The Evolution Of Sketch-A-Day…

I know you’re all sitting at your computers hitting refresh over and over and going, “OMG. Where is Sketch-A-Day?!?!” (except nobody is doing that) so I’m here to tell you that Sketch-A-Day is dead.  After a brutal one week trial period, I’m giving up and evolving it into something that I hope will work better…SKETCH-A-WEEK!

The reason for the change is primarily that I just don’t like broadcasting my ineptitude as an artist so publicly…and on a daily basis at that.  However, the whole point of the experiement, was to be educational (for me) and about making sure that I was doing at least a little drawing every day and to possibly slightly entertain you, my dear readers.  So the new plan is this…I will continue to sketch for no more than an hour every day (Monday – Friday) and I will post only one of the sketches from that week…on Fridays.

Of course if in one week there are several good sketches I’ll consider posting those…but that seems unlikely given last weeks output. 

She Has No Head! – Discovering The Unknown

New She Has No Head column up at CSBG.  A review of Mark Waid’s mini-series The Unknown.

Something Funny

I subscribe to The New Yorker, it’s one of my few genuine splurges these days, and every week without fail I read the short fiction selection and all the cartoons.  I generally also read the tv reviews, movie reviews, and play reviews if they appeal to me and the Shouts & Murmurs section.  And the rest is a how much time I have/how interested I am crapshoot.  Which is a shame because almost every article I’ve taken the time to read in The New Yorker has been wonderful…but sometimes they’re so long and involved…I just don’t always have the time.

Anyway, all that to say that I ALWAYS read all the cartoons.  And they’re generally pretty enjoyable…if not out and out funny, but this past week (the 2/8/10 issue) I found a lot of really great ones…here’s my favorite of the bunch by Zachary Kanin:

Sketch A Day 005

Learn more about the rules of and inspiration for Sketch-A-Day here.

What is it: Keeping in the Psylocke theme.  It’s Psylocke.

How long it took: 24 minutes start to finish

How many sketches I did today: 2

Total time spent sketching: 49 minutes

Materials used: My Wacom Bamboo tablet and Photoshop.

Other notes/details: I did two of these drawings, and this “final” one I used the other as a base for…so it was a little like inking over a sketch, but the sketch was done in Photoshop on the Wacom.  The goal today was simply to do a drawing of an entire character, rather than just the parts I like, like hips and waists, or heads and shoulders.

What I like about it: It’s okay.  I like the face okay.  It’s funny there are things that are better about this one than the base sketch, and there are things about the base sketch that are better.  If I could combine the two I’d be a lot happier.

What I dislike about it: The posing is a little silly.  I’m still skipping out on details like hands and feet.  And it would be easier to tell what was going on in the complicated posing if it was colored.  The legs are not in proportion to one another (and are very long…even for comic superheroines).

Sketch A Day 004

Learn more about the rules of and inspiration for Sketch-A-Day here.

What is it: Just a head and shoulders.  Maybe X-man Psylocke’s head and shoulders.

How long it took: 12 minutes start to finish

How many sketches I did today: 3

Total time spent sketching: 33 minutes

Materials used: My Wacom Bamboo tablet and Photoshop.

Other notes/details: I left the sketchy lines, but it was done freehand, no base drawing.

What I like about it: I actually really like this one except for the fact that the hair should be coming over more…right now it looks like she has no second eye and eyebrow.  FAIL.

What I dislike about it: Other than what I said above, I mostly like this one, but it’s of note that this was once a full body sketch, and I hated the rest of it and cut it off.  So you could say I hated everything except the head. 

Sketch-A-Day 003

Learn more about the rules of and inspiration for Sketch-A-Day here.

What is it: A sexy superhero with her costume zipped all the way up.  Imagine that!

How long it took: 21 minutes start to finish

How many sketches I did today: 2

Total time spent sketching: 46 minutes

Materials used: My Wacom Bamboo tablet and Photoshop.

Other notes/details: I left the sketchy lines, but it was done freehand, no base drawing.

What I like about it: I really like the looseness of it and the sketch-y exaggerated proportions.  I like the overall feel of it quite a bit. The face is nice (ish), and I like the color on the suit.

What I dislike about it: My lack of skills with the Wacom tablet are still obvious though using photoshop instead of illustrator improved my control.  Illustrator has a smooting effect that for someone with more skill (like Adam) is probably awesome, but for someone like me just means that the line looks even further from my intention.

Great Message, Great Ad

Thanks to Jezebel for alerting me to this new ad by Planned Parenthood in response to the Tebow ad running during the Superbowl.  The ad is respectful, informative, and open to personal freedom, like the Pro-Choice movement itself, which I’ve never understood why…continues to be vastly misunderstood.

