Random comic I was compelled to draw this morning. I like firing off a simple 4 panel strip if an idea is burning a hole in my psyche.
As to the content... hope it's obvious. That Overton Window is a fucking bitch. You pride yourself on riding the middle ground but that middle ground just keeps slip slip slidin' into destruction, buddy. Might want to correct your course because whoever is painting that line is on some bad drugs.
File this one under "yet another blog post about separating the artist from the art or something". Just a wee rant/random thought. Skip if you don't give a shit about that stuff.
"Never meet your heroes" is an adage filled with dread and tension. We all have folks who we idolize in some way or another to lesser or greater degrees. If you love movies by Hitchcock, then you are a Hitchcock fan even if you don't like being saddled with that term. And yet Hitchcock wasn't a perfect man (I actually don't know much about him, so maybe he was terrible... I don't know, it's not the point).
In my youth I was influenced by a lot of artists and I still fondly remember their work. I do a Sunday blog post each week called Artists I Like and I highlight someone whose work inspires me. If I know an artist is a piece of shit or has some seriously controversial opinion, I might choose to avoid talking about them for that reason. I have no interest in expanding the lore of an asshole. But also, I have almost no interest in defending an asshole whose only connection to me is they drew a picture I love.
Anyway... I had Armando Gil on my list. Gil was a comics artist for Marvel, DC, etc. I know him pretty much only from the Savage Sword of Conan pinups he drew, which were incredible. So different from other artists' work, so rich and vibrant
I was working up a post about Gil so I looked him up to get a general idea about him. Turns out he was convicted of multiple counts of rape in 2017 and is now in prison.
The fact that I loved his Conan art and that it influenced me as a teen cannot ever be changed. And I'll never say I DON'T love his work. But it is also my choice to promote or not promote someone based on my own feelings about them. I have no desire to promote a convicted rapist, so I won't be including this guy in my Sunday post series.
Normally this is because I don't want to contribute to someone like this financially or socially. In this case I don't think there's much benefit to Gil for anyone talking about him. That ship has sailed. He's never going to be back in the saddle. But aside from that, I have my own principles and endorsing someone like that is not on my list of things to do.
There have been a few other artists who were slated to be on the Sunday list who I removed for similar reasons. Not quite as extreme as this one, but uncomfortable enough that I didn't want to talk about them. Also, I probably already talked about someone who you think was or is a bastard. I didn't do extensive research on all of them. And I don't care about trivial infractions. So what if this or that artist once told someone to fuck off at a convention. Even a dickhead can be good at drawing.
It's my choice. I know that some people are of the opinion that none of this matters and that you should talk about whatever artist you want to talk about, regardless of their deeds. I agree. And I don't want to talk about this one anymore.
The Artists I Like series is about expressing my admiration for work that inspires me. I'm sure 99% of the artists I talk about are wonderful people. Some of them might be assholes. I can live with a few assholes slipping through the gate. And, to be totally transparent, if I post one and later find out something about them that I can't tolerate, I'll just remove that post. That is me doing what I want, on my own.
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| Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Waterson, but you knew that already. |
If I go into a video store (in the past..) and I know I want something cool and fantastic, I can go to the sci-fi and/or fantasy and/or horror sections to find it. I won't find it in the drama section. This is very useful because I'm not in the mood to watch 2 hours about a fucked up romance. I wanna see monsters and shit.
But it's also unfortunate because those labels are boxes that we put ourselves into. Without them, we might explore more territory and be more wildly creative. If I know I'm doing a sci-fi thing then I know I need to check off a few boxes. Maybe that alone is enough to stifle my creativity a little bit.
I dunno.
Here's a label I hate: Gen X.
I'm part of Gen X. But nobody called us that until at least the 90s and I honestly don't remember hearing that term until much later. Nobody talked like that back when I was young. Today... that's all the fuck you hear. It causes us to divide up into boxes based on the year we were born... which smacks of some kinda astrological bullshit if you ask me.
Social mores and pop trends change over time and we can broadly classify them into categories if we want. But there's no bright line between Gen X and Millennials and none between Millennials and whoever comes next. The overlap is staggering, huge.
