennant is like, totally, like, the cooooooooolest doctor of them all. The companion he's currently got as far as my viewing goes is Donna, and to date I think that his best pairing was with Rose. Now, Rose was RUBBISH when Christopher Eccleston was The Doctor, but she hit her stride once Tennant came on the scene and their on-screen chemistry was amazing! The companions he's had since Rose [Martha Jones and Donna Knoble] have been great characters with great attributes and quite a lot of spunk, but they haven't really felt as genuine to me as the connection he and Rose ended up having. Then again, I'm only on the Agatha Cristie episode with Donna, and I'm fast beginning to like her... enthusiasm and cleverness. Also her no-nonsense attitude towards some of the things they come up against, and her confidence. I like to see daring and confidence in the companions.

Anywho! I've been playing around with the idea of doing some Doctor Who art, as well as some fairytale-based art and have sketches of the latter already prepared and ready to go... But I may decide to give that all up and go ahead writing about fire trucks. This story's been a long time coming, and I never really thought about telling it but now I've thought of it I can't really help but want to see if I can let it grow. There's a whole lot of future out there and I'm looking forward to seeing it!

I went to the Ren Faire yesterday!

Heya chumps and chumpettes! It's been a long, winding month here in crazytown and I've finally had a chance to check in!

This half of the year is always kind of hectic for me, because in addition to all them fancy 'give everybody ALL THE GIFTS' holidays that are now, about 3/4 of my friends have their birthdays between September and December. Oh no!!! My lovely, wonderful, gorgeous, amazing, and absurdly loving friend Ren's birthday was last month, and I sadly did not have any money to buy her anything. That's not to say that I normally buy people things in the first place [What artist DOESN'T make at least 2/3 of the gifts they give?], but I had an idea of something to purchase this time around and was kind of disappointed that I had to default to handmade. So anyway! This year, I made her an inked [and later mounted] drawing of her Pathfinder character, Ehalania, and her... Pet? Fuzzy-Wuzzums. I shit you not, that's what she named her character's tiger. We have some AMAZING adventures together every Sunday and I felt like this was an entirely appropriate gift, especially given that I was going to give it to her right after one of our Pathfinder sessions anyway.



That week, I was reeeeeeally craving some deep-inking, but I haven't done anything with extreme shadows in quite a while. I figured if I pulled it off, she'd win a fun and unexpected piece! And if not, well.... Then I at least got to experiment. I feel like I could have done a bunch more detailing and played around with texture and dry-brushing, but Ren loved it so... Who cares! This was fun for me to make, and it gave me some great ideas for whenever I get around to making a picture of my own character.

As a little bonus, I'm feeling generous [and a bit guilty for not having posted for quite some time] and have elected to share a very rough beginning stage of the coloring of the first page of Little Red Men, a forthcoming comic written by the talented Sam Verrall and illustrated by the dead-sexy... Me.



This page has a lonnnnnnnnng way to go until it's finished, but I'm having fun messin' around with it and trying to decide on the best way to create the warm, reflective lighting from the fireplace. Gosh though, this comic looks like it's about creepy aliens that wear wigs according to that last panel. ... I kinda like it.

This weekend, I'll be taking a break from the comic [probably] to help the infamous Brandi make some paintings for her brand new office!... And celebrate Billy's Mom's Birthday! .... And his god-sister's birthday!!! [See, told you there were a lot of birthdays right now. My roomate's birthday is in like... two weeks and I'm still not done her gift yet, either!]. I've actually really missed painting and I'm suuuuuper excited to bust out the ol' staple gun when I stretch the canvas. Hopefully we finish the paintings quickly and I get to photograph them and share!

Don't tell your mom!

There isn't a preview here, certainly! I would NEVER dream of giving off a few crude sketches from random panels of the comic I'm working on to give you guys a taste of how it's coming along. Why, I object to your accusations! I am a standup citizen of the artistic community and I would certainly not abuse my powers of illustration to share some here-and-there bits that won't make sense all jumbled and out of context anyway! Gawrsh. Just what kind of dame do you think I am?

