miss squarehead

Above: I drew this NON-digital (*gasp) picture using my niece's pencil crayons. The carrot doesn't look quite right; I still need to work on perspective drawing.

I've been spending more time with my sister's kids since we moved into their neighbourhood. Jeff and I both have our own different relationships with our nieces; mine, not surprisingly, tends to focus on creativestuff like music and art and crafts.

Years back, I introduced my nieces to comics as a different way of telling a story. They were both fascinated, and I encouraged them to make up their own comics. On the fly, I made up a character named Miss Squarehead that was purposely easy to draw so that I could draw my strip quickly, and to show them that the drawing didn't have to be complex and sophisticated to tell a story.

Since then, both of them have come up with their own comic strip characters as well as experimenting with different drawing styles. They're obviously influenced by their mother's artistic talents; both can already draw better than many adults I know. :-)

I think I must have drawn at least 50 Miss Squarehead strips over the years, during comic-drawing sessions with my nieces. The three of us will sit happily drawing for 20-30 minutes at a time, occasionally peering over at each other's progress and finally reading each other's completed strips at the end of the session. Sometimes we'll do up to three or four strips in a row this way.

Anyway, I decided to keep the most recent Miss Squarehead strip and scan it for Blatherings, just for fun, before tossing it. Please note that there is pretty much NO planning ahead re: plot...much of the challenge and fun of these sessions is from making the story up as we go along. I drew the first panel below, for example, with absolutely no idea what I was going to do for the rest of the strip.

Click on the image below for a bigger version; it's one I drew last night in the most recent comic-drawing session with my nieces:



I've been doing comic strips for as long as I can remember. I did a four-panel strip about a somewhat psychotic baby called "Boppy" for our homemade family newsletter when I was a child. I got paid to do Bible-themed comics for a Sunday School newsletter when I was in high school, and also won a typewriter and a couple of dictionaries in a comic strip contest for a country-wide high school newspaper called Sunshine News.

Update on my newest comic, Will Write For Chocolate...it launches in January! The URL will be http://www.willwriteforchocolate.com. Wordy, I know, but wwfc.com was already taken.

Hm...I might scan some of those ancient comics I've been Blathering about and post them for fun. I need to unpack my scrapbook first, though, and I also reserve the right to change my mind once I actually look at them again.

:-)

I also need to get some kind of illustration/cartoon portfolio online. I'm starting to get more requests for paid illustration these days (and an increasing number of requests for free art which I'm having to turn down more often, sorry) simply because of posting stuff on Blatherings and Flickr, so I -know- that it would be worth actively seeking clients.

My focus will always be on writing, but I'm realizing the wisdom of spending part of the time developing another source of income. When my tendinitis acts up -and at this point I have to admit to myself that my tendons may never recover fully-, I can still use the Wacom Artpad even I'm not able to type as much. And having two types of arm-use activities reduces the possibility of over-use of one type of tendon.

I know...that's a lot of tendon talk. But it's the way I've had to learn to think. Everything is in terms of "arm points," which refers to how much activity I can do with my arms each day before my tendons get tired out. I have a lot more daily arm points than I used to, but I still have to be careful of how I use them.

Thanks to those who were kind enough to participate in my songwriting poll yesterday. I'll be compiling your answers into an entry for the Filking.net FILK FAQ. I'll wait another week, though, just in case others want to contribute.

From my Sketchbook archives:

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