Until you TELL people which category they belong in. Then suddenly some of them start modifying their behavior to fit it. Suddenly we're being sold products and ideas created by corporations, based on the definitions they've carved out for us. We're corralling ourselves into these dumb, stupid, silly boxes that are useful only for data mining, not for living fulfilled lives.
Here's a label you might know: OSR.
This one is very useful for one big, shiny, obvious reason. It's because Dungeons & Dragons is a trademark. We can't go around putting D&D on the cover of our RPG books, even though they are 100% part of that lineage. So, for better or worse, this label "OSR" has become the stand-in. And that does serve a handy purpose. But it still means we box ourselves in.
And yeah, I know, I know. OSR doesn't just mean D&D. But cool your heels... look around at all the game books with OSR labels on them and tell me how many are NOT part of the D&D lineage, in many cases being entirely compatible with that game. Just because you use OSR to just mean "like older games" doesn't mean the rest of the fuckin' world isn't using it to mean "this is off brand D&D".
Anyway... I feel this boxed in lack of air lately. It's probably why I've slowed down to a crawl with Black Pudding, which has always been an explicitly B/X D&D-based RPG zine... OSR. I'm in a creative head space right now where I don't want to make stuff for D&D. Not at this moment. I have other things I wanna do.
Speaking of... I do have the entire Heavy Helping Vol 2 completed and have had it completed for months. The only stumbling block has been some issues with getting it ready to go up on DTRPG. I'll try to focus and sort that out soon. I know I've promised it to a lot of people.
Sometimes you have an idea for a barbarian king on a throne with his badass skull sword but he's also been a space captain. And you think "How do I square this circle? How can a barbarian king with a sword also have a laser gun?"
Well, you only ask that question because you've been brain-doped by pop culture into thinking laser guns and badass skull swords are artifacts of completely different genres. But what the actual fuck is a "genre" anyway?
Ok, I don't want to get into that.
Look, you don't have to mix lasers and swords. I certainly don't do it all the time. I completely understand the desire to have a setting or story in which the technology is distinctly "ancient" or in which it is distinctly "futuristic". But if you want your barbarian king to have a laser pistol you damn sure can and you damn sure don't have to explain it to anyone.
"Why do your feudal warlords carry phaser rifles??"
Because they do. They live in a world where there are phaser rifles and feudal warlords with broadswords. What part of this reality don't you understand?
One thing that is becoming increasingly clear to me, on the whole creative front, is that I need to stop thinking about doing stuff and just do stuff. One of my big problems was, after GOZR, I didn't want to devote myself to such an intense project again for a while. I was like... y'know... just do traditional fucking layouts with text and fonts.
But I haven't been doing those. So it kind of stands to reason that I should just lean into what I know how to do best and stop fucking around. Meaning: Draw more pages and make little books. It's the one thing I love to do more than anything else and the only reason I don't do it more is because I'm constantly second-guessing myself.
No, this is not a New Year's resolution. I don't do those.
Ideas on the table that already have some progress and that I could/should finish:
Black Pudding 8: Mostly finished.
ZSF: Tons of work put into it, but depending on final form it is either half done or barely started.
Blood Red Pinup Book: This one is done. I have a 64 page book all fixed up. I just need to get it printed and offer it up for sale.
Rock Hardy Book of Dwarfs: Literally finished, including layout, other than doing maybe 3 additional drawings. I just can't muster the energy to do it. I fear it is just a meh book.
GOZR Adventure Book: This is an idea for which I have a few pages. I know people have asked for some GOZR adventures and I just haven't been able to return to that game with the same passion. I think because I poured so much time and effort into it I'm just finished, for now. I gave it my all. I made a complete game book. The idea was that you'd make your own adventures.
Sorry, this is a bit of a random and slightly bitchy post. I'm honestly not in a bad mood. I'm just not focused, which is becoming more and more troubling.
While drawing in this wee sketchbook I just decided to do a very simple OSR sheet. No room for extras, dammit! This game is about the basics, you losers. Go play 5e if you want squishy drama and backstories, you pieces of shit. If it doesn't fit on an index card you don't need it, you rubes!
Ok, that's enough of my sarcasm. Play your games the way you want, you're valid, etc. Blah blah. And artful character sheets RULE!
