Curmudge's Sutff

fuss

2026-09-23T13:10:03Z

This is one of the most recent panels from my current WIP. I wanted to point out that, the face on the left? I redrew every facial feature three or four times before I got what I was looking for.

Seems to me that faces in cartooning are unusually sensitive to small differences. Making a line one dot longer, or changing an angle a fraction of a degree, can palpably alter what the face is expressing. The medium is capable of great subtlety, if the artist is attentive enough.

I was going to say that I "fuss over" the faces in my comics, but it's closer to the mark to say that I "dote upon" them. Once I started learning cartooning, I soon found that drawing faces and their expressions was my favourite part. And it still is.

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something I am grateful for today

2026-09-13T14:05:08Z

the music of Heinz von Hermann

This morning I was working on the graphic novel, and had his music on in the background. Several times I became aware of how good his stuff sounded and felt. You don't have to be a household name to be solidly worthwhile and satisfying. [Maybe that can be my goal as well!]

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acrylic #65

2026-09-04T00:04:51Z

I finally completed another acrylic painting! This one is my first attempt at the "Filadora technique", where you start building the painting with rough blocks of colour and refine the shapes, rather than do a preliminary drawing -- kinda like sculpting with paint, in some ways, I guess. It was interesting. [acrylic on canvas, 10" x 10"]

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arting

2026-08-23T16:39:38Z

This mixed media illustration from my WIP is getting a decent response from those who've seen it, so I thought it might be fun to share here:

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quotidian

2026-08-16T20:35:16Z

Out of nowhere, I got thinking the other day...

Ever since I started The Mundane Adventures of Dishman in 1985, all my work since then has been mundane, to some extent or other.

Space Kid, while science fiction, was fairly restrained science fiction. Space adventure limited to the solar system, where it takes weeks to travel to the middle planets, as opposed to the space-warping, galaxy-spanning immensity that is the norm for SF.

And my strip Not That Magic featured wizards and dragons and barbarians... but it was wizards who drive jalopies and travel on their quests via bus, and dragons who love donuts, and barbarians who need to be directed to the bathroom. And the Grand Archmage of the Wizards' Guild is named Steve.

Around the turn of the century, I was working on another strip, about aliens... but it was aliens who settle on Earth and live in suburbia.

And my current graphic novel in progress is about an insignificant little guy doing insignificant little things.

Oddly enough, I grew up with a ravenous appetite for rip-roaring adventure. But any time I tried to make one of my own, I could never get it off the ground. It's only since I discovered the mundane that I found my niche, I guess.

Go figure.

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something I am grateful for today

2026-06-14T22:38:39Z

Completing an entire comic page, start to finish, in one day! I can't remember the last time I was able to do this. [I'm sure today's achievement is in part due to the extremely rare occurrence of a day with no appointments, no errands, no obligations, and minimal chores, along with a relatively pain-free hand/arm.]

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mistake

2026-04-12T00:38:31Z

I spent a while today whipping up quick loose doodles of one of my characters for my WIP, and ended up with one that was so "sloppy" that I got the shape of the head all wrong….

….but I dug it. So I played around for a while with the idea of changing the character design! But eventually decided no, it isn't the right vibe for my character. But I'm keeping this design handy for some other character someday, cuz I really do like this one.

FYI, the original of this is really small… like it would fit on a postage stamp [if you remember postage stamps], or within a square inch [if you remember inches].

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something I am grateful for today

2026-04-02T01:21:02Z

Today I finished drafting the script for my graphic novel. ~~Now to draw it!~~ Now to figure out how to draw it!

This is such an odd project for me, and such an odd place for my head to be in during a project. I can imagine all sorts of problems and complaints readers will have with what I'm doing and how I'm doing it, but none of them dissuade me. I feel like I've never before made a comic that is so much for me, and if other people don't like it, that doesn't mean I'm wrong. It's weird not needing to worry about audience reaction....

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This is the year.

2026-03-30T22:07:12Z

This is the year I re-invent myself.

I didn't choose this year, more like it chose me... and why now, I don't know. But there it is — I can feel it. This year I re-invent myself as a cartoonist, as a painter, and [if I can manage to tackle poetry] as a writer, too.

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where I'm at

2026-03-14T00:07:27Z

Just decided I wanted to update my influence list, o lucky reader!

