Curmudge's Sutff

mistake

Sun, 12 Apr 2026 00:38:31 GMT

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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cartoonists influencing Not That Magic

Mon, 08 Apr 2024 22:01:52 GMT

Dik Browne

The clean simplicity of Browne's character designs throughout his career, and his hand-hewn ink line in Hägar, have always been an inspiration to me.

Anthony Auffret

Again, clean and simple, and even more hands-on -- clearly hand-lettered, and with borders and word balloons inked without a ruler. I love this feeling of something made by a real human being.

Thom Zahler

I admire Zahler's graphic novel series Love and Capes - an ongoing comic-book adventure story, but broken down into sections of four same-sized panels with a punchline, so that it could also be run as a regular comic strip. I dig that storytelling rhythm.

Gisèle Lagacé

Lagacé is an artist I've been following for years, who also uses that rhythm of a series of four-panel punchline strips to tell an ongoing story.

Tonči Zonjić

Zonjić is better than anyone [IMHO] when it comes to a creative use of black, white, and one single tone of gray -- that was a huge influence on how I approached Not That Magic.

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TIL

Mon, 06 Mar 2023 23:42:27 GMT

In my recent cartooning work, I've been using a cheap round watercolour brush to fill in large black areas with ink. Sometimes I've tried inking some of my lines with it as well, but it's not quite as good for that because it's not a great brush.

Today, I dug up some better brushes I bought years ago, when I wanted to learn proper brush inking someday, and decided to test-drive one. I ended up choosing an Isabey No. 1 Kolinsky sable round. Kolinsky sable brushes have been considered top of the line for decades in both comics inking and watercolour painting, and Isabey has a decent reputation, so it seemed a safe choice for today.

However, I couldn't help noticing how ragged the brush looked [you can see it on the left]. I didn't remember it being such a mess when I bought it, that's for sure. One of the most important things a round brush needs, in either inking or painting, is to be able to form and hold a sharp point — this gives you the control and precision you want in a round. I figured I could still use this one for low-precision fills anyway, and I gave it a whirl.

But then I noticed what happened when it got wet [you can see it on the right]. Gorgeous point that it holds together while in use. What a pleasant shock, I gotta tell ya. This brush doesn't look like much at first, but the quality of its performance is all you could want. (Kinda like me!) And yes, after I cleaned it and let it dry, it went all ragged again — that's just its way.

So there's that whole “don't judge a book by its cover” aspect to this, yes indeed.

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