Crits or DIE!
Why?
There's a character class I wrote and turned into a mini-zine for a Gary Con I attended. It was called The Lug. It's basically a big, dumb brute of a guy who has a heart of gold. Essentially Fezzik from Princess Bride. You know the trope. I have often thought I should give The Lug a rendering in Black Pudding, but I can't seem to do it.
Why?
It seems to be because these are relics of a decade ago when I was in a very different mindset. I was just discovering the beauty of revisiting old school D&D and it was shiny and new again. And I wanted to put on the aesthetics of that era. I did work. Then I changed and moved on. I have other ideas now and my approach is very different. I can't put myself back into that mindset.
It was a mistake to start Adventures in the North as a multi-part series. I've never been good at maintaining that sort of thing because my inspirations drift over time. It would have been wise of me to do it as a one-shot adventure location instead of an 11-point mini-setting.
The Lug has the same problem. It was a cool idea at the time, but now I think about it... it feels very liming. Your character would be a one trick pony. You bop people on the head and smash things.
Where IS the God of Tits & Wine??
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| Game of Thrones |
Too bad this 10/10 performance petered out and landed on a 4/10 sour note, like a toddler who says "I'm gonna stay up all night!" but their wild energy turns to irritation and then slumber.
As you might have noticed... I have some B/X D&D on the brain these days. I was worried... for a time in recent months I simply did not have it on the brain. Burnout? Probably not. I don't really "burnout" on something. I get distracted.
OD&D is a beast with which I am familiar only through the osmosis of reading blogs, FB posts, Twitter, and listening to a bazillion podcasts about the OSR. I understand what it is, I know it's rules, generally, but I'm unfamiliar with it intimately and have no nostalgia for it. I never knew much about its existence until much later in life, to be honest. No one I knew who was into gaming back in the 80s ever mentioned it or owned it.
What I did have intimate experience with was B/X, BECMI, 1e, and 2e. That's my era, due to the age at which I bought my ticket to ride (13-14). The first one I played was B/X. The first I owned was Red Box. It was all glorious, of course.
Anyway... levels.
Peeking into OD&D I can see that Fighting Men were given levels through 9, Magic-Users through 11, and Clerics through 8. I don't believe there was any sort of level cap or anything, it's just that they only included those levels. Those books are a shit show of organization - a beautiful shit show, of course. I am an old school zine kind of guy so you would think that I'd be all over OD&D's gritty photocopier aesthetic. And I do admire it! But it's not my D&D so it's hard to get a boner about it.
Add to that the fact that even though B/X is far better organized, cleaned up, and codified it is still a fairly crude book by today's standards, right? Who the fuck uses that garish Souvenir font anymore?? (hint: I do).
So what was my point here? Oh yeah... this one goes to 14. And I think that's super important.
Going to level 10ish is fine. Going to 18 or 20 (AD&D's range, from what I remember, and the range of 5e) is fine and dandy too. Going to 36 is BONKERS. What was Frank Mentzer thinking? (well, the 36 level range had already been promised so it wasn't his idea... he was just fulfilling it.)
14 levels is basically perfect. You have your sweet spot at lower levels, some access to real power, and a nice place to say "We've done it. Let's roll up some new level 1s."
There are other reasons, though. It's hard to hold 20 levels in your brain. What does 14 mean in the context of 20? But 14 fits nicely. I know that getting past 7 means you're a big fuckin' deal. Getting to 14 means you're a god damn existential threat. After all, even though 7th level spells aren't in B/X (and maybe they fucking should be), given the logic of the Magic-User's XP table, they should be slinging 7th level spells at level 13. Mass Invisibility... Charm Plants... bring it.
There are 7 classes in B/X. Characters can get to level 14... 14 is 7 x 2. This means something.
Ok. Time to wrap this up. I'm rambling. Next up, the B/X 64 Challenge! Write and publish a 64 page (or 32, or 48) book for B/X within a year. Stop just thinking about it. Do it.
Man what a couple of weeks. I had to do some travel for work and while I do enjoy getting out, especially after this past year, I really wasn't ready for it. It was a stressful trip. So my past couple of weeks have been creatively barren, I'm afraid.
