Little Doodling - Blood, Door Bells, Kids, Camping

I've not done much doodling this week..no where...but even these I started on some other scratch paper and forced myself to finish them on my sketch pad...now is that really doodling?

Even these I inked over trying another two nibs...both Hunt but since my eyes are so bad I can't make out the inscription. Just before I sat down to post this, my door bell was ringing off the hook. I have one of those door bells that rings the phone. I can pick the phone up and talk to the person there, I can actually see them if I'd fix the channel the door camera is programmed. It comes up on the TV...can be pretty cool, but rarely used, normally we just go to the second floor balconey and yell down, "WHO'S THERE?". This time I knew by the incessant attempts it was kids. Most likely a few of the neighborhood little girls who came buy trying to sell me their art. I'm not sure why they think I'd be a buyer of kid's art, but the are persistent. Well I'm more persistent at avoiding them, HA! I'm taking a mental holiday tomorrow, Friday. No work. I'm headed into the wilderness for a three day backpacking trip with the boys. About a 21 mile hike, two nights out. Looking forward to it, but a bit concerned about my physical stamina, I've not worked out in a long time. To that point I gave blood yesterday. On a complete whim. I was driving back from the post office, and there was a Red Cross blood drive going on at a church on the corner. Don't know why, probably the allure of cookies and juice, I turned in and bleed for them. My pulse was 58...pretty good. It took me less than 5 minutes to fill that bag. (There is a gag in there some where) Hey all you lurkers...I challenge you to comment or become a listed follower. Hello...Hello...check, check. Is the BLOG on? Can you hear me?

Mundane - But High Bio-Rhythm

Actually I've been in a pretty good mood lately. Don't know why, could be that whole bio-rhythm thing I wrote about a while back. So I'll denote this as documenting one of the higher points on the rhythm. As mundane as I think some of the stuff is that I post and share, this would be one of those days it would seem to be just that, mundane, but since I committed to sharing the Sketch Book Diary, I'll adhere to my self imposed mandate. I'm working towards getting more stuff up on My Cafepress Boon Store so I went out and replenished my supplies. I actually used up my earlier sketch pad, so bought a new one, that I just found out is bigger than my last, so the edges are cutting off when scanned...Sorry. I also really like the organic look of pen and ink, brush and ink, so bought some ink to practice. In the past I've just not done much with it because I do like the feel and ease of a Penstix. But that which is worth doing is worth working at. So what you get today is ink practice.

Brush and Ink

Pen and Ink B-5 Nib

Pen and Ink B-6 Nib

Self Promotion - Boon Opens Online Store

Well it is my blog, so I'm going to do some gratuitous self promotion. I established an online store at Boon Cartoons Store. So I created some things to get it started. A logo:

And some graduation themed gifts using the grumpy guy:

And the start of a shirt idea regarding all the reasons people are not prepared for retirement. I know it sounds boring, but I think I can make it witty, insightful and appealing. I've started by using the logo from this blog.

The Twisted Progression From Idea to Finished Product

I figured I'd share all the various sketches and scribbles that lead to the Easter card. This all started from my guilt for not doing a Christmas card. I was going to do a New Years card, but missed that dead line, and it just evolved.

Obviously, I wanted to make the bunny snuff out Santa and his crew, in order to claim his leadership of Christian holidays.

And I wanted the bunny to be ironically beefy.

And played with the idea of a real freaky look or just a Terminator look. Yea, yea I'm warped.

The hunter and his trophies. Squeezing eight "tiny" reindeer in, plus the red nosed one and their leader was somewhat, well, a squeeze.

Then I thought, hell, just have him wipe out the entire Santa village and pillage like a Viking. But that seemed a little too gory.

Easter Bunny Kills Santa and Reindeer

Masters Golf Tournament Week - Old Golf Comic Strip

As I mentioned yesterday I've been scanning in all the old stuff I've done. I figured out how to scan in these larger format cartoons, the originals are about 15x5. This is one from a comic strip I was doing for a golfing newspaper back in 2000. Since it has a Master's Golf Tournament theme figured it was timely and worth sticking up.

I'm Trying to Birth A Comic Strip Here

Trying to get pregnant, well not pregnant in the normal sense, boy meets girl, sperm meets egg, TAADAA 9 month later life has changed forever.

but in the sense I'm really thinking about trying to give birth to a regular comic strip. It is about time. I've been reading and studying about this for nearly 40 years. Not that I haven't done anything before, I have, I took a year or so leave from my normal career, and worked on it, but mostly individual small markets: local press, editorial for county papers, couple of books, self promoted card line, some mural and sign work. I've sold a lot more than a lot of cartoonist wanna be. I made a couple of weak passes at the syndication, but in the end, we got pregnant again and I had to go back to work that generated the kind of income I needed. No more starving artist with two kids. Over time my markets fell to the side and I was doing nothing more than annual Christmas cards.

Recently in my particularly predictable way, I've been doing some internet searches, researching some recent start ups and found their stories pretty similar to mine. They knew they wanted to be a cartoonist from the earliest years. They used to draw all the time. They got stuck in a job that just doesn't get their juices flowing. They constantly were doodling. And then one day they made the leap or commitment. Admittedly I'm anal. I've got a real issue with not being prepared. I say I can stumble forward, but the one thing I've just never been able to truly stumble forward with is not having the money. Right now I already work in a career where my income is random. Yea 100% commish. It sucks, especially if you also have the personality that I do where I'd do what I do for free, cause I'm just a nice guy and don't mind helping people. So with the idea in mind that I need to make some money from cartooning, to offset the time or brain power I'd have to allocate away from my other work, it dawned on my I have over 200 cartoons in files that I could re-purpose and try to sell. It's not like I'm starting from scratch. So I scanned them all in this weekend. Now I need to get my marketing/mailing machine going again. This is really the perfect time. Other than work there isn't anything vying for my time. I banged out about 8 pages of doodles, ideas and drawings this weekend. I'm not going to bore you with them all at once. Maybe over time I'll load them up. This is just one page. A complete visual cacophony.

Beside sharing doodles I guess I'm going to have to start sharing the actual inked and finished products. It sure would be nice to have a following so I could get some feed back. I learned yesterday of a new strip on GoComics that started last year on the internet. They seemed to pick up a lot of press and attention quick and now are on GoComics. Their notoriety may be attributed to their previous gigs as writer and editorial cartoonist for a major city paper. Well, as with everything else in my life, hard work is all I know. So hard work will have to be what it takes.

Give me a NO, or YES Any Day

So much of my time is spent listening to excuses. Excuses that just seem like thinly veiled lies. I politely accept these lies, and normally don't question them too much, because I've learned you're never going to get a straight answer anyhow, and sometimes you just wind up pissing the other person off. I just don't know why people feel they need to spare my feelings. Give it to me straight. I can starve on your maybes so just give me a "YES" or "NO", so I can move on. If there are questions, by all means ask.