Club Comicana Xtra!

There is a new strip pretty close to finished (no, really!), but meanwhile here’s a bit of silliness…

Posted by Chrissie on Thursday, July 29th 2010 at 5:23 am | Permalink | No Comments »

Finally: “Arty Farty”

See, I stuck with it. With the state of my drawing pens right now, this was not easy. Maybe I shouldn’t ask for love off this, but it’d be awful nice, see.

Posted by Chrissie on Monday, July 26th 2010 at 12:56 am | Permalink | 1 Comment »

Ramble Ramble

About Club Comicana—I do have two strips in the works. One, I did very rough pencils on a couple of panels (about two weeks ago), and last night I did 75% of the pencils & some of the lettering for another one. So I’ll get those into a finished state at some point. Hopefully quite soon.

I have a lot on my mind and I just haven’t felt in this particular zone much. Regrettably. It isn’t a question of a strip physically being a lot of work, nor is it about getting everything technically just right (I’m sure most people would notice that my stuff’s not always an exercise in precision). But even in small bursts, it does take total concentration while you’re working on it. Now, with these new strips I’m doing them on A4 and I’m quite intentionally not using a ruler or ‘working stuff out’ to any great degree. I like the energy and looseness of it. But it still has to scan well and hold together, and this aspect is quite demanding. I’m disappointed, really, after five strips, to have dropped the ball… but, a lot of stuff is weighing down on me and I have to work within that limitation. Anyhow, I haven’t STOPPED (although, it must be said, more feedback would’ve helped)—there’s more to come.

Posted by Chrissie on Thursday, July 22nd 2010 at 5:46 am | Permalink | No Comments »

The Bride

Still no strip inspiration, but I was fiddling around earlier, and against my better judgement, here you go.

Posted by Chrissie on Thursday, July 22nd 2010 at 1:50 am | Permalink | 1 Comment »

Vinnie (I’m still here)

Yeah, but I haven’t found the mojo for a new Club Comicana for a bit. The crap level of feedback doesn’t help. I’m fundamentally insecure and need encouragement. Frequently and lots. So, if you like the strips and don’t show appreciation, you’ve got yourself to blame if I stop uploading ‘em!

Meantime, this is a quick sketch of Vinnie I did earlier to make up for my absence. (?!)

(Was in normal graphite. Added blue effect to the scan.)

Still looking for a London-based job! Not much luck as yet. More later.

{EDIT: See also Portfolio for a couple of old B&W movie stills that I recently ‘colorized’!)

Posted by Chrissie on Tuesday, July 13th 2010 at 6:52 pm | Permalink | 1 Comment »

“No Escape”

Quite unexpectedly, perhaps. And partly inspired by an exchange with Garen Ewing!

Posted by Chrissie on Tuesday, June 29th 2010 at 12:25 am | Permalink | No Comments »

Preoccupied

It hasn’t been a week for drawing anything after all. Too much on my mind, I suppose. I’ve been looking for a job, i.e. full-time & salaried—down in the London area. I’ve been doing same locally for ages (this area sadly being of one of the country’s darkest & deepest pits jobs-wise), being that the lack of stability of freelancing has certainly caused me problems—and a lot of other people, during the recession, as far as I can tell. But, I thought, if I’m investing so much time into this, why am I looking round here? I don’t like it round here.

Well, yes, down south was littered with bad judgement calls last time. I messed-up repeatedly as far as places to live were concerned, and my mom’s death was still affecting my morale. It went badly. But in actual fact, I didn’t want to leave. It just became the only ’sensible’ option under the circumstances. Even at that, the experience left me shattered enough to ask my GP for anti-depressants. They helped a bit for a while, but I stopped taking them back in January because they had clearly outlived their use. Doing so hasn’t left me in a worse mood, at any rate. Perhaps a touch better generally, once withdrawal had passed.

When I went to London in 2006, this was actually a pseudo pay-off on plotting to do so for ten years! But it was the wrong time. The first place I got down there was wrong; an expensive, two-bedroom house I had no business renting unless I had a rock-solid sharing arrangement sorted. I didn’t, and I didn’t find one. The four months that followed in Brighton were beyond abysmal (this is a place I still say is nice to visit—have no interest in living there), mostly due to horrible flat & getting glandular fever. After that, the writing was on the wall.

And yet… if I wade into the dreadful times and pick out the decent or actually really good bits—it still had some, in spite of everything. Whereas, round here? Nope, no good times at all (meeting Tori Amos last September would be the sole exception). Unless I get away from here for a while. And I haven’t been outside the Brum area for 21 months now, dammit.

I guess all this means it’s a question of doing things right, and not being in a grief-stricken frame of mind kinda helps. The first thing is full-time employment. So I’m working on that pretty hard.

Too hard, I guess, to think about comics stuff ‘for fun’. But I might find myself in the right head space shortly. Stay tuned, my legion of adoring fans!

Posted by Chrissie on Saturday, June 26th 2010 at 3:09 pm | Permalink | No Comments »

“Interlude”

Okay: I was going to do a whole strip entirely made up of song lyrics. But halfway through I decided it just didn’t fly, it was too damn cheesy. But I did quite like the panel below, so consider this is an interlude… am gonna do a new, full strip but might be another couple days. So maybe this little snatch will keep J&M’s millions of fans at bay for now. :b

Oh, and a No-Prize for first person to identify the song.

Posted by Chrissie on Sunday, June 20th 2010 at 5:12 pm | Permalink | 1 Comment »

“Fecesbook”

Phew. My morale’s been super-low over the weekend, so my having done this is a minor miracle.

Posted by Chrissie on Monday, June 14th 2010 at 9:51 am | Permalink | 2 Comments »

To Recap

As you’ll notice (above), Club Comicana now has its own little category, inspired by the flurry of new strips. This might be a good time to recap on the old stuff I did with Jenni and Marie… so, click links below for a bit of past history!

Club Comicana 1 (December 2006)
Club Comicana 2 (November 2007)
Club Comicana 3 (November 2007)
Club Comicana page 1 (unfinished 4-page story, January 2008)

There are other bits and pieces—for instance, I did an unfinished strip, the first one ever, in the summer of ‘06. I might upload that sometime. I also did a (frankly not very good) birthday card concept with J&M from late ‘07. And there’s an unfinished three-panel strip from early ‘08 that I might finally complete sometime soon (I think the gag’s kinda funny and worth finishing up). But above’s the main stuff. And I was surprised how strange they look in the first one, actually… I don’t think the older stuff is as good generally, but what the hell.

Anyhow, hope to work on some more soon. Feedback helps!

Posted by Chrissie on Friday, June 11th 2010 at 7:12 am | Permalink | No Comments »