The worse thing about travel is people. I guess I'm more anti-social than I thought. I just wear out so fast when I have to mix it up with other people. This is one of the reasons I don't go to conventions very often. They are a mental grind for me.
Anyway, I'm back now. Maybe the fires of creation will heat up. Definitely no shortage of projects that are calling for my attention. I just don't know what sort of energy I have to give them.
I made this post on Facebook here. It was not triggered by anything that has been said to me personally, just based on some things I've noticed lately here and there.
Sometimes I see people refer to traditional art (non-digital) as "hand drawn". But this is not a correct description of what they actually mean.
I mostly draw on a tablet at my computer. I promise you that 100% of everything I draw is "hand drawn".
The term you are looking for is probably "traditional". Which just means you have a preference for things that are not created digitally. Preferences are fine, of course. But I challenge you to look at art with an open mind and I bet you will eventually not care at all if the art you are seeing was created with a wooden pencil or a stylus.
The attached image here is a pencil drawing. It is completely digital and it was drawn by Will Terry's hand. Is there REALLY a meaningful difference between digital and traditional art? I don't believe there is. If there's anything in the world in which I can claim expertise it is this topic.
EDIT: Of course this post is about the experience of seeing art. The experience of creating it is very different and our preferences are really important. Some people need to feel the wooden pencil smashing into their finger flesh or to smell the toxic paint fumes. I always loved it when I had ink stains on my fingers. But for many many reasons I greatly prefer drawing on my tablet and I don't miss traditional drawing much at all. But that's just me. You do you.
In this post I showed a full page table of recent events to kick start a GOZR game. Somehow I fucking lost the page. I know, how in the actual FUCK do you lose something you spent hours working on? I dunno. But I damn sure did. I've scoured my files and backups and came up with nothing. So I must have not named this file correctly to begin with, then I deleted it thinking it was junk.
Shoot me.
Anyway, I did have a fairly robust JPG of the file and I managed to blow it up, tweak it, and added some cool bg graphics to spice it up. I think the result is better, though I'm still pissed at myself. As a general rule, increasing the size of a raster image is a shitty idea and you should never do it.
Kids, don't do as I do, do as I say.
Speaking of Conan, I had a thought while thinking.
Here's my Conan: He is a muscled man, beardless and tan. He is fair and respects his word. He will treat with you with respect as long as you honor your own word. He will gut you otherwise and not lose a wink of sleep. He loves the ladies and the wine and the adventure. Every day is a new day that should lead to some cash, which leads to some wine and women. Conan doesn't wear a lot of armor and doesn't indulge in speeches.
My Conan is based mostly on Savage Sword comics and the 1982 movie with a smattering of Robert E. Howard. This is my Conan.
People will argue that this is not an accurate portrait of the Cimmerian. Only the image of Conan presented in REH's writings are true, everything else is false. And I get it. If you want to be an originalist to the works of a dead man, I get it.
But let's be honest. REH wrote maybe 21 Conan stories, and most of them are really cool. But since his death there have been many more stories written, many novels, some movies, cartoons, RPGs, and a metric FUCKTON of comic books. One could inundate oneself with Conan material and be a Conan fanatic without ever reading Robert E. Howard.
This is upsetting to originalists, but it's the god damn truth. If you spent your youth reading Conan comics and never read a single Howard story you are still a Conan fan and you still have Conan in your blood, by Crom. Don't let the dogs tell you otherwise!
But of course by all means you should read Howard. Most of those stories are pretty good shit. The longer ones are not my cup of tea, but worth a look.
An interesting thing about this setting is just how inaccurate it is to Arab culture and the mythos in which it plays. For example, my understanding is that the tales we call Arabian Nights are actually Chinese in origin (?), not Arabian. but folks in the Arabian world, having also grown up knowing about these tales, assume they are Arabian. There are lots of other culturally inaccurate ideas in the game that you can Google for yourself.
I'd love to say these things don't matter because it's an elf game. And... yeah... I mean, mostly that's true. But we'd be fools and - worse - assholes if we totally ignored it. This is a game series based on a distinctly American male's idea of what Arabian fantasy is. More specifically, it's based on a certain generation of American males: mine.
