Ahem

For school I have started up a third blog. Aside from this one and The In Joke blog, I now have Barbara's Artistic Achievements which will showcase all of my work at school as well as anything I happen to paint or draw in my free time.

So, hear this! This blog will no longer have posts with any of my traditional mediums. All of that work will be going to the new blog. This one will focus on my two comics: Slipping Through and Pretzel and the Princess.

For your comic needs, come here.
If you need a dose of humor head over to The In Joke. http://theinjoke.blogspot.com/
Interested in my serious work? Go over to Artistic Achievements. http://artisticachievements.blogspot.com/

Slipping Through (new): Part 3

I have been told I draw quite the adorable penguin.

Hm. I drew these pages this summer and altered them quite a bit since then. And already my art has progressed to the point where I want to redraw all these pages from scratch. However, I would never get anything done that way since I would be starting over every month. So I'm finishing up three more pages I drew this summer before I start to bring in my more recent work.

In the next installment we shall go to Maggie's place of work and meet her fellow employees. Needless to say, they are an interesting bunch.

Hello, long neglected blog

Goodness me, so many projects, so little time. This is just a note of what is to come.
1. The product's of last semester's sculpture class. Three pieces I must photograph and post.
2. Pretzel and the Princess: I have not abandoned it. I just need to ink more pages.
3. Slipping Through: I have about forty pages drawn. Just need to find the time to color them all.
4. My paintings. Must post my summer's work.
5. I am currently in a print making class which means I need to scan my work and post it here.

My, I have let my work pile up. And as I make this list I observe two things: that I'm marvelous at procrastination and that I have quite a bit of diversity in my work. Not that anyone has been pointing that out recently . . .

Also, I am using the computer in the art lab. This keyboard is disgraceful. Maybe I'm just used to my laptop, but it feels as if the keys here are sticking more than a bit. That is my excuse for a lack of further eloquent elaboration.

Pretzel and the Princess: Part 5

Just a brief update. We meet the other sister! I don't think it was mentioned, but her name is Regan. She is the middle child. Goneril the oldest. Our heroine the youngest.

Slipping Through (new): Part 2

Woohoo! Part two! I think there is a definite improvement in the art. Learned a few new tricks in photoshop. Upcoming: penguins and quirky co-workers.

Musings

Just this moment I was going through my "Slipping Through" sketchbook and I realized how jumbled and out of order the pages are. I suppose this is because I tend to sketch things out as I think of them, regardless of when they take place in the story.

For example, when I rebooted this comic I started off with Maggie standing in a nightclub looking deeply annoyed. How did she get there? I wondered, Why is her hair a mess? And why is she wearing a cape? Then I realized she must have just come off work, that is, she had just had a throw down with some villain. So then I had to go and draw that bit and change that to the beginning.
Later on, in stuff you haven't seen yet, I got frustrated drawing Maggie's apartment so I skipped to drawing stuff with her at work. Now I've had to go back and fill in the gaps.

It just struck me because I've started coloring some pages that are next chronologically, but I drew them months ago. It's getting quite confusing. Especially since in some of the older pages I went back and reworked some of the panels. So in some pages there are bits that I know are ages old, but there's some stuff which I only thought of recently so it's got to be new.

Well, back to work.

Pretzel and the Princess: Updated!

There, a whole bunch of pages for your enjoyment! I'm having fun with this comic. The Princess leaping from tall heights only to be rescued by her amphibious squire seems to happen more than Pretzel would like.

Next: The Great Escape!

Pretzel and the Princess: Part 4

It's been awhile

But I'm back! Bringing with me "Slipping Through" version 2.0! Enjoy twelve pages of my comic. At least, I hope you will enjoy it. I'll refrain from belittling myself and just let you read it.

By the way: This is a work of fiction, any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is purely coincidental. That means that Maggie is not supposed to be me and her mother is not supposed to resemble mine. I thought I should throw that out there before Mom gets any ideas. Any traumas, sufferings, or family problems Maggie has are her own and have nothing to do with me.

And I have never interrogated a rat in an alley. (Please don't ask if I've interrogated them anywhere else)

Any questions, criticism (be kind) or other input is welcomed and encouraged!

Slipping Through: New and Improved

Slipping Through: News

Just an update on my newest comic, "Slipping Through". After some consideration I have decided to redo a great deal of what I have so far. I fussed over a page in photo shop, trying to get it to look decent, until I realized the page could not be salvaged. Looking at what I've posted so far I see a lot of things I want to correct.

I regret none of my work up until this point! It has been quite educational. Now I will be redoing most of the early pages. I've decided to stick to a standard layout arrangement of three horizontal panels per page rather than my previous, unstructured approach.

And I'm off!

Lord of the Masque

The villain for "Slipping Through" is this fine gentleman. Lord of the Masque. There is meaning to that name, which will become clear in time. He is still under development, but I do know that he is arrogant and probably is tearing holes in the fabric of time and space. The jerk.

I posted this elsewhere and submitted it to be featured in an art group on this site. It was declined so I asked why, hoping for some helpful advice. They answered thusly,

"it was declined because of quality. The work is good, how you caught the movement and their facial expressions are great and but a little more work could be done with coloring. The colors are too flat and a little dull in my opinion.
if you thin out the lines a little bit and put more effort in coloring the piece would look different, the shading was okay but again, a little more detailed coloring would make it a better piece.
wish you luck next time"

A very nice reply which would be helpful except . . . most of the problems they list were deliberate choices on my part. I am deliberately cultivating a thick-lined style because it is a cartoon, the same with the semi-flat coloring. As for the colors being dull, that was intentional because I wanted the character to be understated aside from his bright red mask. In essence, for my work to be approved of I would have to adopt a completely different style.

Just my little complaint of the day.

Pretzel and the Princess: Part 3

Another installment in our thrilling and action packed adventure! Ahem. By the way, there are cellphones in this world. Actually, I'm pretty sure at least one of the castle's towers is a cellphone tower.

Coming up next: Vague parenting and sibling rivalry!

A Brief Interlude

A sampling of my ceramic work over the last year. I can't think why I haven't posted images before, but here we are. Ceramics is one of my favorite artistic mediums and I'm thinking about making that my focus in graduate school. We shall see.

These are all porcelain, thrown on the wheel and fired in an electric kiln. Later I'll post some of my raku pieces with a brief explanation of what "raku" is. Awesome, is what it is. I might do ceramics in graduate school just so I can raku all semester long which goes hand in hand with setting things on fire all semester long.

New Project: Slipping Through

This is my new project, a comic called "Slipping Through". The main characters are Maggie the Magician and Ting the shape-shifter. Together they fight crime! Uh, Monsters. They fight monsters. They come from broken homes, too. Keep checking for updates!

Pretzel and the Princess: Part 2

The Princess has rescued Pretzel, but what's going on at the castle?

My Newest Venture

Are you familiar with the story of the Frog Prince? Well, too bad. This is almost nothing like that. There is a princess, she has a golden ball and she's friends with a frog named pretzel. Similarity ends there. Pretzel isn't even sure if he is just an enchanted frog or an actual enchanted prince.


There's also that little matter of reclaiming Princess Jean's stolen kingdom . . .