I’m a Dungeon Master for a Dungeons & Dragons campaign played once weekly at the local comic shop. My players found a cave, The Cave of Wonders, which is illustrated above.
Inside the cave is a room full of gold, a room full of gems, a haunted ballroom, and a minotaur skeleton protecting the Golden Hand, an artifact that grants one wish every one hundred years. Continue reading “The Cave of Wonders”
Oh man, I want to share ALL OF THE THINGS with you, but we gotta’ do this one step at a time.
First, The Superhero Ladies Sketchbook is finally online!
I listed it for $1.99 on Gumroad, and you can download a copy by clicking the cover image below:
Why Gumroad?
Because they’re nicer, cleaner, and more direct than Amazon. And you don’t have to have a super-long checkout experience. I’ve used Gumroad before and it’s smooth and fast. I wanted your shopping to be as nice as possible, and Gumroad fit the bill!
Ok, second, I’m working on a new email newsletter!
It’ll be free, and hopefully (if I can configure everything correctly) people who first sign up will get a free downloadable image for a desktop/phone background. Pretty sweet!
The newsletter will highlight comic updates, blog posts, new product news, and even bonus sketches and cartoons you can’t get anywhere else. Because INCENTIVE.
Third, I finished a new illustration, shown below:
Click it to get a better view, because I am SO proud of how this turned out.
I really pushed myself with the colors, shadows, and gestures. There’s still a few spots I could fix, but I could work on it forever. I won’t. It’s too good right now for me to fiddle with it any further.
(If you don’t know who the two ladies are, they’re Claire and Tracy, from a story I’m scripting about road-tripping through post-apocalyptic zombie America. You can read more about it here.)
And fourth, the blog will no longer update on Mondays…at least for now.
I’ve been working hard this past month to update every weekday, but it’s starting to take away time from making comics and art. Plus, with an upcoming newsletter to make, I need some time to make that awesome.
So, yeah, I’m going to make some changes to the blog, starting with no Monday updates. It’ll give me the time I need to keep making great art and comics for you to enjoy.
The other change I want to make to the blog is that the posts are going to get more personal – except for Review Day Tuesday and Featured Artist Friday. Those are features I want to keep.
I’ve discovered that, while people occasionally like my tutorials, you seem to like when I just blether on about something personal to me. Which is cool! I’m happy to make more stuff like that.
That, and there’s just some personal stuff I want to talk about that I can’t fit in a sufficient amount of space on Twitter.
But I want to keep Review Day Tuesday and Featured Artist Friday. Those are features that I hope will show you new work and new artists to geek out for and support. Like Ark Revner, or Jeff Laclede, or Shadowbinders, or Bartez.
Thank you so much for reading! I’ll see you tomorrow with a new review – and it’s for a webcomic!
There’s no review today (I’ll have a new review for Review Day Tuesday next week).
Instead, I wanted to give you an update on my Superhero Ladies series of sketches.
I already wrote post after post about them, even one featuring Malarkey Maddie, a superheroine sketched for the series.
Well the good news is, there are now 31 sketches done, which is more than enough for the eBook!
I still have to spot check quite a few of them, but I can show you some of the finished ladies in the series.
And here are some snapshots from my camera of some of the looser, sketchier ones.
That last one is a trans girl because I realized towards the tail end of this project, “Crap! I could have incorporated more trans girls in this line up!” I’ll see if I can muster up at least one or two more, because I want this collection of characters to be diverse and inclusive, just like ladies IRL.
Although that reminds me of how I was going to add at least a few magical girls in this line up, as well, but in the end I really only got one. Oops.
I have to give a HUGE shout-out to the Random Superpower Generator and the Superpower Origin Generator, because without either of them I would have been so stuck on this project.
The next step with this series is to make a sketch or two more, touch them all up, and then format them into an eBook so y’all can get a copy of this awesome collection for yourself!
I’ll announce when the book is ready.
Thank you for reading, and I’ll see you tomorrow.
As I wrote before, for the month of January, I’m drawing one new superhero lady every day. Once the month is up, I’ll be compiling the sketches into an eBook.
Today I want to show you one of my favorite ones I’ve done so far.
Her name is Malarkey Maddie.
I loosely based her on a fan I met at Phoenix Comicon, who wore a shirt saying something like “Crush the Patriarchy!” My response was, “Down with the Patriarchy! Up with the Malarkey!”
Malarkey stayed floating around in my head for a while until this sketch series happened. Then I thought back on that fan and that phrase, and went, “What if a superhero lady incorporated that into their superhero name?”
And Malarkey Maddie became a superhero.
She may not fight against the Patriarchy, since it’s an abstract concept and not a person. So she has yet to get an arch nemesis.
She IS, however, super strong and has the ability to fly.
She doesn’t have a story yet, but she’ll be mentioned in other stories I’m working on. Maybe she’s the favorite superhero of Charlie from Charlie & Clow? Or Tracy’s favorite comic book hero?
Who knows what the future will hold for Malarkey Maddie?
If you have any ideas, I would love to read them in comments.
Thank you for reading, and I’ll see you tomorrow.
The Superhero Ladies project is coming along nicely! I have 17 ladies already drawn and the month of January isn’t even over yet. Hopefully I can keep up the good work and have lots of awesome superheroines by the end of the month.
There’s a few characters in the project that I’m thinking of branching off into their own stories, or maybe even comics. So who knows?
Another project I’m working on is one I’m reviving from hiatus.
I put it on hiatus for a few reasons.
But I’m bringing it back! With a few changes.
Firstly, there will be a new finished painting every month. Acrylic, watercolor, doesn’t matter. It’ll be a painting.
As progress is made on the paintings, I’ll be posting them on the Women Warriors Project blog. The intention is to make a chronological series of posts, showing a painting from initial sketch to finished piece. Tonight I made a sketch to develop an idea for the first painting, so expect to see it on the blog soon!
Know any cool historical women warriors? Leave their names in the comments below!
Thank you for reading, and I’ll see you tomorrow.
