Another quick one. Still don't have a routine... and too much to do getting the house done.

I've been playing with FaberCastell pens. I like the superfine point and the brush... very fun to draw with, but I think the Artline may still be my favs. The pens may not feel the best in my hand, but I think I draw better with them. Why? I want to get some better fill pages done, but who knows when.

Well, it's been a month and I finally found some time for a quick drawing. We moved into a new house, did not have internet and still need to do a lot of work to make the place liveable.

It took a while just to get this drawing done and I don't really like my Jimmy Carter. Also no time to tweak things in PS. Still, it is nice to be drawing something. I've really been jonesing to read the news and think of cartoons. As for the topic, most cartoonist completely mocked Carter for talking to Hamas, which is fine and perhaps justified, but what I found funny was the contrast between Carter's naive jumping-in and the Bush administration's so called Middle East Peace agenda.

Hope to stay current and start getting more cartoons out asap.

Too little time to do much more. No touch up in PS. Also, er, no joke? Where is the joke? Sort of like the McCain one I just did... no joke there either. I need to stop thinking about the art so much and try coming up with less half-baked cartoons.

This is the first drawing I tried with the Copic pens... and the last. They dry out too fast (already half the pens are dead), are too pricey, and drawing like chicken scratching...

Yay.. I have a bunch of new pens to test out.... The above was done with Artline's "Drawing System." The sizes range from 0.1 to 0.9 (mm?). The finer points are really fun to draw with. They do have increased friction (like dragging a pin across the paper), but they also allow me to enter into areas I was previously more tenative to enter (mainly places on the face or smaller, detailed objects). I did this drawing kind of quick, using four different pens. I'll stick with these and see if I get the hang of them...

I'm working on a bunch of iconic drawings of people, so I can make a portfolio page. I think this means nailing some of the people I've been drawing, giving less immediate context, and capturing something essential about their personality.

I need a better dark masking page... Losing some depth in the drawings. Also, my Artline pens are now completely dead (except for the .8 and .5). I'm going to dig out the next set of pens now.