Day 659 of 365 More.
Today was game 4 of the Stanley Cup. The Pens pulled out game 3 and this was their chance to tie it up. They even scored the first goal, and I was feeling good about it. All they had to do was win this one, and I was still in the running to win the office Stanley Cup pool.
That’s what I get for hoping.
*sigh*
Day 658 of 365 More.
Ouch. I never knew hottubs could be so dangerous.
Yes, that’s right, I cut myself on a hottub. One of the knobs was stuck. And since I was in the tub, my hands were too slippery to really get a grip on it and turn it. So I reached beneath it and tried to twist from there. Only, yeah, you’re not really supposed to do that.
Ouch.
In other news, if you’re a 365 Days podcast fan, we posted the challenge early. So check it out.
Day 657 of 365 More.
So, like I said, I got fan art from Helder. It’s posted on the Cosmic Hellcats website so check it out.
Went to my weekly poker game tonight. I’ve been playing really well lately. In fact, tonight I’d say that I played better than anyone else. I had the chip lead pretty much the entire night. And then I lost it all in a series of bad breaks right at the end. So 3 hour of poker and nothing to show for it. *sigh* Somebody up there definitely hates me.
Day 656 of 365 More.
First of all, I want to wish a very special happy birthday to one of my most favorite models in the whole wide world, Sarah. I love you, babe. Remind me to take you out for a drink when you get back from vacation. I decided to celebrate Sarah’s birthday by posting the last of her photoshoot with Starr earlier this evening, so all the rest of you can celebrate too.
Speaking of Sarah, I spent the rest of the evening getting the most recent episode of Cosmic Hellcats. Pretty happy with this one, as it is the first time all four girls have appeared in the webcomic together. I also added fan art from Stephen yesterday, and I have one to add from ☼ Helder that I’ll probably put up tomorrow, so check back often. And if you have Hellcats fan art, we’d love to post it as well, so send it to us at feedback@cosmichellcats.com.
And now about this picture. I’m still not happy with my own current drawing skills, so I’ve been brushing up on Manga techniques. My natural style was never really Manga influenced, although I am a fan. Hopefully reading a bunch of technique books will help me brush up to where I feel confident drawing an issue. We’ll see.
Only I didn’t get around to actually drawing anything tonight because I was too busy coloring and lettering the comic, editting the Sarah and Starr pics and watching the Penguins finally win a Stanley Cup game. Series is now 1-2, with the Pens having scored 3 points. 3 more straight wins with only 8 points, and I win the office pool.
Go Pens!
Day 655 of 365 More.
People always tell me that I never use enough color in my self-portraits. I take the vast majority of them in my darkened studio, just because its easy for me. I decided last night that today I’d take something more colorful. Only after a day at work, it becomes evident that I really don’t go all that many colorful places on a regular day. So I did all I could do, when I got home from work, I took a shot in my front yard. I actually have some really pretty bushes in my yard, so it kind of worked out.
And look, I’m not even wearing black today. Aren’t you impressed.
Wanted to make sure I got this shot done and posted early tonight so I could work on Thursday’s Cosmic Hellcats comic. If you’re not reading it, you should, I think the story is moving along nicely, and I’m rather proud of it.
Also, Stephen was nice enough to draw some Hellcats fan art" which I’ve posted to the site. If you can draw or even if you can’t, I’d love it if you sent us some Hellcats fan art to add to the collection too. Either post it to flickr and tell me here(I miss a lot of what gets posted to flickr, even by my contacts, sadly) or email it to us at feedback@cosmichellcats.com and I’ll toss it up on the website too.
And tell all your friends to read the comic too. The more people reading it, the sooner I can be a fulltime cartoonist, and when i am, that will give me more time for photography too, and you’ll be able to enjoy my art all the more, and you can say "I knew him when…"
See, everybody wins.
Day 653 of 365 More.
Long long long day. And yet I don’t really have an interesting story. Memorial Day means I got a much needed three day weekend. Celebrated it in the traditional American memorial day celebration technique. I slept in til almost noon. Thank God too, I needed it.
After that, I got things together to do barbecue for a bunch of friends. First BBQ of the year, and it always reminds me, "wow, I really am a great cook." Sometimes, when I don’t have time that often, what with the hustle and bustle of life, I kinda forget that.
People hung out for a while and then left so Steph and I settled in for some quality TV watching. The second game of the Stanley Cup was tonight and, well, moving on…
New podcast is up. Check it out. It’s the exciting episode of Stephen and my mother trying to embarass me by showing kid pictures of me. Luckily I was a damn cute child. Enjoy.
Day 653 of 365 More.
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery… or something like that.
Today was kinda productive, yet not very memorable. Finished yet another Cosmic Hellcats comic and got it posted. Mowed the lawn. Worked on some other stuff. Watched a movie. Nothing terribly interesting.
