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 »

“The Bride of Cthulhu”

Okay, so this is a ’strip blog’ right now. Deal with it. Click = bigger view. Reading previous ep probably a good idea but not essential.

Posted by Chrissie on Tuesday, June 8th 2010 at 11:18 pm | Permalink | 2 Comments »

Another strip

The frame of mind is there, I’m using it. Pretty happy with this one, which means no one else will like it. And yes, a click gets you a bigger & clearer view of things! How about some feedback?!

Posted by Chrissie on Saturday, June 5th 2010 at 3:37 am | Permalink | 3 Comments »

A few scrawls

A new (very quick) strip for perusal—first bit of sequencing for two years! Click for better view.

More Club Comicana stuff in the Portfolio. Yesterday, I also did a quick doodle of a demon and a portrait of a character from an old story (or, unintentionally, Cate Blanchett with black hair). I’m a bit rusty so it was fun to start this month with a workout. As I am ‘thinking’ about a new SP comic—knowing my hand still sorta works is useful! :b

Posted by Chrissie on Wednesday, June 2nd 2010 at 5:29 pm | Permalink | 2 Comments »

Statistically

Oddly enough, though, this is the most prolific month for this blog since March 2004. Not sure anyone’s reading a damn word of it, but hey, I have other things to lose sleep about…

Posted by Chrissie on Monday, May 31st 2010 at 9:21 pm | Permalink | No Comments »