Chore Day, Feb 29 -- Cooking (as usual), Doing Laundry, and Drawing Hands

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Graphite and Brush Pen

Graphite and Brush Pen

Chores, chores, chores! Some days I embrace them, and other days I’m out of touch with them. Today was a day of being present. My chores — doing laundry and cooking food for the week — give a gnawing feeling that I should be working on my book. My chores were a welcome relief from drawing and learning Clip Studio Paint EX. For the first time in months, I slept a solid 7 1/2 hours without waking up. What’s going on with me? Have I had an elevation of consciousness? Have I “leveled up” to a new plateau of awareness? Or was I exhausted and simply lucky enough to get a good night’s sleep?

I’ve been drawing lots of hands lately. Hands baffle me. What works best for me is to draw every bone as a cylinder and every joint as a sphere. Doing a wire frame for hands gets me to the point that I can draw an almost human hand…almost. The effort is worth it. Hands are a comics artist’s best tell for showing a character’s emotion. Practice! Practice! Practice!

Muji and Copic Markers work together

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I intend to do pen and wash drawings for my children’s book and I’m waffling between watercolor or markers. I use Muji gel ink pens for my sketches. Muji pens are silky and always deliver a great line…and they’re only about $1.10 each. However, when I apply a wash, there’s noticeable bleeding if I slather on the water when I’m impatient.

With alcohol-based markers such as those made by Copic, the ink lines don’t bleed at all. I have an awesome collection of Copic markers that’s been gathering dust for ages and I have an equally awesome collection of watercolor gear that I haven’t used since the 2017 Inktober.

Muji 0.38mm gel ink pen and Copic markers

Muji 0.38mm gel ink pen and watercolor


These two mother Steller’s Jays are the same character but they don’t resemble each other at all. In fact, they don’t resemble a Steller’s Jay in any way. That’s okay because these characters aren’t really like the garden variety Steller’s Jays that dig up my flowerbeds. Still, for my own sake I have to create a “look book” for my story’s characters just so I’ll have a way to remember to draw them the same every time they appear. I’ll post the look book here when I’ve completed it. It’s already on my project mind map, which is another reminder to me to keep focussed and on track.

Pages from my sketchbook

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Here are some of the ideas I’ve got running through my head…way too many of them and they’re all going in different directions. I’ve been watching some of those “find your style” videos on Youtube and Skillshare, and you know what, I’m more confused than ever. I shouldn’t be surprised that I’m confused — I already have a pen-and-ink style that goes back to my appreciation of the very first issues of Mad Magazine, and later R. Crumb. But for the things I want to do now, that crosshatching style simply takes me too long to do a drawing; worse, I always get the impulse to do more hatching when I should really come to a full stop. It’s an addiction to hatching.

Some day, soon I hope, I’ll know when enough is enough. Until then, I’m sketching away on some new ideas for my Meanie Bambini pomeranian character from The Deadbeat Club, and I’ve been scratching out some ideas for a children’s story book about a bird and a boy.

SKETCHES FOR NOV 17-24 (approximately)

A selection of this week’s sketches. I’ve been tinkering with Copic markers this week. Pomeranians are hard to draw — sometimes they end up looking like teddybears.