I had no good idea for a shot today, so I fell back on what all great artist do. I stole. I once had a professor who said "never borrow an idea, always steal. Because that way you make it your own." As such, I decided to steal a concept from the lovely and talented like_shipwrecks. I actually saw the shot and immediately knew I’d copycat it at some point. I just didn’t know it would be so soon. Oh well. Thanks for the idea, ‘Ship!
That’s about it for today, I guess. You want more of me, go read my comic. It’s funny.
Day 652 of 365 More.
It’s a hockey night in Pittsburgh!
Tonight was the first day of the Stanley Cup championships. I’m not nearly as big a hocky fan as I am of football, but on a night like this, I have to support the team.
Fat lot of good it did us.
We got blown out 4-0. Luckily, its a long series, so hopefully we’ll get them next time.
Actually, I had kind of predicted the blow out. I’m in a pool at work for the cup. I predicted that the Pens would win the series in 6 games with a total score of 11 points. When Steph asked me how they were only going to have 11 points after 6 games, I told her they were going to get blown out in at least one game, and win another 1-0, so really its only about scoring 10 points in 3 games. Much more reasonable.
Also filmed the podcast today. In a total surprise, 2 min. into the show, Stephen introduced my mom. Apparently he was in the area, so they filmed the episode from her house. It was a total surprise to me, and pretty much the whole show is just about embarrassing me. Still, it was a fun time. I can’t wait to see how the final broadcast turns out.
GO PENS!
Day 651 of 365 More.
You know, I used to actually be good at this stuff. I really was. I was so good I even got into a pretty exclusive art school.
Of course, they ruined me.
*sigh*
I swear, I’m not fishing for compliments. This is not an attempt to make people come out of the woodwork saying "you are good." And its not an attempt to belittle anyone who thinks they don’t draw as well as me.
It’s just that I’m not happy with where my pencilling skills are right now. To be fair, I’m not the same person I was. The person I used to be drew every day for 11 years or so. The person I am today misses that and has been trying to recapture it for 3 days.
I guess I can’t expect magic over night.
I just don’t know if I can expect magic at all. The thing is, it just doesn’t work how it used to. The thing that makes me a good(i think) photographer is that I see the composition I want in my mind long before I ever actually snap the shot. I’ve always said, I’m not really a photographer. I’m an artist. I just draw with a camera now.
Drawing used to be the same way. I used to just see what I wanted in my mind and then it was a simple matter of tracing that image on the page. I still want to be able to do that, but the motor skill just aren’t there anymore.
I wonder if I’m doomed. I wonder if its just my lack of drive. I used to love drawing. If I was sitting in a class, listening to a lecture, and not paying attention, I’d look down at my notebook and find out that I had absentmindedly doodled the person sitting in front of me. That doesn’t happen anymore. Now I am pushing myself. And I’m not doing it out of love, I’m doing it out of regret. Trying to recapture I once had for the simple reason that I want to draw my own comic. There’s not even a good reason for that. I’m quite happy with the job Max is doing on Hellcats. And really, I have no real desire to take his reigns and do the daily art chores. But if we’re going to do this series of solo stories, I want to draw one of them.
Mostly just so I can say I did, I guess.
*sigh* I may never get there.
Day 650 of 365 More.
Well, I guess I’m getting a little better. Now great, but getting there.
Did some more drawing today. I’m still not comfortable to the point where I feel like I can do a whole comic, but maybe I’ll get there.
In the meantime, if you haven’t been checking out our comic, please do, and let me know what you think. Max and I update the comic ever Monday and Thursday, so a new episode went up this morning.
And if you like to draw and you want to take a shot at drawing one of the girls, by all means do so and send it to feedback@cosmichellcats.com. We have a fan art section that just doesn’t have enough stuff there yet, so I’d like to fill it out some.
Blah, it’s only 1:30am. Maybe I’ll go to sleep early for once.
Day 649 of 365 More.
It was a dark and stormy night. Business hadn’t been great. The dames were even worse. You know how it goes. I gave Miss Jones the night off and shut myself up in my office and decided to crawl inside a bottle of Old Number 7 and tried to wait it all out.
I heard the knock at the front door, but with no Miss Jones to answer, I thought maybe if I just stayed quiet whoever it was would go away.
No such luck.
That’s when she walked in. A pretty face, stems up to here and a rack that could cause traffic accidents. The dame wore red. She smelled like money. She said she needed help. She said she could pay.
Her name was Trouble.
Or it might as well have been. I could smell it a mile away. You could have driven a ’49 Olds through the holes in her story. But what was I gonna do? A man could get lost in those eyes for days and I’m a sucker for a pretty face. Besides, this broad would do anything for my help and I hadn’t done the nasty in nearly a week. Sometimes you just gotta roll the dice and hope for the six the hardway. And sometimes you crap out.
