Cavegirl Combat, week 15

And so the battle continues, with Mika continuing to work Oko over between the legs.

Cavegirl Combat, week 14

Poor Oko is still getting nailed hard by Mika's thrusting fingers in this week's episode.

Health update

Saw the specialist yesterday. I have an immediate, and life-threatening, situation. This is above and beyond the other stuff I've written about. Physically, I feel pretty good, but that could change at any time. I don't have enough information to say more. But I'll keep you advised.

Cavegirl Combat, week 13

Oko sees it coming, but she can't stop Mika from viciously escalating the attack in this week's installment.

I owe the blog some art

From the early 2000's – another panel from the 'sofa fight.'

Cavegirl Combat, week 12

Those of you who are rooting for Mika will enjoy this week's installment of Cavegirl Combat.

Stunned and hurt by the force of Mika's kick last episode, Oko can only moan helplessly as Mika slams punch after punch into the her foe's groin.

Owww! That hurt!

This is time-stamped December, 1999, but I'm almost sure it's older than that.

It's my catfighting cartoon girlfriend, lingerie girl, and she's just been smacked in the boobs by jungle girl. Jungle girl caught her completely off guard, and lingerie girl is pissed.

The picture I posted previously had to be reduced eightfold before I posted it; this one is the actual size at which it was first drawn – probably on my old Windows PC with a whopping 8MB of RAM.

I am still taken with the energy in this sketch, and the expressiveness of her face.

Something I see, even in the work of top cartoonists and comic book artists, is that the energy frequently gets squelched as the work gets closer and closer to completion. And it certainly happens with my stuff.

Almost over

This has been sitting around on the hard drive for eight or nine years. It was a one-panel drawing – not part of a narrative.

This was originally a huge file: 8000 by 7000 pixels, which at the time, pushed the memory of my computer to the limits. The original art became corrupted, and I think it happened because it was so huge the computer I had at the time couldn't successfully write the file back to the disk.

In 2012, I have enough RAM to easily open a dozen files that size simultaneously, but I realize I get no advantage in working that large. So the first thing I did with this when I decided to post it was reduce the thing to 1/4 the original size. I cleaned up the corrupted areas, completely redrew the blonde's face and finished the brunette's hair. Then I reduced it by half again, to the current size, for posting.

There are some themes here that are familiar if you've been following my drawings for any time: the bruises and bite marks and the solid, smashing uppercut to the breast.

Another theme here is the size mismatch. Like a lot of fans, I am fascinated by fights where a bigger girl is dominated and defeated by a smaller one. The story here, I think, would be that the blonde agreed to put on the gloves confident the smaller brunette would be easy to take. But the brunette took everything the blonde dished out and outpunched her at every turn.

The blonde, exhausted, dazed and hurt, stands with her arms hanging helplessly at her sides while the brunette slams away at her ample chest. The blonde knows that with two or three more punches, she'll go down, but it's too late to do anything about it.

Exhaustion

It's been awhile since I contributed any archive art. So, here's a drawing of two exhausted fighters, part of another unfinished narrative from seven or eight years ago.

Another perspective

I would love to just embed this YouTube video by an artist who produced a show of catfight paintings. But I'm not going to because I'm not sure she would appreciate having her work identified in any way with what I do.

At the same time, I think what she has to say is worth listening to, and I would like everyone to watch it and at least consider it.

Her show was called CATFIGHT: (Hello, Nurse).

You may find her assessment of male catfight fans objectionable. My own response is that yes, that's probably how we look to a lot of women – even the women who earn income producing content for our pleasure.

I don't know how we change the image of ourselves as dirty, slobbering old perverts.

I will only say that she seems to be an artist providing some thought-provoking ideas, and I hope you'll refrain from making hostile comments. Every artist deserves support.

And yeah, I'd totally wrestle her.

Update

Not to turn this into the Wildebeest Health Update Blog, but I want to let you know a little of what's up, and how it affects Cavegirl Combat and other projects.

First of all, I haven't worked on Cavegirl Combat in a few weeks. I was working weeks ahead, and I still have significant lead time, but there's an increasing chance that there will be some delays in the spring.

I have a handful of other story ideas I want to explore, but I've done only the first few loose sketches. I still want desperately to find a technique that doesn't require me to spend so much time on each page.

I go into the hospital later this month for more tests. I still don't know everything that's going on. I have the hereditary health issue that I wrote about previously, for which the medication actually produces worse symptoms than the illness itself, but keeps the illness from killing or incapacitating me.

In addition, my GP has identified some issues that are probably the lingering effects of another health problem I had five or six years ago. That's what I'm getting tested for.

In the meantime, I've started taking some over-the-counter stuff that helps keep me functional. I have felt better the past two days than I've felt since Thanksgiving.

On top of everything else, I seem to have caught a plain old garden-variety cold, so I've got sore throat, runny nose and coughing to contend with.

Anyway, I'm trying to make myself sit down and finish some art, instead of sleeping and moping around the house all day, wishing I had two sexy, nubile young nurses engaged in a nasty, uniform-ripping catfight over which one of them gets to take care of me.

Oh, there's another story idea.

Cavegirl Combat, week 11

The first "Cavegirl Combat" of the new year finds Mika coming back from a brutal series of breast punches to drive a foot squarely into Oko's puss.

Hope you have a happier new year than Oko's having!