31 January 2007 - Snowflakes

About mid-afternoon I was away from the office running various errands when it began to snow in earnest. As I am not used to dealing with snow, I decided to work from home rather than risk being trapped in rush hour traffic later on. The snow initially was coming down as big fluffy snowflakes. But there must have been some instability in the weather system. Next minute, the precipitation started coming down as big rain droplets. I was struck by the violence of this rapid change in the weather. This went on for a few minutes while the winter gods decided whether to have snow or freezing rain. They must have made a decision as in about 5 minutes time the big fluffy snowflakes were back.



This is the first appearence of Annie Mae in the sketchbook. Annie was a minor character in our comic strip "Terminal Degrees". Much like Kenny in South Park she was constantly getting injured or killed, usually by something going hideously wrong with one of her experiments. My partner in crime, who was the artist, did the original character design and based her on one of the generic cute schoolgirls found in anime and manga. Thus she was named Annie Mae (yeah, I know, how effing original). At the time art based on anime/manga wasn't so prevalent, so it seemed fairly cutting edge. All I remember of the original character design was her hair clip that unsuccessfully kept her hair out of her eyes. I can't refer back to the strips as they were lost in a flood in Houston. Still, I think I will ressurrect her and continue to work on her character design. Keep an eye out for more "Annie Mae" appearences.

30 January 2007 - Itching Throbbing Brain

About midway through the afternoon a fierce headache started up. I hung around work for another hour and a half, before calling it a day and heading home early. I took some aspirin and laid down for a nap. I woke up about 2 hours later with most of the headache gone. The headache inspired this picture.

I wish I had waited until the next day, as I think I rushed through the drawing too quickly and I'm not totally happy with the quality of this drawing.

The legend came from a discussion some friends of mine had at a particularly drunken party. We were saying that we should drop out of grad school and start a rock band. We then started coming up with rock band names. "Itching Throbbing Brain" was my proud contribution.

29 January 2007 - My Home Entertainment Center

I had forgotten that January the 28th was the date of SketchCrawl 12.5. The topic of this sketchcrawl was to draw areas of your house. I was going to do my home entertainment center on Sunday, but I forgot. So I just drew it on Monday.

26 January 2007 - Figure Drawing

Went figure drawing tonight. This is a 20 minute drawing of a male model.

28 January 2007 - Another T-shirt Design

It was time to do laundry again, so while I was sorting and folding clothes I pulled this t-shirt out to sketch the design.

27 January 2007 - Devil Girl

I was going through a box that I had not unpack since the move and came across a tin of Devil Girl Hot Kisses. The lid of the tin has a picture of Devil Girl by Robert Crumb.

Robert Crumb is one of my artistic influences. I like his artwork and hope to be as good in working in pen some day.

25 January 2007 - Tarot Card: The Tower

Went to a metaphysical group tonight, the topic was the Tarot. I was inspired to draw my own interpretation of the major arcana card "The Tower". When the attack on the World Trade Center occurred, I remember making the connection to this Tarot card.

24 January 2007 - Characters from Questionable Content

Today's sketch is of some of the characters from Questionable Content by Jeph Jacques. From left to right are Marten, Pintsize, and Dora.

I recommend the strip for it's witty writing and good artwork. You can find the
strip at: Questionablecontent.net/

In this drawing I think I did a good job capturing Marten and Pintsize, but I fail to obtain the essential "Dora"ness.

23 January 2007 - Greetings from Disneyworld

Today I found in my mailbox at my apartment complex a postcard addressed to my boss. This is really an odd occurance of synchronicity because even though my boss lives in the town as me, his house is 4 miles away and his address doesn't even look anything like mine.

The drawing shows Tigger punching out a teenager. This based on an actual event where a employee costumed as Tigger got in a fight with one of teenage patrons of Disneyworld. The assault was captured on videotape.

22 January 2007 - Opus

A drawing of Opus from Bloom County and Outland by Berke Breathed. The drawing was inspired by one of my favorite strips where a feminist scolds Opus, Bill the Cat, and Milquetoast the roach for being insensitive clods.

21 January 2007 - Characters of Krazy Kat

A sketch of three of the characters from George Herriman's Krazy Kat. From left to right is Offissa Pupp, Krazy Kat, and Ignatz Mouse. I enjoy the strip for it's surreal writing and artwork. George Herriman is one of my artistic influence due to mastery of the pen.