But speaking of previews, this certainly isn't one.



Now that we've got that out of the way though, I feel like I can get on with my business. Which is certainly not taking a nap during my lunch break, if that was what you were thinking. Because it's not. It's something else.

Goin' a bit batty. Har har har.

Howdy, y'all! So, I'm taking the weekend off from working on the comic to hang out in Jersey and celebrate father's day with Billy's family! I'm super excited to get a move on the cooking that Brandi and I are going to do for the Sunday BBQ [The Gluten-Free kid and Vegetarian kid are going to do some cooking for Glutenized meat-eaters?!!? Oh noooooooooo!!!!!] because we always have awesome food adventures and, this time, we're going to be playing board games and watching Dr.Who simultaneously! How jealous are you?

So obviously, there are going to be some awesome treats getting pumped out for Billy's family this weekend, but what do I have for you? Well, I'm glad you asked! First, and most excitingly, I have one COUNT IT, one actual finalized and finished.... panel... for the comic!



The way this panel came about was that one day, during my character-sketching bonanza, I got fed up with fiddling about poses and turning heads and designing chairs and just wanted to draw! ...But it doesn't really make sense to draw just whatever the heck while I've got this awesome project to pull from and decided to take one of the more striking images that Sam, the writer, specified in the script. It was originally just something I was doing because I wanted to keep sane and because I wanted to procrastinate while still being able to claim productivity but... I ended up going all out. Luckily, this particular panel was written to be a sort of inset panel on the page, so it doesn't matter that I made it completely separately from a fully-realized page. I'm pretty pumped about the way this came out, and Sam went super crazy over it, too!

Also, here's some stuff that I did for work that didn't make the cut!



This piece WAS going to be the cover of a brochure for this Summer's newest polish collection but, unfortunately, they decided to just not do a brochure at all! This project was a lotttt of fun to do and I was glad they let me try it out riiiight up until they decided not to go with it. Le sad. This is a common theme though becaaaaaaause....



this one is ALSO not being used. The rejection of these two designs was particularly heartbreaking to me because, obviously, they are fully-realized... I had a lot of fun working on the projects so I guess I shouldn't be sad about them. Plus, I got to take home the props from the second one and am tooooootally going to add them to my studio at home. I forgot how much I loved painting with actual paint until I did that UFO! Even though it was done with acrylic [my LEAST favorite paint] and with an eh quality brand of paints, it was just... fun!

You know what else is fun, though? Making your own guacamole! ... Which I'm going to do right.... NOW.

Progress!

Howdy! And welcome to the post in which I give you some very vague previews and slightly-related character sketches! Above you will find Dr. Can't-be-bothered-to-look-up-his-first-name-right-now Freeborn... Mostly. The colored one, while more entertaining, is not the final version that I'll be going with. However, the floating heads on the second image ARE! Huzzah! Freeborn is the hero of our... unique... tale. Well, I wouldn't really call him a 'hero' so much as 'a guy the story follows.' Nonetheless, he's a rather interesting chap! How is he interesting? Well, he is in no way related to an octopus, for one. And he has not been reported as wearing an ice cream cone as a hat for another. Also, he seems to be particularly poor at winning bets but excellent at drinking to the point that bets start flowing freely. Only some of that is relevant to the tale, really.




This chap is, for all intensive purposes, about as important in the story as Freeborn is. Interestingly, he doesn't actually have a name! He's listed in the script simply as "Guide" which is certainly his duty in the comic. Personally, I think he's a bit of a dumb-head, as you may well notice from the little side notes surrounding him. I'm not going to reveal what all that's about quite yet, but I gotta tell ya... As stories go, this one is bizzarrrrre. It involves an old myth that is all kinds of super-kooky and makes for one incredibly interesting story. It involves Australia, fig trees, and the color red quite heavily. OH NO, WHAT EVER DOES THAT ALL ADD UP TO?!?!?! No, seriously, you probably don't know. It's a very obscure myth but I honestly love the heck out of the tale that Sam, the writer, has made of it. Stay tuned for more, later!!! I think I'm going to spend my evening inking.