Some Thoughts On The Tonight Show Debacle

I read an interesting piece in last week’s (February 1st 2010) New Yorker on The Tonight Show debacle.  But I thought the author of the piece,  Nancy Franklin, touched on but did not expand upon one part of this equation that in the future is going to be a very big deal.

First let’s start with the “facts” (as we know them).

1.  I suspect very few people who are fans of Conan are also fans of Leno and vice versa.  I’m sure there’s a crossover but I’m willing to bet it’s small.

2.  Conan’s audience skews young and Leno’s audience skews much older.

So here’s the thing, Leno going back to The Tonight Show is going to work fine for a while…maybe even for 10 years…because his fans will come back and the show will default back to the way it was before…fine.  But what happens in 10 years?  Maybe I’m overestimating the grudge holding ability of the Conan fans (my grudge holding abilities are practically infamous in my land) but I don’t think those young fans are coming back…EVER.

I think they’re sufficiently pissed at the way Conan has been treated (there has been picketing, ad campaigns, facebook groups, you name it in support of Conan and horror at NBC’s behavior), that in 10 years when Leno is ready to be replaced (because he’s even older than he freaking is now) there will be nobody that NBC can put in that Tonight Show chair (short of Jon Stewart perhaps) that we would come back to watch, just based on principle.

Now, I’m not the best fan of late night talk shows anyway.  I’m not a consistent viewer, watching only when the mood strikes, or when I remember to.  And I generally feel about late night talk shows the way I feel about SNL – that there are always brilliant little bits and moments – but that I’m not willing to sit through an hour of average (and sometimes below average) entertainment for those small gems – especially when I can pick them up on the news websites the following day if they were good anyway.  I just am not willing to invest in them consistently.  I also have the problem of being both a Conan fan and a Letterman fan, which worked fine until Conan took over The Tonight Show, because I didn’t have to pick.  I tried to watch more Conan once I had the option (and misfortune to have to choose between them) because I felt he needed the support since he was new to the timeslot.  However I never watched Leno.  The dude is just not funny to me.  And because of that it hurts NBC not a whit for me to vow not to watch Leno, because I never did and never would have.

However, I CAN vow to never watch The Tonight Show again**

So in the end I think this is more short-sighted BS on the part of NBC.  Sure, this might work now and they’ll get their “safe” Leno hosted Tonight Show back, but in the long run, they’ve shot themselves in the foot.  Good riddance I say.  Perhaps we should have just let Johnny Carson take the show with him when he left…it’d certainly be more respectful of his legacy than where we ended up.

As for you specifically Leno, while I don’t think that you are specifically to blame for all of this, your handling of it has been proof that I was right all along to dislike you.  I had barely any respect for you left after your writer’s strike behavior in 2007, but that little I had left has been killed dead dead dead.  You now seem like a ridiculous comic book villain to me.  Congratulations idiot.

* Credits:  Jack Ziegler cartoon taken from The New Yorker 2/8/10 edition

** Again, with the exception of a Jon Stewart Tonight Show host – which I don’t even want because I prefer him where he is – but I think Conan would understand and forgive me for going back on my proclamations in that one scenario.

Sketch-A-Day 002

Learn more about the rules of and inspiration for Sketch-A-Day here.

What is it: Woman in a red bathing suit.

How long it took: 8 minutes start to finish

How many sketches I did today: 4

Total time spent sketching: 41 minutes

Materials used: My Wacom Bamboo tablet, Illustrator, and Photoshop (for clean up).

Other notes/details: The sketch was done freehand with no base drawing to “ink” from (obviously, because it sucks!)

What I like about it: I like the abstractness of it…not much else.

What I dislike about it: Pretty much everything else.  I need to have Adam give me another Wacom tutorial.  I’m no great artist, but had I been sketching this by hand it would have looked about a thousand times better.  I got almost nothing on this drawing the way I envisioned it.  So while the Wonder Woman drawing of yesterday had some redeeming fun loose qualities that I could enjoy even though it didn’t turn out how I had planned…this one really doesn’t.  Too bad. Wish I had time to go back and do another, but rules are rules (and I didn’t like anything I did today, so perhaps it’s futile anyway).

Sketch-A-Day 001

Welcome to the first Sketch-A-Day post.  Learn more about the rules of and inspiration for Sketch-A-Day here.

What is it: Wonder Woman!  I’ve been in a Wonder Woman mood lately so she seemed the obvious choice.

How long it took: 9 minutes start to finish

How many sketches I did today: 3

Total time spent sketching: 36 minutes

Materials used: My Wacom Bamboo tablet, Illustrator, and Photoshop (for clean up).

Other notes/details: The sketch was done freehand with no base drawing to “ink” from.

What I like about it: I really like the looseness of it and the sketch-y exaggerated proportions.  I like the overall feel of it quite a bit.  It feels fun.