20 January 2007 - Taurus .22 Magnum

Had to cancel shooting again, because the weather was still pretty crappy. This is a sketch of a Taurus .22 Magnum

19 January 2007 - An Angry and Embarrased Asuka

Another sketch of Asuka from Neon Genesis Evangelion. The original image appears in a NGE hentai doujinshi "Angelic Impact". Here she is in a post-coital moment with Shinji and she both embarrassed and pissed off at him.

I had a lot of trouble with this sketch. It was a simple drawing but contained some subtlities. The artist soften Asuka's normally angular features to make her cuter. I think I overdid that. Also she is look far to the left at Shinji who is out of frame. I don't think I managed to capture that in my sketch.

18 January 2007 - Rooster Statue

In the lobby of the Center of Excellence for Poultry Science is a large statue of a rooster on a stump surrounded by a hen and her chick. Today's sketch is a close up of rooster.

The Sketch



The Original

17 January 2007 - Cat Figurine

Today's sketch is of one of the figurines in my cat collection.

16 January 2007 - Nikon EM

I bought this film camera for $30 from one of my photography professors back in the 80's. He failed to tell me that the electronics were shorted out and that it would eat a fully charged battery in a day. Still, it had a manual mode that functioned well. I just had to adjust the aperature to match the lighting conditions. It has served as my knockaround film camera since that time.

15 January 2007 - Ratliff by Sam Hurt

Today's sketch is of Ratliff, a character from "Eyebeam" a comic strip by Sam Hurt, trying to juggle. It's a simple design, but it took me a long time due to all the hands. Hands are still hard for me to draw.

14 January 2007 - Original Character Design

Once upon a time, dinosaur ruled the land, we had to walk barefoot 5 miles in the snow to school, and a friend and I wrote a comic strip for our college paper. It was called "Terminal Degrees" and followed the adventures of a couple of graduate students trying to get their doctorates. My friend did the artwork and I did the writing. At least I call it writing when in fact it was more like snarky pop cultural references, surreal ramblings, and jokes cribbed from Monty Python (some of the writing I've recycled in my strips at Stripcreator.com). We did the strip for one semester because: 1) the editor thought the strip was a little highbrow for undergraduates and that they couldn't relate to our material, and 2) it is HARD making with the funny five days a week. We were replaced by a badly drawn, poorly written, and very unfunny strip about the adventures of a couple frat boy trying to find titties and beer.

Today's sketch was one of the few contributions to the artwork I made for the strip. This is a character loosely based on me. The character design was greatly influenced by Picasso's cubist period. (I only steal from the best). We used a much simpler design in the strip.

13 January 2007 - Firestar .45

Had planned to go shooting today, however a freezing rain started to fall the previous night. So rather than fight the weather, we postponed it for the next weekend.

Today's sketch is of an automatic Firestar .45 pistol.

12 January 2007 - Schuco Wind-up MicroRacer

I was cleaning house and came across a favorite childhood toy of mine, a Schuco Wind-up MicroRacer. I is still in very good shape and I still have the box it came in. I decided to draw the toy to work on perspective and shading. I think I rushed the drawing, as it is not as good as I could have done. I photographed the drawing with the model for comparison.

11 January 2007

I have a poster of Wallace and Gromit from their show "The Wrong Trousers". I decided to sketch one of the characters because being plasticine figures they have actual shading. Shading and values are two things I have to work on. Todays sketch is of Gromit acting in suprise to another one of Wallace's inventions running amok.

10 January 2007 - Mel by Natasha Allegri

I was listening to a podcast of "The Now Show", when a line caught my attention. It was by a commentator talking about global warming and he totally mixed his metaphor. He said, "We are on the precipice of a runaway train". I just had to jot that down.

It was a few days before I could decide what sketch to match up with the quote. Then one day I was surfing Natasha Allegri's LiveJournal Site "Normal Life" and read one of her strips "Hamsters in the Microwave". I saw a character that was sufficiently agitated to mate with the quote. Today's sketch is of Natasha Allegri's character Mel from "Hamsters in the Microwave".

9 January 2007 - Veterinary Teddy Bear.

Today's sketch is of a teddy bear an old girlfriend gave me while I was in vet school. He is wearing a mask and surgical scrubs.