An example of inking.

Dear universe,

I love inking. Here's some proof!


















That is all!

Smooches,
Kat.

I'm siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiick.

So I'm lying here on my free, old-lady style, cream and creamy green-colored loveseat, talking to my roommate about how much it sucks being sick. She's got a killer sinus infection, and I've got a killer case of the too-stupid-to-dry-off-before-going-to-sleep-while-it-was-damned-cold-and-managed-to-contract-something-horrible-but-don't-know-what-exactly-because-I-don't-have-health-insurance-so-can't-actually-ask-a-professional-and-have-to-basically-just-tough-it-out-and-hope-for-the-best. I'm a big believer in the "Just toughin' it out" method, but Linny [the aforementioned roommate] is a big believer in drugs. After two nights of keeping my boyfriend up with my coughing and nose-blowing and general sickery, I decided to give him a break by going out into the living room and trying to nap here... Especially since I felt awful for kicking him in the face, inexplicably. Linny, who works night shift and is also having trouble sleeping due to the evil, evil phlegm monster, was in our living room watching Avatar:The Last Airbender and immediately started pressuring me into taking Niquil. Linny's basic arguing method is the doooooo iiiiiitttt method, except she's exceptional at it and I've pretty much been conditioned to give in within an hour in most cases. Wow. Niquil frickin' kicked my ass. I took the shot of Niquil at the beginning of the episode where our ragtag bunch of heroes gets drawn into a swamp and meets a bunch of swamp-style water-benders and was stone-cold knocked-out in the most uncomfortable position imaginable on this itty-bitty love seat by the time Aang started chasing -spoilers- Toph and a flying pig. And I STAYED asleep. AND I DIDN'T SUFFOCATE. I don't know what the heck is in Niquil to make it work, but... Good job to whoever figured that crap out. Anyway, speaking of not having health insurance... My job!

I've been doing some pretty cool things for work that will never see the light of day, so I figured I'd show a couple of them here whenever I feel like it. I only had this idea like.... last week, and I'm definitely not at work right now on account of being pretty damned feverish so the only things I've got to show are..... the following. Since they're saved on my hard drive and not the server.


That is the cover for a nail art brochure that was scrapped on account of not being clean.


That's an illustration I made for a 50's-themed collection of nail polish that we're coming out with. The drawing was scrapped on account of being too terrifying.


This image actually was used in our blog in celebration of the Chinese New Year, but I felt like sharing it because while it is incredibly simple, I did it, damn it. And I'm gonna say so.


There's more, but I figured that's enough about work for now. I'll upload some stuff here and there as I get around to it.



Lately, Billy's been bugging me about how I haven't been doing as much personal art and that I've been only doing work art and... well... He's right. But so what? Sure, what I do at work isn't what I really like doing but... By the time I get home, I've done so much of it that I'm just too tired and don't want to do any more. But he does have a point, so I have been trying to at least get around to doing SOMETHING once a week, especially if that something is make a shirt for the woot.com derby. Now, the illustration that follows was originally for the woot derby, but I didn't finish it on time because we decided to spend the weekend with Billy's mom on Mother's day instead of doing something responsible like 'conserving fuel' or 'finishing artwork.' I feel like it was well-worth it, honestly. But I at least got the basic lineart finished so... Y'know... Here it goes.



And just so it's known, I inked that digitally which I absolutely HATE but I had to do on account of the fact that I pretty much only had time to work on the 'inking' while I was at work on my lunch breaks [at which time I pretty much only had my laptop available to me] and at Billy's parent's house while he was sleeping before we went to brunch for his mother. ... Either way, no scanner in sight and not really ideal scenery for inking. I did also finish the pencils for another design which I'm hoping to ink the proper way if I ever get around to it.


