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Tonight’s the last night for the tarot card orders sent out by me with tuck boxes.  They will be available soon for purchase through TGC’s site, and meanwhile, I’ll be waiting for the orders to make it out to me, and get those packed up and shipped out to you fine folks!

I’m working on finishing the icons, which is why I’m so quiet lately.  Pardon!

I’ve also been following news about the fire going on in Boulder this week.  So far, I haven’t heard of any injuries, and everyone I’ve talked to is fine, but I know a lot of folks have lost their homes to this, and I wish I was back home to help out in some way.

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Here’s page 94 of the comic!

The tarot decks have been doing well so far!  I realized that this weekend is Dragon Con, and decided to extend taking orders out until Wednesday, to give folks a little more time to see the cards.  If you haven’t seen the post about the cards yet, it is here - http://djinni.livejournal.com/249266.html

Life is going pretty good.  I got my tetanus booster shot yesterday, and got very sleepy.  I slept a ton last night, and now I feel like I got punched in the arm.  I’ll take a little inconvenience over tetanus any day, though, so I can’t complain too much!

Foxes

I want to share something I do to practice cartooning animals, and I’m going to start with a popular animal lots of people have fun drawing: foxes.  Foxes are awesome.  I get to draw them every week for Crimson Flag.  So, before I go on any more, if you’re up for it, without a reference, draw a fox in your style.

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learning to draw

I taught kids in private art lessons for several years, and done a handful of “getting started with cartooning” panels at conventions.  While my sample size is much smaller with the latter, I’ve had enough conversations with adults about learning to draw to notice some pretty stark differences.

My conclusion, and the best advice I can give about getting started with cartooning: draw like a kid.

I think people become much more critical as they grow up.  I’m not sure where exactly that starts to come into play, earlier for some than others, I’m sure.  I know I’m pretty ruthlessly critical of my work, and how often do you come across artists you admire writing about their insecurities and criticism?

The truth of the matter is that drawing is a learned skill, and requires a serious time investment to hone.  It’s not something you’re born with, and it’s not something that you can perfect after a page or a whole sketchbook full of doodles.  The way you learn is to ignore the voice in your head telling you that you can’t draw, and that you should stop.

Kids are often good at ignoring that voice, because of course, play is how people learn, and that’s a kid’s job.  When I was little, I took an interest in drawing, and my parents encouraged me, praised me, gave me art supplies and helped me foster an idea of myself as “an artist”.  Look through my doodles as a kid, though, and you’ll see pages and pages of me gleefully “not being able to draw”, the kind of stuff an adult will scribble to prove that they can’t do it.

This is the kind of stuff I was doing in second grade:

At the time, I was reading every book I could get my hands on about art and cartooning.  I learned from them, and art class, about the concept of constructing a drawing from basic shapes, and played around with that constantly, trying to incorporate it into my drawings.  I didn’t stop at drawing the shapes the books told me.  In playing with what I’d learned, I was starting to develop the groundwork that I still use today, and never once did I feel like I sucked at art.  I had fun making characters out of shapes and writing utter travesties of spelling about space aliens and dragons the size of Mount Eferist.

That’s what you have to do.  I’ll talk to adults about learning to draw, and the excuses begin.  “I can’t draw a straight line!”  “I can only draw stick figures!”  “I tried learning to draw for a whole year and I still suck!”  If you feel like what I’ve posted above is better than you can do now, do what I did then - keep drawing anyway.

When you’re getting started with learning to draw, the only thing you need to concern yourself with is whether or not you’re having fun.

If you give kids an art project and they think it’s boring, they’ll change it to what they feel like doing.  I’ve seen this, and remember consciously doing this when I was in art classes, myself.  One time, we had a project to make an abstract image incorporating a piece of string glued down to the paper.  It could have one loop.

The thing was, that day, I really wanted to draw a unicorn.  I’d gone into art class inspired to draw a unicorn, and I saw glitter and paints and crayons being brought out, and gosh darn it, if the glitter and glue sticks coming out wasn’t a sign from above that I was meant to draw a unicorn that day, I don’t know what was.  So, I made the string into a unicorn, with one loop, and blew off the whole ‘abstract’ business entirely.  The teacher could have stopped me, and I do remember her being amused with my insistence, but she let me have my fun.  I think I still took away a great lesson from that project.

I’ve taught kids to draw cartoon animals and had them spend the lesson drawing swords and cars instead.  Great - we switched to learning about the shapes swords and cars are made of, instead.  The lesson’s the same, either way.

Now, there are things that you might want to learn that aren’t very glamorous to learn, but that all depends on what it is you really want to be doing with your art.  If you want to be able to draw realistic figures, you’re not going to get away with making unicorns out of string and glitter.  You’re going to have to find a way to apply that same spirit of fun and play as a tool to help you get through your studies, and to be open to feedback and to the fact that you can improve.

If you practice and practice, and don’t see the improvement you expected, don’t let that discourage you.  It may very well be that there’s something else you haven’t realized you could be practicing that will help you solve the problem you’ve encountered.  It’s not impossible for anyone to improve.  It’s all a matter of figuring out how you learn best, how to get yourself to keep practicing, and figuring out what it is you really want to do with your art, not from a commercial standpoint, but from the standpoint of personal expression.  I became worlds happier with my art when I decided to focus on cartooning - like I wanted to do when I was little - but that’s a whole other story.

Tod’s Creatures Tarot

I am excited to finally offer my tarot deck for sale!  Check it out!

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Tarot Video

Early Morning Status Report of Dooooom!

Hi guys! I haven’t done a status update for the current Icon Day in a little bit, so I thought I’d let you all know that the icons are coming along, and I’m expecting to have them finished in a week or so. I’m also working on a few other things, and will be posting pictures as I get them completed!

I got the tarot deck in the mail yesterday, and it seems that all my worries about the appearance of the cards were unfounded. They look great! The card stock and color is definitely pro quality, and the off-center issue, while it does show up on a few cards, is minor and something I think I only noticed because I was looking for it. Of course, I’ll have some photos of the cards so you can judge it for yourself, but I’m quite satisfied with this product.

So, later on today, I’m going to put together a post with photos and such, and start the whole preorder thing, to get this ball rolling!