8 January 2007 - Chesire Cat

I always loved the original artwork done for "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" and "Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There" drawn by John Tenniel. I really like Tenniel's use of line and shading to create an image. He is one of my artistic influences, that I hope one day to emulate. Today I decided to draw the chesire cat.

7 January 2007 - Furry T-shirt 2

Took me two days to watch all the clothes and repair the closet rod, mainly because my cordless drill was not charged.

Today’s sketch is another design from one of my many t-shirts.

6 January 2007 - Furry T-shirt 1

Sometime, while I was away, one of the cats decided to climb up to the top shelf of the closet. He must have tried to jump up on the shoulders of the shirts and then try to jump up on the shelf. However, with the extra weight, the bracket holding the clothes rod broke because: a) it is made of cheap crappy plastic, and b) the rods were overloaded with clothes. So I came back to a pile of shirts on the floor which the cats made into a bed. I had to wash all the cat hair covered clothes, replace the bracket with a metal one, and put up the closet rod.

Over half my wardrobe is t-shirts. Today’s sketch is of one of the designs on one of my many black t-shirts.

5 January 2007 - Envy Adams

Purchased the datebook today for the express purpose of drawing one picture a day. Got home with the book and didn't know what to draw. I trolled through my collection of comics and manga for something simple design to draw.

The drawing I picked was from Bryan Lee O'Malley's "Scott Pilgrim vs. the World", the second book in his Scott Pilgrim series. Check out his graphic novels, I highly recommend them.

The sketch was of one of the characters on the back cover, Envy Adams, who is prominent in the third book "Scott Pilgrim & the Infinite Sadness". My sketch makes the character look much more wistful than the original. The original character presented herself much more coolly.

4 January 2007 - Rei Ayanami

A companion sketch to one of the previous day. This one is of Rei Ayanami from the manga of Neon Genesis Evangelion: Angelic Days.

3 January 2007 - Asuka Langley Soryu

As much as I dread the rest of the drive home, after meeting Juli for a quick lunch, I started out. I got to Dallas at about 6 pm, during rush hour, in the rain (and uphill both ways). I stopped at a Half Price Books there to get a quick rest and some coffee. I got lucky and found a copy of Neon Genesis Evangelion: Angelic Days Volume 1 and Hellsing Volume 1.

After an hour there I started out. I had 6 more hours of driving to go. The first 2 hours were miserable. But after a Mountain Dew and some hot pork rinds the traveling got much easier. I made it home about 12:30 in the morning.

The sketch is of Asuka Langley Soryu from the manga. I did not draw it that night or the following night, as it took me a couple of days to get over my sleep deficit.

2 January 2007 - Juli

Began the return trip from El Paso, Texas to Fayetteville, Arkansas to day. It takes about 18 hours to drive. Was still feeling a little punky from the stomach virus I contracted during the holidays. So I broke up the trip into two parts. I decided to stop in Midland TX, which is kinda sorta at the half way point. While there I invited an old girlfriend of mine,who lives there, out to dinner. We exchanged Christmas gifts, had dinner, and caught up with what was going on in each others lives.

1 January 2007 - The Equestrian

In El Paso, near the airport stands a 42 foot tall bronze statue entitled "The Equestrian". It is of Don Juan de Oñate on a rearing horse. The statue was originally going to be standing in downtown. However, Don Oñate's historical reputation as a conquistador was too much for some people and the statue was renamed and moved to its new location.



While in El Paso I took some photos of the statue. When I started this sketchbook I decided to start out with this close-up of the horse.

Nasty Scribbles: Prologue

After hearing me bitch how I never practice drawing for several years, a friend suggested I do something about it. As a New Year's resolution, I bought myself an inexpensive datebook at Barnes and Noble. I purposefully bought a cheap datebook for two reasons: 1) so I wouldn't treat the paper as being precious and that I wouldn't feel like I was wasting paper, and 2) the drawings are already dated so I could monitor my progress. I promised myself I would draw one sketch a day using pencil and pen. I normally work with blue non-reproducing pencil and ink it in with Pilot Precise V5 or V7 pens. These sketches are the result.

They aren't great works of art. But the purpose of this whole affair is to get me into the habit of drawing on a daily basis. So forgive my simple little doodles.