It's a small world, after all

I'm on my Facebook in my ‘real-life’ identity.

I was somewhat surprised the other day when a friend ‘shared’ a political post with me. Its original author, unknown to my friend, was a catfight artist who was fairly well-known several years back. 

I had to check his profile to be sure. No mentions of catfight art, or any art at all, really. But his profile pic was a self-portrait, and although the style had evolved, it was clearly the same guy.

What are the chances of that happening?

Life in crowds.

 Last week we were talking about how much attention Cam gives crowds, always rendering them with expressions and body language. Here's a great example. This is a frame in which the crowd is the real subject.

 Again with the crowds...

 This Betty drawing just has so much vibration I fell in love with it. I'm referring to the head nearest the center.

 Hey, it's the Buddha! I just dig it, OK?

 Still more crowd work!

And a process progression that Cam put together. From '96.

Working out a page

Today I'm posting an interesting progression of a page in development that I stumbled on. Here you can get a bead on his work flow and thinking. I like how he develops the whole page at the same time. It helps with unity to always think of the page as a unit rather than a series of panels. A subtle but important difference in approach. Thinking through a piece and working it out is what an artist will spend most of his time on. Thumbnails can help but not everyone uses them. Since you can change so much when you're working digitally, theres an argument to be made to set that phase aside and let your preliminary sketch function as a thumbnail. So far I haven't happened onto any thumbnails that Cam may have done.

Diving for Treasure

I love just diving into the vast and wonderful sea of artwork I have before me. It's staggering what's here and I shudder to think that I haven't even begun to catalogue it yet. 

But it's like diving for treasure in that I'm never sure what I'll find. Here's the haul from today's random dive. 

First: They're so cuuuuute!

 The Iconic Fist In Pussy!

 And according to the file name, this is a bit of Ipad art. I need to take a crack at that  myself.

Drawing again

I'm drawing again.

After I got out of the hospital, I fell into the habit of just crashing in the easy chair and watching TV. I hadn't watched TV regularly in years, so I had some catching up to do.

But eventually, I remembered why I quit watching TV in the first place. It just depresses the hell out of me. It's not the content, although the content is certainly dismal, for the most part. The problem is that it's so passive. You just lay there in the recliner, letting this stuff bleat at you. I need to be intellectually stimulated. I need to interact, not just lie there. Art and web surfing give me interaction and intellectual stimulation.

So now I’m drawing again, as my health allows. And I feel better emotionally and mentally for doing it.

What this means for you is that there are going to be more pages of Cavegirl Combat. I hope to have several ready in a couple of weeks.

At this point in my illness, about one-fourth of sufferers are already dead. Except for the effects of chemotherapy, I’m leading a fairly normal life. But the long-term survival rate — past five years or so — is almost zero. While I feel pretty good now, I could start going downhill very suddenly and very quickly. I hope to have a lot more art for you before that happens.

Some cg background work

I found these partially finished pieces with characters painted over a cg background. Marrying the two techniques, painting and cg, is effective as hell, I think. I really like these.

This week

I'm intending to do daily posts this week to catch up a bit. Then next week I'll go to weekly Monday posts again.

So, off to the races. This bunch is all sketchbook work majoring in heads. I find it all most inspiring and instructive as an artist. I hope Cam isn't cringing about my choices here, but just for me I like this sort of thing. Sketchbook work is usually done without the intention of having it published on the web like this, so, Cam, cringe away, but I love this stuff. I'm sure everyone else does too.

Back again.

Thanks, everyone, for your patience. I have to apologize once again for yet another absence from this website. The reasons can be summed up in a nutshell by saying that I've been so busy I haven't had time to shit sittin' down! Gee, and this used to be such a classy site before I got here...

At any rate, I've had along with my work, a lot of personal tumult...well, not a lot, but just the right kind of get in your way, let's see how many ways can be invented to interrupt me in my work, kind of tumult. I think I've had about, honestly, three to four days a week to actually work on making a living. So in order to deal with the cut in working hours I've had to endure, I had to set some things on the back burner, which meant  this blog along with my own have been neglected. Even my paysite has been getting short shrift.

If this continues to be a problem for me I'll consult Cam and see who else he may want to guest host here in order to get this done. But it won't because I'm so greedy to do this!

Excuses aside, let me try to make up for it in the coming weeks as Cam recovers by going a little bugfuck here with the posts. They'll be a little random and will be a result of my sifting through many many gigabites of material and grabbing things that pop out. But, I'm betting no one will complain too much about it.

Many thanks to Anonymous for a well timed and appreciated kick in the ass. Now I will bow out of the picture and in the words of the sage Yosemite Sam: GET ON WITH IT!!!!!