When I was in first grade, c. 1976, I remember our little asses being marched into the school's auditorium to watch a movie. I remember it vividly because we were arranged from shortest to tallest (so people could see over each other, natch) and I was second in line. The only person shorter than me was Vickie and her pigtails. I loved Vickie. Being placed next to her in line, for me, was an early romantic experience that filled my wee mind with ideas. I was her "taller man".
Anyway. That's not important. The fact that she ignored me is meaningless. The point is we watched the 1963 classic Jason and the Argonauts, then only a little over a decade old. It was phenomenal! Warriors, ships, giants statues, skeletons! My mind reeled with the imagery looming over me.
This has jack shit to do with Arabian Nights, but it's this sort of movie, along with mummy movies and other adventure flicks, that fueled the imagination of Jeff Grubb, author of TSR's Arabian Adventures setting book that launched the Al Qadim campaign series.
Jason and the Argonauts, the mummy movies, Sinbad, the Thousand and One Nights... these are the sources for Al Qadim. Arabian mythology and history are really a distant second. The setting is a hodge podge of middle-world cultures and ideas, all filtered through the brain of a white male American riffing on ideas that inspired him in the 60s and 70s. And it's fucking fantastic! I love Al Qadim, for what it is. Warts and all.
But I understand that folks from middle-world cultures might find the work irritating or even mildly offensive. I don't believe it is egregiously so. Jeff Grubb and crew did a bang-up job of doing the best with what they had and genuinely trying to make a setting that lovingly and respectfully approached the material. But it was by and for white Americans, so any actual near-east perspective is not really present in the work - and that is one of the things that must be kept in mind when exploring it.
This is the subtle point that people miss out on when they complain about "cancel culture". Nobody is running around screaming "cancel it!" like the right wing media machine wants you to think. Rather, things we took for granted are being examined from new perspectives and sometimes that means something old and beloved has to be re-evaluated if you want to be intellectually honest and socially responsible.
You can still love the shit, so if you feel some sense of outrage welling up just tamp it back down, kiddo. Enjoy your magic carpet ride, just don't forget it's complete fantasy.
But hey, maybe check out this video series that goes into a lot of depth on the topic. They talk about these issues more broadly, from a modern perspective, so don't go into this expecting a short review of Al Qadim. You ain't gonna get that, buster.
EDIT: And I want to say for sure that I 100% accept that this series has serious problems. No defense will come from me on that front. This is probably why, even though I own this and still collect it, I have not ran it. I could have easily ran this setting long ago. Still I don't.
HOW DID YOU GET INTO GAMING?
It was 1984, I was 13. I had a crush on my math teacher, Mrs. Kendall. She was a short, plump woman with chubby red cheeks and an overbite. She had these delicious black rimmed glasses and wore simple dresses. But they were snug enough that her ample curves couldn't help showing through. I was 13. I noticed this shit.
Anyway. Um... one day after class I stopped to chat her up, like you do at that age. I was putting on my moves, talking about Conan comics and she clearly wasn't into it. She was rushing me. Time to leave. I got the message eventually and left the room with a cool swagger, pushing up my glasses to show solidarity.
In the hall was my buddy Sam talking to this tall dude I saw around but didn't know. His name was David and he had in his hand a thick biology book that contained no references to evolution and this other book with the fucking weirdest looking creatures on the cover I had ever seen. Title said "Monster Manual". It was some next level strange bullshit. He also had this little blue ball in his hand... like tiny. Like a toy. Kept saying it was a "20 sided die", which sounded like complete nonsense to me.
Well, turns out that book was for this weird board game without a board called Dungeons & Dragons. He was looking for some players and Sam was volunteering us to join the game. As it turns out, I remembered Mrs. Kendall one time talk about a game like this where you used numbers to represent character traits. Like you'd have a strength score or something. She seemed to think it was a useful math tool or some shit, so I was like in my head going "This could be my way in" so I was like "Yeah man, let's play."
