SKRIBLSKRIBLSKRIBL

[spatch]

Carolyn got me a Wacom tablet back in January for my birthday and I've been having a great deal of fun with it. Not only did it come with fun software that turns photos into fun things like other pictures only different, it also came with a fake pencil (called a "stylus") that has a tiny tip on one end (called a "tip") and a thick tip on the other and if you use it with the tiny tip it draws and if you use it with the thick tip it AUTOMATICALLY KNOWS YOU FLIPPED IT OVER and it erases instead. I DON'T KNOW HOW IT DOES THAT. BESIDES MAGNETS.

Now I used to be quite the little cartoonist Back In The Day, publishing a comic book in high school with my best friend (Mark Bode and some random Hampshire College student both thought it was swell!) but in the nearly 20 years since, I fell out of practice and my drawrirng has been in a sad state of decline. Carolyn thought it would be a neat idea to give me the opportunity to maybe practice back up again, and I think she's all the more awesome for it.

Now I really can't say that I quit altogether; I have occasionally chanced into drawing, from drunken airplane doodles in 2000 to mouse-drawn cries for help in 2003, but it's very clear that even then, the quality was low and I just didn't have the same hand I had back then. Maybe I shouldn't have switched with the devil for the talented one. I never even bought a violin.

So I have been tinkering every now and then with the tablet and doodling and CTRL-Zing and doodling and CTRL-Zing and doodling and going "why can't I erase the entire thing by CTRL-A and then DELETE?" and learning new and fun ways to cramp my hand up and finally I think I have done something worthy of sharing with the World At Large. So please, underneath the cut, enjoy the first drawing I completed with the Wacom tablet. I will let you guess what the subject is.



It may take you a few tries but I think you'll see it eventually. And boy howdy! I can't wait to start up my very own DeviantArt account!

Comments

[beth47.livejournal.com]

That drawing makes me happy.

[spatch]

Maybe we will put it on a t-shirt!

[beth47.livejournal.com]

I would totally buy one. Maybe two.

[redtheblue.livejournal.com]

I need you to put that on a shirt, actually. I got paint on my Abbie the Cat has a Posse shirt just yesterday and I was upset. This could turn a disaster into a transition.

[lbmango.livejournal.com]

http://xkcd.com/231/

[spatch]

RANDAL MUNROE IS A HACK

oh wait I don't have a strip yet I can't get into a "feud" with someone else

DAMMIT

[lbmango.livejournal.com]

This *IS*, I imagine, a solvable problem.

[jicama]

Cat Town doesn't qualify?

[spatch]

The now-expunged Wikipedia article called it a "Fumetto". I think I could live with that. I am not sure how the Animal Hat Gang would take to stick figures, though.

[kalibex.livejournal.com]

ki'kat.

[markm.livejournal.com]

That looks uncannily like the lunch bag cat puppet that my daughter made. I'll just mark it down as an homage.

[spatch]

Well, your daughter's does have the advantage here of being able to speak. But did she helpfully label hers a cat as well to aid in recognition?

[markm.livejournal.com]

No, she did not! Well played, sir. Well played.

[tonysalieri.livejournal.com]

I still had, until very recently, my issues of "Western Mass Avengers" and the exceedingly rare, one off "Purvis The Slug/Twelve Pigeons Tonight" that you doodled for me at 5Con in 1994. Hell, I might even be able to find them yet...

[spatch]

DUDE.

If you could find any of the WMA copies, I would so love to see them, or at least get 'em scanned or something. The original artwork was lost in a move several years ago and I am missing them something fierce and sad.

[tonysalieri.livejournal.com]

No promises, but I shall at least look for them!

[spatch]

And should you ever venture out Boston way, there will be celebration.

[tonysalieri.livejournal.com]

Sadly, I have been unsuccessful over the past half hour. If I still have them, they may be buried deep in the recesses of Thunderdome. But if I stumble across them, then there shall indeed be a great huzzah across the land!

I was recently corresponding with Ben Nugent ..

[(Anonymous)]

.. who was, in the early 90s, a younger student who looked up to us and our cartooning endeavors, and is today a published author ( http://www.americannerdbook.com/ ) who dates glamorous television stars (http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2008/04/13/fashion/13nite-500.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2008/04/13/fashion/13nite.ready.html&usg=__vbeiBwmhJcAYXUGCtsysMyz2fJo=&h=500&w=332&sz=63&hl=en&start=3&sig2=KaDWfosmxgmQSk45JcNAfQ&um=1&tbnid=35bPnrc6m_I9wM:&tbnh=130&tbnw=86&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dnugent%2Bkaling%26hl%3Den%26rls%3Dcom.microsoft:en-US%26sa%3DN%26um%3D1&ei=aG3BSfroForKtQO7qe3YBg). He recently found his old copies of WMA and offered to bring them to me when next he was in LA. We haven't spoken in several months, though, so who knows?

Noah

Re: I was recently corresponding with Ben Nugent ..

[spatch]

Wow! He has done really well for himself! That's awesome.

What scares me, you know, is that we're nearing the 20-year anniversary for the ol' WMA. That's... mind-boggling. I will not think about it any further for a while.

Re: I was recently corresponding with Ben Nugent ..

[tonysalieri.livejournal.com]

I've got it! I've got it, by Jove, I've got it!

I just found WMA #3 and the weird-ass doodle you did for me. It was in the absolute last place I checked, in the last box of junk from home I had yet to unpack. Sadly, I can not find #2 yet. But I also found a whole bunch of stuff I thought lost, so this is quite a bonanza of childhood memories.

Mail me your address via Facebook, and I'll send it to you toot-suite.

[lno.livejournal.com]

BRING BACK CATATONIC COMIX

BRING THEM BACK BRING THEM BACK BRING THEM BACK

[susskins.livejournal.com]

Hopefully it has the brains God gave a goose.

[cloudscout.livejournal.com]

Wow! Feminine LeGauche! Now that's a blast from the past.