Here are my current all-time Top Ten Cartoonists. Today's list is geared toward those whose work I not only enjoy and appreciate, but whose work speaks to and inspires my own current work. So they're more about where my cartooning head is at right now — therefore, some old major idols and influences don't appear, or appear differently ranked:

And, to flesh things out further, here's my Top Ten of cartoonists currently working:

Enjoy and/or dig!

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critters

2025-12-28T17:19:16Z

My 14^th gouache is a Bohemian waxwing — I was quite taken by the incredibly vivid reds and yellows in the wings and tail, they were fun. 8 x 10, watercolour paper mounted on cardboard: a surface I found in Dollar Tree and have since stocked up on. I find it a very handy work surface for gouache.

My 63^rd acrylic is a seasonal Golden Lab. Got organic greens by mixing yellow and black: a trick I picked up a while back and still get a kick out of. 10 x 10, canvas.

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something I am grateful for today

2025-11-18T23:14:55Z

making a breakthrough [okay, maybe more like a baby step forward] in designing a character for my graphic-novel WIP

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No Idea: 1962

2025-08-29T20:15:50Z

My 58^th acrylic is sorta my 55^th because I did the underdrawing for it back in January, then left it untouched til now. An attempt to let Expressionism [and maybe Fauvism] inform my approach a bit more than usual.

( the story behind it )

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something I am grateful for today

2025-08-16T21:23:54Z

Getting enough comic strips drawn to give myself a buffer of time so that I can try to produce a painting as a gift for an upcoming special occasion.

[Sometimes my creative life feels like I'm spinning plates.]

[Actually, the other parts of my life do, too. Just Sayin®.]

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something I am grateful for today

2025-08-03T01:01:50Z

My glasses! So many of the things I love to do, I couldn't do without them.

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good?

2025-07-24T00:02:36Z

I was recently talking with Barbara about a local artist [acrylic painter] I have met and conversed with a few times... and how I always find it flattering but odd when I realize that said artist talks with me [and about me] as if I am a peer. Barbara says that I am one and should certainly see myself that way, but I have trouble with this. Then she got talking about whether I realize that I am a good artist, and that my art is good.

Afterward I thought about it for a while, and realized that I do think that my work is generally Good Enough®, but I don't think of it as Good®. Since then, I've been struggling to define for myself just what the difference is, between good enough and good.

Finally I settled on something like this: if I look at a piece of mine, and I don't see things that I wish I had done differently, or parts that aren't quite what I would like.... if the flaws are not glaring, but are acceptable instead, then I can say the work is good.** Then I got thinking about which pieces of mine I can say that about.

I came up with four. Out of sixty years of arting.

Not sure where I'm going with this, I still need to mull over and hash out. Wondering if other people make a similar distinction between good-enough work and good work. I just wanted to get this down while I thought of it.

** and is this how I judge whether other people's work is good? Not sure that I do. Yet more sutff to mull over....

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lesson

2025-04-16T00:05:16Z

As a part of training my eye and hand for a new upcoming project, I've been drawing studies of Lee Holley's Ponytail panels from the early 60s. And I find myself learning [yet again] the lesson that comes from pretty much any 20th-century cartoonist: while the drawing may appear and feel pretty simple, it is deceptively simple. There is always a lot more intricate work involved than that. Always an inspiring eye-opener for me.

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something I am grateful for today

2025-04-12T22:27:21Z

trying out my new specialty pencil sharpener [designed for carbon and charcoal pencils] and finding out it works exactly as hoped

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Dalmatian

2025-04-12T20:25:16Z

I am calling this my eleventh gouache painting, even though technically that isn't correct: this was done on a 4-by-6 canvas board and all my other gouaches were on paper, and the paint calls itself acrylic paint rather than gouache. Bear with me while I explain:

This was my first time trying Deco Earth brand “reclaimed acrylic” paint — claims to be more opaque and more matte finish than regular acrylic. The opaque is maybe a bit true, but the matte finish is way true. It's a lot like working with acrylic gouache IMHO — hence my labelling it such. Handles nice and I look forward to working with it again. (Even though the range of pigments available to work with leaves a little to be desired, I think.)

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Sands

2025-02-17T22:07:05Z

My 56^th acrylic is, once again, a visual that mysteriously popped into my head and stayed there. (As usually happens with any abstract that I feel moved to pursue to completion.) There's something about this colour palette that seems to connect with me, seeing as I used this same one last year. I can see me using these colours to sub for the white/gray/black palette I'm accustomed to working with in my cartooning, and doing value studies that way. (I even have a vague idea for the next one...)