Given that there's only so many hours in a day that I can use to try and sleep away this fever, I'm hoping I manage to get myself to do something between pass-out sessions. I've got a feeling anything I'd make in this state would be entertainingly awful. Whoo!

Dream big.

So I've been coasting along the road of life for the last couple of months with much more ease than I'm accustomed to... Which is why it wasn't really a surprise when I managed to hit a delicious disaster of a bump. I'm not going to mention what's going on, only what I've discovered because of it.

There are no rules. You can do literally anything at all as long as you want to and refuse to accept that there are pre-existing roadblocks that you have to bypass. Nobody in this world knows what they're doing and are pretty much just doing their best to convince you that they've got it all under control while panicking massively in their own mind. We're all just people dealing with the same stupid problems from different sides of the situation. What in this world says that you need to go to school to become something if you've already got all the knowledge without it? Who says the stars are too far away to be reached? Who says we can't all grow up to be happy? We all have such a limited amount of time on this earth and the people who have managed to build empires and become successful are not gods-they're merely other people. There's nothing special or scary about them that makes them any different from you. If you want it, go ahead and get it. We're all on the edge of dying at any given point anyway and I, for one, would like to go out thinking I had a good run; not go out thinking 'well damn, ain't that just another fuckin' thing.' Don't ever let anyone convince you that you CAN'T do something. Especially you.

I'm a big kid now!

Holy crap, I got a big girl job doing stuff that I totally dig doing! I've got to admit, after the debacle with Nijah directly after Panera I was a bit skeptical that work was really working out for me. I considered becoming an old-timey railroad robber or spaceship instructor or parasite wrangler but those positions all seemed not to currently be available. I'm sure you can imagine my surprise when this new job not only turned out to be with a totally swanky company [ http://www.misacosmetics.com for those interested], but also doing something awesome! Yes, ladies and gentlemen, you are now reading the blog of someone who is, quite unexpectedly, an art director. Awesome.

You know what else is awesome? CHRISTMAS. My family raised me Jewish, and did a pretty crappy job of it. If we decided to celebrate anything, it was by buying a pack of Matzos during Passover and eating it alongside our toast and possibly remembering to light a candle at least one of the nights of Channukkah while possibly being given gelt or nothing or a coat and continuing to ignore each other. Now, I am very proud of my roots despite not identifying with the religion or the people at all but goddamn does being a Jew suck.
This holiday season I elected to spend time with Billy and his family and celebrate Chrismas for the first really real time in my life. I was so excited! I couldn't sleep at all Christmas Eve and am STILL just going around and shouting CHRISTMAS!!! from time to time. Billy's family is fun to be with, and they provided me with enough trail mix and clementines to cause me to develop a very serious trail-mix-and-clementines dependency. That stuff's friggin' tasty.
By the way, the second best gift I was given is a heart necklace with a triquerta carved into it. The best gift was two weeks straight of Billy. <3

Also, my friends and I participated in a pollyanna for each other and in true "I'm a brokeass" style, I drew the gift for my polly.



Yes, this is why I was practicing reflective lighting on crazy child-faces.

Fireflies!!!

One day I woke up and said "hmm. I don't think I've done anything with reflective light for a while..... LET'S DO THIS THING!!!" ... So I did.




Now.... I am definitely aware that I may have gone a teensy-weensy bit overboard while doing this, but... I have a couple more projects I'm working on that will really help me refine this skill. Honestly, I just wanted an excuse to draw something that looked freaky as fuck, and we all know that me drawing children is terrifying. What's weird is that I actually like kids... So I'm not really sure why they're pretty much the scariest things I ever draw but... Eh.

