I was trying to kill time towards the end of work yesterday, so I drew the following with one of our Hampton Inn ballpoint pens while standing at the front desk:
For something drawn quickly, in freehand, and with one of work’s free pens, it turned out pretty damn well. I mean, I’m happy with it. It looks how I wanted it to at least.
When I started actually teaching myself how to draw in early 2008, I wasn’t very fond of using physical materials (paper, pen, pencil) so I stuck with Wacom Tablets as my main tool for the comics and for learning a lot of basic drawing habits. I figured that drawing is drawing, whether its on the PC or on some sketch paper. To state it bluntly: it’s not. And that’s why I started doing Gleeful Nihilism… as a way to start with small stickfigure art, done with pen and paper, and move towards new stuff with that physical medium. Sometimes the comic is funny, sometimes its just an experiment, and sometimes its both… hopefully it falls in the last one more than it does the middle, but I’ve definitely enjoyed it a lot.
And my enjoyment with the physical medium has left me feeling, well, lackluster for the digital. I like my tablets. They’re fun, they get the job done, and it’s easier to fix mistakes… but getting the same thing done on it just doesn’t happen. And that’s probably the biggest reason why boozeathon4billion has suffered from a lack of updates lately; it’s just a pain to draw. I’m trying some new stuff, and hopefully I’ll find something I like soon (because I’m gonna start updating again this week)… but I dunno. Maybe I’ll just start sketching everything out with pen and paper, and finishing it with the tablets.
This is longer than I intended it to be, but that’s what tends to happen when I sit in front of a keyboard. Thanks for reading the blog and my comics. You’re time is very appreciated and I hope you get some enjoyment out of them. I know I do.