What I dislike about it: My lack of skills with the Wacom tablet are obvious – there is little ability yet to do anything but something loose and sketchy – i.e. the hands look like little claw bits.  Also, the face looks pretty dead and non-specific (that isn’t the expression I had in mind – I wanted something a little more playful) and doesn’t benefit from the fun looseness of the rest of it.

She Has No Head! – It Took Gail Simone

New She Has No Head! column up at CSBG.  All about Wonder Woman and my long standing attempts to fall in love with her.  Did it work?  Click to find out.

Let’s Cast The Walking Dead!

So I started writing this post back in August of 2009 when it was announced that AMC was going to be the home of Robert Kirkman’s The Walking Dead,  but there’s been a lot going on (despite the lack of gainful employment) and it took me a while to circle back and get to this. I was reminded that this post was sitting here waiting to be finished by the announcement last week that Frank Darabont’s pilot script had been greenlit by AMC …so here we are.

Plenty of other people, websites, and blogs have already taken a swing at casting The Walking Dead, but I’ve tried to avoid those posts so that I don’t corrupt my own instincts (and cheat off of those people).  So take a look at what I’ve come up with – and get your own recommendations on the board in the comments section.

A couple of guidelines I used:

1.  I tried to keep the casting fairly realistic, picking actors that I thought would be willing to be a part of an ensemble cast of the next (hopefully) highly acclaimed AMC television drama (i.e. you won’t see Angelina Jolie or Will Smith in here anywhere).

2.  I tried to pick actors and actresses that fit the roles visually AND that had acting skills I admired.  If I had to pick between skills and visuals, I usually went with skills.

RICK:

This one is honestly the easiest pick of the bunch, because I think Nathan Fillion is a just an obvious and yet inspired choice to play our hero Rick.  Fillion has a great fan following already (and one that overlaps nicely with comics thanks to his Firefly/Serenity, and Buffy roles) and he’s a proven actor that can hold his own on the film screen, but isn’t opposed to doing television.  Also, though his show Castle is very much “his” show, I feel like Fillion would recognize the great opportunity in The Walking Dead, like the opportunity of Mad Men, despite it being an ensemble cast.  The fact that Castle is still on is a bit of a problem, but I see the ratings aren’t great…I don’t want it to fail, as I like Fillion and wish him the best…but man I’d like to see him playing Rick.

As an interesting side note, my mother used to watch One Life To Live (and General Hospital) when I was younger, and I got addicted to both shows, and never more so with One Life To Live than when Nathan Fillion was playing a GORGEOUS version of the character Joey Buchanan.  I was so sad when he left the show (and I left watching it not long after) but MAN did the boy do well for himself.  It’s one of the only things that makes me proud about having watched soaps at one point in my life.  I’m all “I saw him and loved him first!”…and I’m almost never that far ahead of the crowd.

The Inspiration For Sketch-A-Day…

So Adam has been drawing a lot lately, especially on his tablet, and I’ve been envious.  It’s no secret that drawing has taken a back (WAY back) seat for me over the last year as my novel has become my primary focus and writing in general (for CSBG, this blog, and a handful of other things) has become my secondary focus…but I miss drawing.  And I’ve been trying to figure out a way to get it back into my life in a practical and productive way that won’t eat up all my time.

Adam’s recent AWESOME drawing of us has inspired me to get serious about it.  Oh, um…NSFW?  Too late?

Anyone who knows us knows that Adam has been (wisely) very kind to me and as usual very unkind to himself in this depiction – but I love it anyway.  I wish I was that cute…in cartoon form…or any form!

Anyway, the awesomeness of Adam’s drawing has inspired me to try a new blog project that will both get me drawing again and also help me to work on my new tablet skills.  So the new Sketch-A-Day feature will be just that, a sketch every day (Monday through Friday) posted on the blog and created either on the tablet or by hand in a minimum of 10 minutes and a maximum 60 minutes (I’ll be focusing on the tablet to see if I can hone my skills on it, but there will be some traditional non-tablet work done as well).  I’ll try my best not to draw only sexy curvy girls, as that is pretty much my default setting when I sketch…but no promises.*

So we’ll see how it goes. The Sketch-A-Day posts will start on Monday, February 1st.  See you then!

* It’s important to note up front that NOTHING I do will look as good as what Adam has done here.  For two simple reasons…1) Adam has always been and will always be a far better and more naturally talented cartoonist that I am and 2) Adam took WAY more than an hour to do this.  So lower your expectations already!