This image was also colored entirely in Photoshop, as opposed to my lovely, lovely Painter. The main reason being that my computer has had problems with Painter crashing lately, and I need to reinstall it.... But I don't quite remember where I put my install disk soooooooooo.......... Poop berries. It's probably somewhere real clever like... In the bag that I keep the rest of my computer accessories and my CS4 disks but I am far too lazy to search for mere moments. No, instead I feel compelled to spend many hours slaving away in front of a program with which I am slightly less competent.

It's really funny to me, actually, that in high school I pretty much exclusively used the Adobe suite of products, but when I went to college... I switched to Painter. I think the reason is that I was able to get a copy of Painter 10 online for $35, and the adobe products were locked into a key server that meant I was only going to have access to them temporarily. I figured it was probably best not to get too used to something that I wasn't going to have around forever and instead, become a master at the one I actually did own: Painter. I was literally the only person in college that I know of that was using Painter, so when I had to figure out how to do something.... Actually, I kind of had a lot of fun doing it. I think I came up with some of the most bizarre methods of doing things and honestly I don't even remember what they were any more, but I always made them work. I also really love the brush controls in Painter, and how it duplicates the effects of traditional mediums quite nicely.

Recently, though, I've been getting re-acquainted with Photoshop and it is one of the best ideas I've ever had. Why? Because it got me a job! I've been unemployed for a bit due to some complications at my old new job that resulted in me not gettin' paid. Yeeeeeeeeeeeeah. Don't worry about it. What's important is that a combination of randomly deciding to start using Photoshop again, coupled with the super high-quality portfolio that UArts required me to make landed me a job as a receptionist/artist at Misa Cosmetics, a pretty rad nail polish company. The art portion is mostly going to be Graphic Design, photo editing, and product photography but... Hey! It's something! I am sooooooooooooo freakin' psyched it's just ridonkulous.

You know what else? I am sooooooooooo freakin' hungry it's just ridonkulous. I think I'm going to go make a totally pimped out veggie burger with a bun that's been grilled with garlic butter, topped with garlic herb mayo, extra sharp cheddar cheese, lettuce, tomato, onions, pickles, and a hint of ketchup. Successes like this are worth celebrating with copious amounts of soy.

Man, it's really cold right now.

Now, it is no secret at all that I am crazy head-over heels ga ga goo goo butterflies up in the sky in love with the most wonderful man in the universe:Billy. And if it was a secret before, well.... Uh.... Surprise? Where the junk have you been living? I mean, seriously... He's just about all I talk about aside from my cat and how darned cold it is right now. Anyway, his birthday was this weekend and I am beyond grateful he managed to be born so.... I conjured up this little number for him.




Anyone who knows him, obviously knows that the pirate is, in fact, the most realistic portrayal of Billy ever to have been created. I'm serious-aside from the entire month of December [during which he dons a Santa hat], Billy wears a pirate hat all year-round, usually has a ducky or two on his person, and is the jolliest crazy bastard you've ever met. He's also got this really awesome dog named Rowdy, but that's only partially as important. I absolutely LOVED making this piece, and it is actually the first one that I've completely colored in Photoshop without even a little bit looking at Painter. I'd definitely say that it was an interesting experience, and I understand why it's so popular but.... seriously... Painter rocks. I really want the latest version, but I've got to replace my xBox before I go spendin' money on other, more productive things like art programs.

Also, this week I re-discovered my shrinky-dinks. Good lord, they are pretty much the most awesome art supply ever!!!!!! I will probably make an etsy account sometime in the near future and make billions of dollars off of Shrinky-Dink crafts.

Double also, I'm really good at making cake!

END OF LINE.

[Totally want to see the new Tron movie. :D ]

Let's go for a ride.

