Halloween is waning...

It's 9:30 pm and I think it's safe to go home and put the lights on again. The last of the trick-or-treaters (if in fact there were any) are down in their dungeons and sorting their stash. Nope, I didn't give out candy this year. Halloween has come and gone and Irwin the Creep failed once again to make an appearance. But that's okay! Because NEXT YEAR when he does I'll be ready.

I've got people working on plans as I type. Or at least I've got a co-worker in another state who has offered to help as payment for some monkeys. So to make up for not having Irwin entertaining the little hellions, I started a short mini-comic about his life and times to give away as a freebie next year. Here's a few pages as a year-ahead-of-time preview.

Halloween's a bit Sketchy

Last week was a special haunted version of Dr. Sketchy. Our models were the Motor City Rah-Rahs, cheerleaders for the Detroit Derby Girls roller derby team. Hula hoops were in full gyration as the Rah-Rahs decomposed throughout the evening. Lookit those evil eyes. Apparently they were possessed.



Oh, and I finally got the Dr. Sketchy stickers made. I guess there was a lot of calls for t-shirts too, so we'll have to check in with the good people at J's Silkscreens (where I worked while in college).

Here's the usual selection of sketchy-art, including the final pose where all I could see was the bottom of Suzanne Baumann's shoe.

Evil, evil me.

What do you do after you stir up a hornets' nest by breaking the taboo of discussing politics and religion (and art)? Why you slink into a corner and let others duke it out while you sketch quietly away on your tablet with a deviously sly smirk on your face. I'm such an instigator. Evil, evil me.

Here's John, witness to the trouble I started.

It ain't goin' nowhere.

I've been charged once again with designing all of the invites, posters, travel guides, etc. for my company's upcoming trip for their top sales people. I had put together some ideas for designs and was going to use vintage travel posters as the theme. But now it seems the client wants to go in a totally different direction and probably won't use anything I've done so far. So I thought I'd share this luggage tag design I did that will never get to see the light of day. Booooo!

And here's a card design too:

Ooooooooo...

I got a really cool new tablet PC! I can draw right on the screen! I can carry it everywhere because it's small and only weighs like three pounds! Ain't it cool? Ain't I cool? Who wants to touch me?!!


I hemmed and hawed long and hard over getting one of these for about a year. I was torn over this model or a Wacom Cintiq, which is a big twenty-one inch monitor that you can draw on. Only thing is that the Cintiq lacks the portability that I was looking for.

Now, what I really want is a Macintosh tablet. But Apple isn't really interested in making a tablet. Then I thought that my dreams had come true when a third party company was taking Mac laptops and converting them into tablets. But it was taking forever for them to release them. And they cost a lot.

So I settled for Motion Computing's tablet PC. Don't get me wrong, it's a great little machine. But as a member of the cult that is Macintosh I felt I was actually betraying the company that has provided me with excellent computers for over fifteen years. I prayed to the glowing apple on the back of my laptop for guidence. And because there was no answer being handed down by Steve Jobs himself, I decided that it was time that I make room for two operating systems in my home. Besides, I've been using Windows at work for years now and haven't noticed any real difference in how the software works. Well, maybe a few annoying things, but nothing I can't work around. So I put an Apple desktop pic on it to make me feel at home.

I'm currently learning to navigate around Windows with nothing but a pen. That's right, no keyboard. Things work just a little different and it takes some getting used to. Plus I'm also setting all of the software up like I want and that takes time. So right now I've mostly been using Alias Sketchbook Pro to scribble with before I get down to business. Here's a few examples in my electronical sketchbook:

Sunday Brunch with Dr. Sketchy

Sunday afternoon a small group of us local artists lounged in Cafe 1923 in Hamtramck for a laid back version of Dr. Sketchy. Our model on short notice was Sean Bieri's wife Sofia. She's been an artists' model for years and I have sketches and paintings of her going back a while. After some warm up sketches of cafe patrons and a few other art monkeys, as well as our barista April (who filled in as impromptu art judge and prize-giver-outer), we got down to business.