Unfortunately, I am not going to be able to attend the @sequentialartistsworkshop Friday Night Comics workshop this week, because I'm working this afternoon. (Well... there's a slight possibility I may be able to make it if it turns out to be a very short workday. But it's unlikely.) But I did attend the workshop last week, and, uh, didn't get around to posting my comic until now.

Last week's workshop was hosted by Anand Shenoy (@anandpagalkutta on Instagram), and the theme was "aimless comics", basically just start with a grid of 2x4 panels and... draw a kind of an aimless story, without worrying about where it's going. The only further restriction was that there should be at least two panels with dialogue.

Anyway, when not given specific direction I guess my default tends toward drawing monsters, so here's what I ended up with.

New thing (but has a lot of the old thing in there.) , , , , , #podscape #comics #ink #inkdrawing #webcomics #fridaynightcomics #friday https://www.instagram.com/p/Cqd1CL_vKWQ/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

Another workshop with S.A.W., another weird little kid adventure… #fridaynightcomics #lateinlifecartoonist https://www.instagram.com/p/CeFO0XetBfS/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

Attended a comics workshop on zoom given by @believermag & @tilliewalden who is clearly an extraordinary teacher. #FridayNightComics (at San Diego, California) https://www.instagram.com/p/CPb4ZiWD8WP/?utm_medium=tumblr

My older daughter and I decided to attend @believermag’s workshop by @by_teresawong. I realized that I have a very bad memory for what actually happens in movies. I kept asking my daughter to recall the various scenes from Harry Potter. She chose the festive favourite Home Alone. #movies #comics #workshop #fridaynightcomics #lisaonsocial 🎥 🍿 https://www.instagram.com/p/CMDzihJBLHh/?igshid=1m7gkai3zpozd

I once again participated in the @sequentialartistsworkshop Friday Night Comics workshop, this time hosted by Katharine Woodman-Maynard (@woodmanmaynard on Instagram). The project for this week's workshop was to create a four-panel comic about a holiday (or a diary comic, if you were having trouble of thinking of anything related to a holiday), but either with some pattern between panels, or centered around some visual motif.

I ended up sort of combining two holidays...

Okay, I'm going to really make an effort to get some Art Fight revenge attacks up tomorrow, but in the meantime I'll try to get a little more caught up with the comics from past @sequentialartistsworkshop Friday Night Comics workshops that I haven't uploaded yet.

So here's the comic from the May 12 workshop, hosted this time by David Lasky (www.laskycomics.com). The project this time was for participants to draw a comic incorporating a haiku about some recent small event in their life. (Well, a "haiku" in terms of syllable count; it didn't have to be about nature or include a seasonal reference like a traditional Japanese haiku.) So, here's what I ended up with.

So, I participated in the @sequentialartistsworkshop Friday Night Comics workshop again today—actually, I still have some comics from previous weeks I haven't posted which I really ought to get to, but at least I'll get this one up so I don't fall further behind.

The project for today's workshop, hosted this week by Ellen O'Grady (@ellenogradyart on Instagram) was to make four cards that represented different aspects of yourself—positive and negative—through mythological or archetypal figures. First, participants answered four questions to guide their thinking of what aspects to represent. I'm heavily paraphrasing, but I think the questions were more or less as follows: 1. If someone who knew you well were to introduce you to a community intended to make the world a better place, what positive quality of yours would they name? 2. What other quality would you like to bring to the community? 3. What quality might interfere with your contribution to the community? 4. What is something you would do if you could do it with no societal disapproval?

Anyway, I wasn't completely sure of the distinction between #1 and #2, so the first two panels are just more or less positive qualities. The first panel, representing my drive to create things, is the Demiurge, which was sometimes represented as a snake with a lion's head. (Of course, in Gnostic philosophy, the Demiurge wasn't exactly a positive figure, so I guess maybe there's a bit of self-deprecation going on here.) The second panel represents the fact that I like to share knowledge, I guess? I mean, I work as a teacher (well, currently as a studio teacher most of my actual worktime is taken up just keeping an eye on things and making sure the minor on set is being treated well rather than actual teaching, but I'm still nominally a teacher), but I also like sharing knowledge through other means that are less direct and obvious, so I went with Mimir, a figure from Norse mythology who advised Odin; after Mimir was beheaded in a war, Odin continued to carry around Mimir's severed head, which continued to surreptitiously counsel him.

Panel three is the negative aspect, the poor time management that prevents me from getting anything done—and which I'm pretty sure is because I have ADHD. (I haven't been formally diagnosed, but the descriptions and diagnostic criteria I've read seem to be a really good fit.) I tried to think of any mythological figures who tried to do too much and didn't get much done or who otherwise showed symptoms of ADHD, and then I finally decided to go with the Tumblr-famous ADHD creature, BTW, bending perhaps the definition of mythological or archetypal a bit, but what the hey.