My name is Philip Marlowe.
Trouble is my business.
Day 648 of 365 More.
"Now keep in mind that I’m an artist,
And I’m sensitive about my shit…"
-Badu
Let me let you in on a little secret. I’m not really a photographer. I never even wanted to be. I never took a single class for it.
What I wanted to be was an artist. It’s what I dreamed about when I was seven years old. It’s what I went to college for. I wanted to make comics. A childhood fantasy, sure, but its what I dreamed of.
That dream got ripped right out of my brain during school. I gave up. I became a writer, and later when I started seeing that being a writer was no more realistic than being an artist, I became a web designer.
Then I found photography. All the same rules of being an artist applied, just with different tools. And since I was doing it on my own again, there was no asshole faculty members telling me I was doing it wrong. I grew to even think I was kinda good at it. Sometimes I was even happy.
I got even happier when we started doing Hellcats. Lookie there! I was making a comic. The seven year old boy in my brain was shitting himself.
Max and I had this idea of doing a special edition of the book after we finish the second issue (which we still haven’t really started since we’ve been so busy with the comic strip). It would be four shorter solo stories, one for each of the girls. Each by a different artist. Max wants to write one of them as well as draw and it got me thinking that maybe I’d like to draw one as well as write.
God, I’m out of practice with freehand drawing. It’s been years since I’ve really given it a serious try. I totally suck now.
Now I have to decide if I want to retrain myself in the next few months (I don’t know when the hell I’d find the time) or just give up.
*sigh* There are just not enough hours in the day.
Day 647 of 365 More.
Wow…
So, I say all the time that I never expected 365 to really take off the way it did. I would really have been happy if there were 20 people in the group on my first day, but now every time I look at the stats and see it’s over 8500 people all over the world, I am astounded.
The group has gotten so big and so amazing that a month ago, my mother decided to organize the members to pay tribute to me and my awesomeness.
Wow.
So I kind of expect my mother and Steph to do stuff like this, because for some crazy reason, they claim to actually love me. I even expect it of Jameel since he’s spent the better part of his adult life, laying in bed at night and dreaming that he might one day be the Maverick. I’m happy they participated, but its no surprise.
The real surprise is the other 130-odd people who have also copycatted one of my photos in the last 24 hours.
I’m sorry I can’t go through and comment on each and every one of you (just flipping through the pool and working on this pic ate up my whole night and kept me from working on the next episode of Cosmic Hellcats which I had planned on working on tonight (and if you aren’t reading my webcomic, shame on you. Go check it out now! End cheap plug…), but let me just say that viewing the whole thing really made my day. So thank you to all who participated.
When I first heard about this, my immediate thought was "hmm, I wonder how many catholic school girl pics there are going to be today?" I kinda guessed that there might be one from like_shipwrecks and I was was so sure that PhotoKat would do one, that I would have bet my life on it. But the entries from er3465, evaxebra and gaymay were nice surprises. And it was great going through the pool and seeing other people’s takes on all my other ideas.
So thank you to everyone who participated and feel free to make it a yearly occurrence. Maybe next year we’ll all get off work. 🙂
Day 646 of 365 More.
It really shows how busy I am when I can’t even find time to use my hottub. My back has literally been sore for like two weeks now. I knew that I need to soak in my hottub, but between work, 365, the podcast, Hellcats(which is now posted, by the way, so check it out), getting ready for art shows and comicons and trying to lead some kind of a life, I simply haven’t had the fifteen minutes to spare to get in.
Today all of that changed.
I finished tomorrow’s Hellcats early and got the podcast shot and uploaded for Stephen to edit. I really felt like I needed to get a jump on Thursday’s Hellcats, but there was a new Ninja Warrior tournament on tonight and Steph and I were planning to watch that together (I will someday conquer the demons of Mt. Midoriyama, this I swear). I was waiting for her to come home from her sexist book club and finally decided I’d had enough.
Oh god, I should have done this days. Ago. Fifteen minutes and I’m a new man.
If you don’t have a hottub, your life is hardly worth living.
Day 645 of 365 More.
Max and I presented Cosmic Hellcats at an art show at Creative Treehouse (the place that I’ve had other recent photography shows). Sadly, we didn’t do as well, as I would have hoped, there were far fewer people there than there were at previous shows, and no one really buys much at them anyway. But, a lot of people did say they really liked our stuff, so that was good. I may even have picked up another couple tarot models. And again, I’ve neglected the tarot project. I really need to find more hours in the day. *sigh*
Took a bunch of pictures of one of the bands at the show, and a few snapshots of random other people, but I really didn’t get that much with me in it. I did do this one though. And damn! Crazy eyes!