Man. It's been one hell of a week for me. Heck, it's been one hell of a year... But the year isn't over yet so I'll wait 'till the end of it to figure out how it all went. News of the week, though, is that I quit my job. Yes, nearly a year and a half after becoming employed at that wretched hellhole of a torture dungeon Panera Bread, I finally managed to snag a space somewhere else and quit. I'm not sure I'll like this job that much since it's not something I've ever even considered doing before, but I'm hoping that it will at least pay the bills... Something Panera consistently failed to do. I'm finishing up my training for them this week before heading off to North Carolina for my second wedding ever, whereupon my return I will immediately begin working. I'm going to be nervous as hell until that first paycheck comes in, though... I'm kind of down to my last $5, which I borrowed from a friend to keep enough gas in my tank to get around. Basically the only good thing to have come from the bread mines are some really, really good friends that I would go completely mad without.

I think of all the horrible things that Panera did to me, the worst was kill my spirit. But I got it back, now... And I've been up to no good.




Most of it involves this guy. And yes, I know that turning your neck a bit to see something is a bit cruel of me but... well... I'm lazy. And working on something. Specifically, I'm working on a book about an adventure that this guy has. Interestingly enough, he was created late one Panera morning while dreading the horrible harpy shriek of the ovens, demanding to be tended to and have their guts constantly stuffed with an endless stream raw dough. A couple of months ago, I got the ability to doodle back sort of suddenly. I started losing myself in ink splotches and scribbles and those spirals and squiggles you make when your pen isn't working because after quite a few months of being ignored... Well... My pens weren't really working. Actually, now that I think of it I should probably go and clean those suckers out. Anyway, I squeaked out a tiny little drawing of an extremely excited bunny kid wearing a pair of pajamas and, for some reason, couldn't let him go. Maybe it was because he looked like he could take on the world and I wanted so terribly to do so myself at that moment, or maybe it's because I thought his smile was goofy and it got me going a bit... Or maybe it's just because he was in some secret part of my head, waiting for the moment to escape... Whatever the reason, the night he was made was the night I found his story and just couldn't stop thinking about it. I've got some more sketches, some comp pages, and half of a pencilled page but... I think I'll keep stringing you along for a bit before giving them up. In the meantime, here's another shirt I entered into that contest. This one's called "oh, shiiiiiiip..."




I'm really enjoying thinking in positives again. :)

She doesn't fight fair....y.

Have you ever just wanted to see some fairies kick the crap out of each other? Because I sure have.



You know that song by Lemon Demon? Y'know, the one about the ultimate showdown and Mr.Rogers wins in the end? I'm kind of wondering what it would be like if there was an ultimate showdown for cryptids. Like.... Would Bigfoot, or the abominable snowman win out? They're pretty much the same big hairy ape-type dude, wandering around in an undesirable setting and alllllways having blurry pictures taken of themselves. Mitch Hedberg was probably right when he said Bigfoot just is a blurry monster. But they might not stand a chance against something as crazed and blood-thirsty as the Chupacabra! Then again... Neither of them is a goat and so... Are probably not actually in any danger. Unicorns have a high probability of stabbing something through the chest, y'know... And Nessie's got an awful big mouth.... Hm. Nah, if we're looking for the Mr. Rogers of the cryptid world, I guess we'd have to declare the inflatable hedgehog as the winner, since seriously.... what the junk? Inflatable hedgehog? Who the heck comes up with these creatures?!

Well, that's all for now. Be sure not to trip on any hoop snakes on your way to bed, or upset any owl men when you go out grocery shopping. Not that I think it would be deadly for you or anything, just that it would be hard to explain to your parents why you suddenly up and lost your marbles.


P.S. Fairies are totally real, though.

Bigfoot in Love.

Looking for love stinks. Being single really isn't bad at all... Unless you've gotten that itch that only the love of someone else can scratch. You know what I'm talking about. Those weeks of evaluating yourself, starting to think there's no one out there who could ever love you, changing your face and hair and wardrobe to make yourself a little more appealing, telling all your friends it's okay that you're single because it's okay, you're a deity and don't need anyone to fill your void and it really doesn't matter that everyone you know is growing up and getting married and you can't even manage to wrangle a second date despite the fact that you think you do and say all the right things aside from ordering the most garlic-y dish on the menu.... But yeah, no big deal... Everything's okay. But you're still lonely. I'm reminded of a Deirdre Flint song, actually....