So we did. I played a character (you make up characters) called Beano the Cheesey Wizard. David, who was the MC of the event, didn't seem to love that name but he was like "whatever, just roll for initiative". Beano was kind of a skinny, weak, silly asshole who wore a fedora and carried a big sword. Now... here's the thing about the game. Wizards couldn't use swords. David said I couldn't have a sword and I said the price list says 15 gold pieces and I have 48 so unless the shopkeeper shoots me, I'm buying a fucking sword.
I got the sword, but wasn't allowed to use it. I know, it's fucking stupid. But the rule book says I can only use a dagger, dart, or staff. I mean, in the words of Lars Ulrich, "they don't actually put anything there to stop you, like spikes"*. So I carried that fuckin' sword and made a point of threatening people with it as often as possible. But the MC was stubborn and would not let me use it. I played this up. "Beano tries to draw his sword but some invisible force stops his hand. He struggles against it... clenching teeth and pushing at the force but to no avail! Frustrated, he casts Magic Missile instead."
Beano was killed by kobolds who laid a pit trap. Poor bastard fell in, taking 6 damage... 4 more than his hit point total. Then a kobold shot him with an arrow for 6 more and he was at -10. Apparently, according to the MC, -10 is a big deal. I said "Look, I'm fine with Beano being dead. I'll roll up a dwarf named Cormac Mac Daddy. But if this shit doesn't get me to second base with Wanda Kendall I'm telling people you shave your nads."
David lit a cigarette at that point. Not uncommon back then. He was older, maybe 17. I remember Toto playing in the background when he looked at me and said "That might play well with my rep.". Someone, I think Jesse, knocked over a can of Dr. Check at that point, spilling it on the Monster Manual. Not sure what happened next, but it's not important. I did score that copy of the Manual from David later that year by trading issue 107 of Savage Sword of Conan. I didn't mind the Dr. Check stains, but it pissed me off that pages 17 and 18 were stuck together. Seriously, David? What the actual fuck.
When I relayed the story of Beano to Mrs. Kendall she smiled, nodded, and said "Ten foot pole could have found the pit trap." I believe the "ten foot" comment was a phallic suggestion, honestly. And, if I'm being straight, it kind of put me off a little. Like... what was she suggesting anyway? Feeling incredibly self-conscious, I stopped making moves on her and kept our potential affair to myself for private time. "Tow the line, love isn't always on time", right? But I still kept playing in David's D&D game. Cormac made level 3 before succumbing to a roper's grasp. His sister, Fanny Doodle Mac Daddy, inherited his +1 war hammer and lived on to see level 9.
That is the truth, I swear it. Every detail.
*He was talking about driving between the lines.
Bit of a rant here.
There's a lot of bad art wisdom out there. I grew up hearing a lot of things that simply are no not true and it probably some impact on how I developed as an artist. I dunno. But bottom line is that this shit is false.
Here are a few falsehoods on my mind lately that bug me when I hear them. To be clear, I don't hear these often. But they are out there.
1. You need to sketchbook
2. Trad art is more genuine
3. Tracing is cheating
4. It takes training
5. You draw so you can paint motorcycles and do baseball logos
1. YOU NEED TO SKETCHBOOK
No, not really. It's nice to sketchbook and I'm an advocate for doing it. But you don't have to. I haven't kept a "real" sketchbook in years. I sketch all the time on my tablet, on notebooks, scrap paper, etc. Most artists just like to doodle. But you know what? You don't have to do that shit if you don't wanna.
Draw when you want, where you want.
2. TRAD ART IS MORE GENUINE
Fuck off. This is just elitist garbage along the lines of "digital art is not real art" bullshit. I remember getting into an argument with a good friend in the early 90s when we were looking at Batman: Digital Justice. He felt like it was not real art. I strongly disagreed.
Art is not limited to any given medium. Medium is the thing through which you express art. Arting through a crow quill is no more or less art than arting through a Wacom tablet. So get over yourself already.
3. TRACING IS CHEATING
What the fuck does it mean to "cheat" in art? That's such a bizarre thing to think. I grew up hearing this a bunch. The measure of a good artist was the ability to "freehand" a photorealistic likeness onto the paper with the power and strength of your art muscles. Preferably with only a single pencil, which is a bit like a sword or a dick.
And yet I learned various techniques for cheating in art from art classes. I learned how to do those grid things where you grid out an image then blow up the grid with a projector and then draw what's in each square, but larger. There's probably a name for that.