Apple’s iPad Is Debuting As We Speak…

You can see it live blogged here.  I don’t know how I feel about it.  I suppose I can’t afford it right now regardless of how I feel about it.  It interests me most as an e-reader, as I think that is the direction publishing is headed (unfortunately in some ways, fortunately in others) and I’m not wild about the Kindle and Sony E-reader that currently exist.  This looks like a step up in that regard…it’s kinda big though…

Update:  They haven’t gotten to anything specific to e-readers yet…well, they did just show a pretty good looking New York Times…

Okay…here we go…ibooks…looks WAY better than The Kindle

Oooh.  You can change the font.  That’s a nice feature.

Wow.  $499 for the iPad.  Honestly…that is…not bad.  I  was thinking it would be a lot more.  I still can’t afford it…but that’s a pretty impressive price point for what seems like a pretty broad spectrum of functionality.  Plus it’s pretty.

Update 2:  Here’s a link to a video of the iPad in action.  At the end it shows the ibook application.  Again, a huge step up from Kindle and Sony by the looks of it…but where are the comic books…?  Until we get there I think I’m probably an admirer rather than a buyer.  Because you know as soon as buy this a new one that works (or works better at least) for comics and trade paper backs will release…

6 Things Not To Hate This Year Includes…Yours Truly

Thanks to Jeremy Whitley at The Weekly Crisis for putting me on his list of 6 Things Not To Hate This Year.  I feel in good company with the other women on that list.

Check out Jeremy’s post, and if you’ve been dragging your feet on catching up with that I’m doing over on Comics Should Be Good, now is the time to pick up and dive in.

She Has No Head! – Giving Lois Lane A Second Look, For The First Time

New post up on my She Has No Head! Column.  Check it out.

2010 April DC Cover Solicits In Three Sentences Or Less…

Here are the “rules” for this new series of posts.

And we’re off…

I don’t read The Brave & The Bold, but this makes me think I should be.  It just looks fun – and the women being featured here, who often get sexed up to the nth degree, just look like awesome female superheroes, nothing more or less.  I’m not sure why it’s all men unconscious on the ground…but it makes me curious enough that I’m picking this up.

*SIGH* This cover pretty much sums up how I feel about the new Stephanie Brown Batgirl series – there’s nothing really wrong with it, but there’s nothing interesting or inspiring about it.  If it weren’t for my column at CSBG I wouldn’t be buying this book…it’s just so awesomely mediocre.  I miss Cass.

This is a pretty dynamic cover and since I’m already buying this book it’s an easy decision with this cover to keep it up.  I don’t love the kind of Tom Raney look to it, as Raney’s style is not one I love, but it’s still a nice cover.

I continue to be less impressed with this series than everyone else, but I continue to buy it because of my column, and in the hopes that I’ll come up with something profound to say about it, for good or ill.  I also continue to hate the art, and this cover is a fine example of what I hate about it.

2010 April Marvel Cover Solicits In Three Sentences Or Less…

This is a new feature I’m trying out since my world has become all COMICS! COMICS! COMICS! lately.  I’d like to do it monthly…but we’ll see how it goes.  How is that for commitment phobia?  I’m basing these sentences of mine on the solicit cover images only – not taking into account the solicit text that comes with them…since that tends to make things worse I’ve found, instead of better.  I’ll try to be funny…but no promises.

Tune in tomorrow for 2010 April DC Cover Solicits In Three Sentences Or Less.

We all know how much I fucking hated Marvel Divas - inside and out (but especially out) but this is GORGEOUS.  I will buy the hell out of this and hope that the inside is as good as the outside.

I’m still not clear on why Black Widow suddenly ALWAYS unzips her costume, which used to pretty much always be zipped up (maybe it’s a biting commentary on the issue of global warming?) but this unzip is less offensive than the Acuna version, so I can’t be too complain-y.

For the first time in my life I’ve become pretty interested in She-Hulk.  Unfortunately, I wouldn’t be caught dead buying this J. Scott Campbell horror show of a cover, so no money for you Marvel.  Maybe they’ll release it with a variant cover…?

As those of you who have been following my take on the Girl Comics controversy know, I’m pretty excited about this book, despite the ridiculous name.  Add to that a Jill Thompson cover?  And…SOLD!

There’s Just No Room In The World For A Green Haired Half Alien And Her Lover Man Beast…It’s A Damn Shame.

I really liked S.W.O.R.D. – it was certainly the most original book I’ve seen come out of Marvel in a long while.  A nice breath of fresh air.  I thought of doing a giant post about why it’s a shame that this book couldn’t make it, of course adding my layman opinion on why things like this prove that the comic book industry is pretty doomed independent of the digital age…but Greg at CSBG did it first (and way better), so I’m just going to link to him instead.

And this was the advance cover released for issue #5 (the final issue) – the cover is completely awesome – which makes everything feel like an even bigger damn shame I say.

She Has No Head! – Spotlight: Eleanor Davis

New She Has No Head! column up on Comics Should Be Good.  Check it out.