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musings

2025-02-11T12:43:50Z

A few times now I've mentioned the graphic novel I'm working on this past year or so. [And, if it gets out of hand, it may get too long for me to get it done while I'm still here.] Anyhoo:

Today I got thinking, "Am I being ridiculous to work on something like this when the world seems to be falling apart around me? I mean, for the first time in my life, I am looking at the very real chance that my country may disappear and be swallowed up by a neighbour... causing untold stress and disruption and chaos. And then, being able to draw a comic will become the last thing on my agenda. Society may disintegrate beneath my feet, and I'm still just plugging away at my comic book like all is well??"

I've thought that a few times lately, but when it happened today, I thought something else: "Yes, there is a chance this could happen. But, if I'm being brutally honest with myself, there's a far better chance that I could have a heart attack or stroke at any moment, and I won't be able to finish my novel then, either. But this has always been true, and I didn't let it stop me from trying. So maybe I similarly shouldn't let the state of the world stop me."

Today I feel like I understand a bit better what the Beats meant in the Fifties when they said, "When The Bomb drops, it will find us painting and writing poems."

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pups

2025-01-19T20:01:52Z

My 52^nd and 53^rd acrylics are, as you can see, both pups. One is a gift, one is for putting up at the cafe and [hopefully] selling. I've already realized that my animal paintings are the closest I get to “crowd-pleasers”. So, when it comes time to make a gift, that's what I fall back on. But I've also already begun to wonder how much these paintings actually qualify as fine art. Like, do they say anything? Do they express anything about me? Maybe they're just an expression of “my love of animals”, and maybe that's enough, I dunno....

On the other hand, I can think of an artist I see on Instagram who only ever paints horses, and she quite cheerfully admits that's all she ever has any intention of painting, because that's what she loves most. And I've never questioned her legitimacy as An Artist®, so why do I need to question my own?

On the third hand, lately I've gotten more of an urge to spend at least some of my easel time working on less accessible pieces — I can feel things in me wanting to get out. I've already resigned myself to those new pieces not being understood or enjoyed, but I still feel like they'll be worth trying anyway.

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my musical discovery of the year

2024-12-31T22:55:25Z

It seems that, every year, of all the music I discover, there is one particular standout artist for me who turns me into a major fan. Most often, it is someone new [to me]... but not always. For example, last year my musical discovery was Richie Kamuca — I was listening to records forty years ago that Kamuca played on, but at that time I wasn't focusing particular attention on his specific contributions to those records. Last year, I was given the chance to listen to him more closely and more widely, and finally became smitten.

But my discovery for 2024 is someone I had never heard until a couple months ago: Cory Weeds. He's an exciting find for me — not only for his own playing, but also for the record label he runs which issues work by many other wonderful artists, lots of whom are also new-to-me. There is such a wealth of good music to be discovered here! You can bet that Cory and other Cellar Music artists will occupy my ears frequently in 2025.

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latest paintings

2024-12-31T20:58:11Z

My 51^st acrylic is a nocturne of the Christmas fair at Hebden Bridge, which we visited in 2018. I got into how the night suggests rather than displays things, and really got into the depths of the lights on the tree. There's no razzle dazzle in this work, but I feel like maybe there's some honesty about a night I remember fondly.

My tenth gouache is a horned owl in the snow. This was my first time using an angle brush — I only recently picked up a few of those, in both bristle and soft synthetic — and I really enjoyed how it handled. I can see myself using them a lot in future. And, once again, the limited palette I have felt my way into for animal paintings came in handy here.

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something I am grateful for today

2024-12-18T22:54:57Z

Getting back into The Painting Groove®.

It's been weeks [months?] since I painted, largely due to adverse health circumstances, but also lack of ideas-slash-inspiration. But the deadline of Christmas looming has been making me fret, and I owe some people paintings as gifts, so I finally panicked enough to force myself once more into the breach.

I've noticed that, whenever I'm away from painting for a while, I eventually get to feeling like I have forgotten how. I lose what little confidence I've developed, and start to believe that whatever I produce now won't be any good. [Something similar happens with cartooning, but that feels more like gotten rusty than don't remember how.] But, in the last couple of days, I have finished the gifts that absolutely had to be done, and once I got about a third of the way into each one, I realized that they were turning out Okay Enough®, and I started feeling like I have a clue again.

I realize that the solution is “don't go so long without arting”, but this is me we're talking about here, so....

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