And finally panel four... well, despite my reliance on technology and constant computer use, I guess there's a part of me that wants to just... have nothing, and be part of nature. So I thought of the näcken, a figure from Swedish mythology who (at least according to some versions) just sits naked in rivers and waterfalls and plays the violin. (Okay, the violin isn't exactly natural, and I don't play the violin (I did take violin lessons as a young child, but that was a long time ago), but I could chalk it down to just representing the production of art in a natural setting or something.)

So yeah, I don't know if these were the best choices I could have made for these representations, but the time was limited for the workshop, so I went with whatever I came up with in the time.

(Why did I write "The Näcken" but just "Demiurge" without the article? For no good reason; I just didn't notice the inconsistency until it was finished.)

Anyway, I'll try to finally get some of the past Friday Night Comics workshop comics up within the next few days. I also was planning on participating in Art Fight again this year, but I went to sign in and the site seems to be down? Hopefully it'll be back up tomorrow...

Just participated again in the @sequentialartistsworkshop free online Friday Night Workshop, hosted this week by @annasellheim.  The focus for today’s workshop was on expressive characters, and the task was to draw a character monologuing for at least three panels, at least one of which was a full body shot.  So... here’s what I drew.

So after not posting any art (or anything else) all month, I’ll make two posts today!  Neither of which involves art actually drawn today!

The pictures above were drawn at @sequentialartistsworkshop’s free online Friday Night Comics Workshop, hosted this time by Tom Motley ( @cartooniologist).  Basically, for the first page, we had five minutes to draw a character whose face was based on a squiggle, then five minutes to draw a second character whose body was based on a squiggle, then five minutes to draw a background and add dialogue.  (I did not know this third bit was coming, or I would have left more room for the dialogue.)  Then we had... I forget, another five minutes I think? to draw a second page that followed from the first.

So, I wouldn’t call this one of my finest works, but the squiggle shape did lead to me to draw a more exaggeratedly cartoony character than I’d normally draw.

Well, I'd really hoped to post more often in 2024 than I did in the last part of 2023, and so far I am not off to a great start. But anyway, I did participated once again today in the @sequentialartistsworkshop Friday Night Comics workshop, so I guess I may as well post what I drew there.

This week the workshop was hosted by Yasmeen Abedifard (@yasmeen.abedi on Instagram), and the theme was the rules of comics, and when not to follow them. There were three "warm-up" activities for which we were given five minutes each, and then a main activity for which we had ten. The first warmup was just a two-panel comic with three dialogue balloons; the second a two-panel comic with non-rectangular panels; the third a four-panel comic without gutters. Finally, we were tasked with drawing a comic that broke the rules in one (or more) of the following ways: No dialogue, no characters, no panels, fixed perspective, fixed panel size, no gutters, only spreads, backwards narrative, or no narrative. It's hard to make out because of the size and the sketchiness, but my last "comic" is supposed to show a bunch of vignettes of investigators exploring a haunted house and failing to spot the ghosts; it has no narrative, no dialogue, and at least arguably no panels, though I guess you could also argue the rooms of the house sort of function as panels.

I really am going to try to post more in the near future than I have been; we shall see how that goes...

Okay, I still have been very busy lately and I haven't been posting here; sorry; I hope things will turn around in the new year. But anyway, today I participated once again in the @sequentialartistsworkshop Friday Night Comics workshop. It was hosted this week by Breena Nuñez (www.breenache.com), and the project was, basically, to draw a four-panel comic about your family's migration experience: where your family came from, memories of your first home, etc.

I don't have much of a migration story, per se; my parents still live in the same house they lived in since before I was born. Sure, if you go enough generations back, my ancestors came from other countries—England, Sweden, Scotland, Ireland, Norway, Wales—but my family doesn't really carry on any traditions from any of those places, and they don't really talk about them. So, well, I did what I could.

(Given that I was drawing this digitally, I probably should have literally copied and pasted the houses in the second panel; it would have let me do it much faster and gone along with the theme of the panel. But I didn't think of that until I was already well into drawing them. Oh well.)

Yikes, it's been a long time since I've posted here. Things have been tough lately and I've had a lot to deal with. As I've mentioned before, I've been in a really bad financial situation due to the WGA and then SAG-AFTRA strikes (once again, it's not the unions I blame for this; it's the AMPTP for dragging things out and refusing for so long to negotiate in good faith). Well, the strikes are finally over, but I'm not completely out of the woods yet; I have a lot of debt to pay off, and I'm still not in great financial shape... but at least things are starting to look up.

Anyway, today I participated once again today in the @sequentialartistsworkshop Friday Night Comics workshop (I hadn't for a while just because I happened to be working most Friday afternoons lately). Today it was hosted by SAW founder Tom Hart, who I gather stepped in at the last minute when the invited guest was ill. The project was to make some drawings with a stylized, symbolic look reminiscent of ancient petroglyphs, but related to the artist's own life. First we were asked to make three such drawings representing our childhood, adulthood, and old age, and then a single, long, linear drawing representing our lives as a whole, and perhaps drawing on symbols from the previous drawings—and including observers looking at the drawings.

