2019-10-27 – coat

…and profilin’

I feel like I’m limping to the finish as Inktober winds down.

Last Christmas Lisa bought me a new coat, which I desperately needed. It’s a Prana Bronson Jacket, and I [heart] it. When I went online to find a picture of it to refer to for this drawing (because heaven forbid I get up and walk to the closet), I was stunned to find almost NONE were available. I guess Prana has moved on.

Here we once again have the typical dark lines I always use to represent blue jeans, which is just about the only thing my characters wear. The problem is what to do when I need to make ANOTHER piece of clothing dark. The jacket here is supposed to be dark-ish green. As with the foreground/background issue with the “dark” drawing, I’m not thrilled with the result. And what was I thinking with the stippling?

Gruss vom Krampus (2017)

One for the road…alas.

All of a sudden I’ve been drawing krampuskarten for four years. It still feels like a new tradition (my drawing them, that is). I’m clearly in the time-flying-by phase of life.

Anyway, here’s last year’s model. Maia and Robby got to https://monsiana.files.wordpress.com/2018/12/2017-krampuskarten-2017-main.jpgstar in the inaugural 2015 card, Beth and Lisa took 2016, so that left Todd and me. And here we are. Pretty obvious “plot,” really, given that this whole nonsense started over the annual pouring of Southern Tier’s Krampus Helles Lager.

Unfortunately, we’re near the end of that component of Krampusnacht. We noticed a sharp decline in the availability of liquid Krampus last year, to the point where Todd called Southern Tier and learned that they will no longer be brewing it. (In my mind’s eye I see a frantic, tearful Todd making this call, but I doubt that’s how it went down and I’m certain he wouldn’t appreciate that.). I managed to get my hands on a couple of bottles of Krampus (deeply discounted in Total Wine’s annual post-Krampusnacht sale)(no, not really), so we’ll be able to toast Krampus this year (and maybe in 2019).

As for this drawing, I once again employed what is perhaps my favorite computer-aided cartooning trick: blowing up an area where fine detail is needed, then shrinking it back into the original drawing. Unfortunately, as is so often the case, it’s too hard to see the fine detail once the drawing has been shrunk.