Anyway, some of us have a little more trouble than others. Some of us are imaginary creatures with a constant bad hair day and have a LOT more trouble than others.





This week's woot.com topic was cryptids, or well-known imaginary creatures that people SWEAR are real. More to come soon!



By the way, I'm in a ridiculously satisfying and happy relationship and have fairly normal-sized feet. ... But that doesn't mean I don't sympathize with ol' Bigfoot up there.

No sense cryin'.

Holy smokes has it been a long time! How y'all doin' tonight? I see some old faces in the crowd, glad to see you're still up and kickin' about. Me, I stopped kickin' about for a while there... As you can tell. It's hard out there when you're working fifty hour weeks at a job that doesn't pay you nearly enough to survive, tells you you're the cancer of the company [true story!], and sticks you under the command of some dumbass too idiotic enough not to run into a car while on his bike. In the suburbs. At some point, you've just got to say enough is enough and get back to what's important to you. I've been spending a lot of time with my cat, and my boyfriend, and they both agree that drawing is the best way to fix this craphole I seem to have slid right on down to. So I've got a solution to keep me motivated, and hopefully end up with a good enough payload that I can blow this crummy popsicle shop and lead my life somewhat more on my own danged terms!

shirt.woot.com has a derby every week for random people to submit shirt designs based on their parameters. This week, they just so happened to decide the theme was the end of the world, and I just so happened to produce this little gem:





As of now, I've got a whopping 24 votes, which is pretty pathetic but actually way better than I was expecting.... I was really only hoping for five votes, and ten as an ultimate goal. Did I mention that whoever's shirt gets picked, gets a thousand bucks right off the bat? Hot damn! I could use that money to buy the biggest bag of gummy bears ever made!!!! Yeah!!!!! .... Or, y'know.... Do something responsible with it, too, like... Pay my electric bill. Sheesh, whatever. Gummy bears are cooler.

I'll be entering this derby for at least another ten weeks for a few reasons. One, moneymoneymoneymoneymoney. Two, deadlines force me to actually do work. Three, I was super frustrated I hadn't been doing anything other than random doodles for basically a whole danged year. Four, it'll help me buff up my portfolio so I can get back on track to being a real artist. Five, secret plan.

YES, THAT'S RIGHT, SECRET PLAN. Just because this is the internet doesn't mean I need to tell you everything.

Incidentally, I just pulled off one of my toenails and it's bleeding quite a bit. And I'm going to start learning sign language next week. And I'm hungry. Stay tuned!!!

The Pope-revisited.

I tend to fall victim to misinterpretation quite often, but I always get my best ideas out of it! For instance, one day I saw the phrase "The Pope's Not Coming" for a split second and IMMEDIATELY died laughing. Then someone threw me a phoenix down and I ate their brains because reanimation can only end badly. But! The point is that I just could not get over that phrase. What could it possibly mean?!?!?! I started thinking up all these reasons that the pope wouldn't be coming, and things that he wouldn't be coming to and knew that something had to be done with this. So, I've been working on a series of illustrations called "The Pope's Not Coming" all with the theme of... The Pope not coming. I really dig this series and hope to get it published at some point, but since I usually do it entirely in black and white, throwing a couple of them into my portfolio doesn't quite fit. Solution? Colorization, of course! I took one of my favorite Pope images and gave it a go with the ol' computeramizational colorajiggatron.

Before!


After!



Oh, and by the way, the origin of the phrase was from a professor's computer. It turns out that he did the illustrations for an article about how The Pope wasn't coming to Philadelphia on his U.S. tour, I believe. That's pretty normal compared to my versions, which involve rock concerts, aliens, wedding invitations, and chastity belts. And plenty more still, I'll have you know.