If anyone's curious what my drawings represent and what they say about my life, I guess I'll put a full explanation behind a cut...

So, in the childhood drawing, the large figure, of course, represents me; I gave myself a big head because frankly I think I was a pretty arrogant child. Anyway, as a child I spent a lot of time writing stories and planning out computer games (that I had no idea how to make), so the figures on either side represent characters from my projects; their heads are missing to represent the fact that the projects were unfinished, and there are lines connecting them to represent that some of them were connected in the same fictional universes.

The left side of the adulthood drawing represents college. I'm afraid it's perhaps rather overly literal; the buildings at the bottom represent, well, the actual college; the figure in the lower left is a very crude depiction of a statue of the college mascot that occupies a central location of the campus (Tommy Trojan; I went to USC). As for the sun figure above that, that represents, uh, the sun (like I said, it's literal); as a grad student I was a part of the USC Space Sciences Department and did my dissertation on solar radiation (or at least tried to; I never finished my dissertation, so I never earned my doctorate, though I'm not sure what I'd have done with it if I had).

The right side represents my attempt to turn back toward artistic pursuits. The symbols to my right are supposed to be a paintbrush, representing art; a clapboard, representing movies; and, uh, a twenty-sided die, representing role-playing games (and in this context meant in particular to represent not playing role-playing games, but the creation of role-playing games and supplements, which is something I... want to do but haven't finished anything yet).

Finally, the bottom drawing is the "adulthood" drawing, and is perhaps a bit overly optimistic. The figures from my childhood drawing return, but this time complete with heads, representing my hope that by my old age I'll have finally finished some of my projects and put them out there in the world. As for those blocky shapes in the background—uh, those represent VR buildings, because there are some things I want to do with VR; I don't know; look, time in these Friday Night Workshops is very limited so it's not like I have the leisure to carefully plan out what I'm drawing.

And of course the second page is the representation of my life. On the far left is child me, with many worlds and characters in my head. Then college, with figures with robes and mortarboards pointing in judgment, and then again the figure of the sun. Then I'm standing in front of a blackboard representing my teaching career, and to my side are various simple machines representing physics, the subject I've taught. And then once again we get to my perhaps optimistic vision of the future, where there are once again many worlds and characters, but this time not just contained inside my head but radiating outward to be shared with the world.

Okay, yeah, I don't know; it's self-indulgent, but I think that was kind of the nature of the project, and anything autobiographical kind of tends to be that anyway.

So, I participated again today in the @sequentialartistsworkshop Friday Night Comics workshop, hosted this week by Kit Fraser (@kitcadoodle on Instagram). This week, participants first did a warmup consisting of drawing a simple scribble that corresponded to some emotion, and then expanding that scribble into a character of some kind. (My chosen emotion was "tired"; the original scribble is the squiggly line extending from the tip of the beard to the top of the nose.) The second and larger project was to draw a three-panel comic with a building as a main character.

Yeah, a disproportionate amount of my few posts on Tumblr lately have been from the Friday Night Workshop. Sorry; I want to post more, but I'm still kind of going through some hard times right now; hopefully things will get better soon...

I once again participated this week in the @sequentialartistsworkshop Friday Night Comics workshop. This week the event was hosted by Lillie J. Harris (@lilliejharris on Instagram), and the prompt was just to draw a comic about an unfortunate event you'd experienced.

Given the limited time on the workshop, I probably spent way too much time with the writing and layout and left myself too little time for the drawing, but oh well. (In the interests of accuracy, I even looked back through my old emails to look up the flight number and the exact times of the delays. This was probably unnecessary.)

I want to get back into posting other things (such as things that are drawn in more than a few minutes), but I've still got a lot to deal with at the moment... but in the meantime, I did attend the @sequentialartistsworkshop Friday Night Comics workshop again this week. The host this time was Amy Kurzweil (@amykurzweil on Instagram), and there were two main parts to today's workshop (not counting a bit about stream-of-consciousness writing to generate ideas). First, we were supposed to take one minute to draw ourselves as a robot. (One minute is, of course, not much time, hence the sketchiness of the drawing.) Second, we were to take twelve minutes to draw a four-panel comic about a robot. (There was a little more to it than that, but that was the gist.)

Anyway, I haven't been posting much lately, but I'll definitely have something to post next week, since this weekend is 24-Hour Comics Day, and I'm participating in that, as I have been every year since 2006. Not sure I'll get around to posting the entire comic right away, but I should be able to at least get the title page up on Monday as a teaser. I may also get some in-progress shots up tomorrow or Sunday, but no promises.