Stick Figure Sketchblog & Webcomic Creator @ Stewped.com

This is what my stack of drawing paper looks like. Classy, right?

I’ve been listening to all the episodes of Comics are Great and on this episode Jerzy talked to one of the authors of Drawing Words and Writing Pictures. I was lucky enough to find it at the local library here and started going through it. This is exactly the book I never knew I wanted. Being out of practice for so long, I’ve really gotten  down on myself and completely forgot how to doodle and just screw around in my sketchbook. The first chapter has these cool exercises that basically lead you by the hand into having fun and trying things knew. It’s perfect for when you don’t have any ideas and the blank page is sitting there taunting you.

Here are my attempts at the first part of the chapter 1 exercises. You can compare them to critiqued examples on the DW&WP site if you wish. The staggering guy was the one I had trouble with, but as you can see, I did fill a whole page trying to work it out. And I had a good time attempting it. The tasks were to create:

• A Person Running
• A Car Speeding
• A Ball Falling
• A Person Staggering
• A Newspaper page blowing in the wind

Go ahead and critique these if you wish.

If you’re an artist you know how great it feels to have your art on a nice thick piece of paper strewn about the floor of your artin’ room.

I started out drawing these poorly in a sketchbook. Eventually I moved to some series 300 Strathmore vellum bristol. In terms of a boring, white sheet of paper it is pretty great. I have a pad of plate bristol in another brand(borden & riley) and it’s awful. The ink spreads out and bleeds so that the artwork looks all fuzzy. Eww. However, the vellum of the borden & riley stuff is great and doesn’t bleed. I am almost out of the 9×12 pages that I use for the thesaurus entries, too *sad face.* If you want to be super nice and donate something so I can buy some more pads of this awesome paper, that would be great. If there’s any wallpapers or ATCs I can make as thanks, be sure to let me know in the comments or at aj dot stewped at gmail dot com.

I really want to make 2012 worthwhile for you visitors to any of my comics sites. I know that I’ve been a bit of a sappy screw-around the past 5, 6, 7 years? I think I started in 2003, posting stuff here and there. Then, due to some baloney or other I’d pitch a fit and give up for a month. Two months. 6 months. A year. Ugh. How embarrassing. Thanks, chrome, for telling me that there are two ‘R’s in embarrassing. However, this year is going to be different and awesome.
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I finished this the other night. I might be learning a thing or two about color.

Slowly.

We bought some cookies today–because it’s cheat day!–and the sticker on the box was a giant BUY ONE GET ONE FREE!! sticker. Then, once we arrived home, inspiration struck.

Above,  I present to you the “original” sketch followed by the intermediary step before the inky final step. I say “original” like that because, sadly, there is no actual original.  I did all of this in Manga Studio, my favorite program for drawing comics. I wish they would pay me to advertise for them because it’s that good. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: go try out the demo! The trial is only for the Debut version, but every few months it seems you can find EX 4 on sale for around $200 or less. It is WORTH IT.

And by hell, I mean the bathroom.

Let’s get personal, kids.
I spend a lot of time in the bathroom.
A wasteful amount of time.
Not having fun, either.
Digestive issues.
Buuuggghh.

Then, a good friend gave me some tablet-PCs that his company was just going to throw away. They even have Sketchbook pro on ‘em and come complete with a Wacom-type stylus that is pressure sensitive. Wacom may have contributed to the making of them, I don’t know. I do know, however, that it is immense fun to draw on the thing. Absolutely no keyboard though, so it’s not ideal for typing. I don’t have that kind of time in there.

That’s when the magic started happening. I’ve been drawing on this tablet thing for almost 2 weeks and making some fun drawings. Even started some goofy comic strips that I can’t wait to finish by beaming them to the real computer so I can finish them on the Cintiq. It’s a lot easier to finish something on the big screen and with a keyboard for shortcuts.

Enjoy these drawings knowing they caused me horrible, horrible stomach pain!

More squid tits. Including the squid tits logo! I love it.

Here’s some more. The beginning of the squid tits!

Here’s another teaser image for Word Man. I like sharks.
That’s what they’re supposed to be. Don’t judge me.

More!

I bought a 24-page sketchbook around the middle of September with the intent of filling the entire thing by the middle of October.

I think the only way to keep myself honest, and actually working on this goal, is to post each page as I complete it. Ideally, I would be posting two pages a day. If I were to fill two pages a day, I would complete this in 24 days. However, I sincerely thought that doing just one side of one page a day would be good.

Then it hit me.

That would make 48 days. Whoops.

So here’s the first couple pages, then I’ll post the rest day by day until I’m caught up and post them each day.

There’s some illustrated thesaurus stuff here, some ‘arry pottuh stuff, and just random craziness. Enjoy.