One drawing technique I learned in 6th grade was how to transfer-trace images. I either learned it from a kid named Danny or I made it up. Or, more likely, I picked it up from using those Preso-Magix transfer sets. The technique was to graphite the backside of an image such as a comic book cover, then use a ball point pen (dry, old, didn't matter) to trace the image onto a clean sheet of paper. Bam! You got a perfect tracing of the comic art. Then you would pencil or ink or color it to perfection.
I credit this stupid simple method with at least 50% of the development of my drawing skills. I ruined SO MANY comic book covers. I am so very sorry, Peter Parker.
Anyway. Tracing is fine. Do it. Trace some shit off then draw from it. Like riffing on a good song. Of course stealing other peoples' art is not cool at all so if you're gonna trace something make it your own or just do it for practice. Don't be a dooshnozzle, geez.
4. IT TAKES TRAINING
To do what? To art? No, actually, it doesn't.
Training and practice are great, don't get me wrong. You can learn some amazing tricks and tighten up your game this way. If you want to be a highly paid professional, then training probably does matter a little. But to art? Fuck no. You just do it. The doing it part is training, anyway. Don't turn this into a kung fu movie wherein you have to seek out the Master to teach you the Reverse Dragon Nib Technique.
5. YOU CAN DRAW, SO YOU SHOULD PAINT MOTORCYCLES AND DO BASEBALL LOGOS
This is a personal pet peeve. I grew up being known as the kid who can draw. Having that reputation meant family and friends would often recruit me to do things like draw their dog, draw their car, draw their mom, paint on their wall, paint their motorcycle gas tank, design their little league logo, etc. And sometimes I'd do it and always always I would hate every minute of it.
Maybe I'm just a selfish bastard. But I like to draw what I like to draw and I don't like to draw what I don't like to draw. It's a dumb-simple concept but that's how the shit is. I am not a car painter nor am I a mural artist. I draw cartoons and pinups and RPG art and if I wanted to pain motorcycle gas tanks I'd fuckin' be doing it.
(Though, being honest, I think painting motorcycle tanks would be hella fun! I just have no idea how to even begin doing it.)
I probably traced the figure in this drawing from some magazine ad. I don't remember as it was like 25 years ago or something. It doesn't matter one fuck because this drawing is not a demonstration of my freehand muscles and assuming it should be is some dumb shit.
Now, I wanna be really clear. Being a skilled freehand artist who can draw your kid's face without tracing or anything at all is fantastic! Good on you. But doing it like that is not a requirement for arting nor does it make the arting better, as a rule. It's just another cool thing you can get good at.
I haven't read this entire issue of Conan. In fact, I'm a Savage Sword man so I pretty much turned my nose up at the color Conan comics. Those were for kids! They were rated PG.
It's funny though. Here Conan is in a bar being hit on by a hottie that "works here". They do everything they can to skirt around the fact that she's a prostitute and that they are going to get it on. Instead, they go somewhere to "talk". lol
Whose idea was it to make Conan fit into a line of books sold to kids anyway? I mean... I'm not complaining. Some nice covers came out of it. And probably some cool stories too. I wouldn't know. I was busy reading Savage Sword of Conan where there was boobs and shit.
I installed the latest version of Krita and tried it out again now that I'm back on the Intuos 4. Naturally, it's awesome. Lots of great brushes. The way you can rotate canvas so easily is super cool. I know that rotating my canvas in PS7 is fuckin' stupid slow.
But dammit I just have so much creative energy invested in my PS7 setup. And it's fast. Like... my pen strokes in Krita have lag. I hate that. But when I do a stroke in Photoshop it's instantaneous. Feels very natural. So I guess I won't be budging from my digital grognard stance. I will continue to use a massively outdated drawing program on a massively outdated computer until it dies or I do.
In other news, I've been noodling some comic book ideas. Been a long god damn time since I did a proper comic. I might have mentioned it here before... but comics are a lot of work. Like, a metric shit ton. If you know a comics artist who actually does the work, kiss 'em. They deserve it.
Here's a rat man drawn rapidly in PS7 for shits and giggles.
