Happy All Saint's Eve!!!

This has been a busy month. I'm not quite sure where it's gone. I haven't done nearly as much writing or drawing as I would have liked. On the other hand, I've played a couple of gigs, was involved in a couple of events at church and I've spent some time trying to get my office/studio organized. So, like I said, I've been busy.

Anyway, in celebration of the holiday, I drew this in my sketch book this morning.

Looks like the three trick-or-treaters in the foreground probably shouldn't have bothered the old guy in the castle on the hill.

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Below I've taken one of my recent renders in Bryce, used one of the the edge-detect features in Gimp, inverted the colors, then desaturated the colors to make it black-and-white. After adjusting the brightness and contrast a little, and filling in some of the white space, I've got what almost looks like a very intricate hand-drawn picture.

 This next picture is a detail from the same shot.

More stuff next month. Hopefully, by then I'll know how I did in the 3rd quarter of this year's Writers of the Future and Illustrators of the Future contests.

Roadfrogs website is live!

The main news I have to share this month is that I've set up a wordpress site for my comic strip Roadfrogs. So far, I've only put a splash page on the site, but I hope to start posting strips weekly beginning sometime next month. Roadfrogs is an anthropomorphic (otherwise known as "funny animal") strip featuring two rival motorcycle gangs, the Roadfrogs (Froggie, Sword and Pistol) and the Toad Warrriors (Toad and Wart). My wife Peggy and I came up with the concept over twenty years ago. At that time I penciled and inked three comic book pages for the first story in the series, entitled "Froggie Went A'Courtin'". Somehow, although I've managed to hold onto virtually every other piece of artwork I've done over the thirty-five to forty years, those three pages are missing.

Therefore, I've decided to rewrite, expand and redraw the entire story, this time in a comic strip format. Roadfrogs can be seen at roadfrogs.wordpress.com. In the meantime, here are a couple of pen and ink drawings I've done this year. Just to show that I can do something other than science fiction and fantasy art.

This panda above is based on a photo I found in an issue of National Geographic Kids. Children's magazines are a great resource for photo reference. The photo reference for the batter pictured below came from the back cover of an old Richmond Braves program magazine.

I'm still waiting to hear results for the 3rd quarter of this year's Writers of the Future and Illustrators of the Future contests. I think that both the writing and art that I have submitted have been stronger each quarter thus far. The more I write and draw (and 3d model), the better my work seems to get. I guess the old axiom of "practice makes proficient" is true.