I’m pretty confident that the person who came up with the expression never fully understood the subtle interplay between the pain and discomfort of, say, a prostate infection, and the creation of art. In my sample1ew of one, suffering does not lead to art, it leads to wanting the suffering to stop. I could draw a big happy face right now, then splatter it with Jackson Pollock-style blobs of colour, and it would not make my prostate infection go away.
If it could make my prostate infection go away, I’d be up to my pits in art as I typed this. I’d be typing from on top of my giant pile of art.
Instead, I’ve been taking antibiotics and resting. Neither of these produces art, but they ease my suffering.
When the suffering ends, I will draw a Gum Gum Person.
This is riffing on Chris Silverman’s work, which you can see here: notes.art
I tried to decide if the probe thingie should be drifting over:
Mountains
Trees
Water
Urban scenery
I went with my original pick (trees), but I struggled to get the trees looking like they fit the rest of the drawing. I also futzed with the probe a lot. Overall, I think it’s not bad. If I keep doing these, my own style will eventually emerge. Probably with Gum Gum People.
For reference, the brushes I used in Procreate were:
Artistic Crayon (mainly the probe)
6B pencil (mostly for the highlights)
Dry Ink (fill)
Technical pen (fill, some outlines)
Bonus! Here’s a second version, with tweaks to the moon and with the starry backdrop greatly simplified. I think the ideal might be a cross between the two, but I’ll probably leave this for now and move onto something else.
There’s a social media account called Comics Outta Context. You can probably guess what it posts.
Today the account posted this, which raises questions:
Why is Shaggy in Hell? Why does the Devil have a pitchfork that looks like some $2 plastic job he grabbed from Spirit of Halloween? Is the Devil wearing a unitard or is he naked?
I decided I need to address at least some of this:
I’ve edited the comic from the original post, changing the sign on the booth and, curiously, the amount the kids have earned. The original was riffing more off the original, but was creepy enough that even I couldn’t abide it.
This one is just dark.
As an aside, we had a challenge years ago to “Make Marmad*ke funny” and my entries were invariably creepy or dark. The creepy ones tended to be very creepy. I think I’m good with dark now. And yes, I am deliberately not spelling out the giant dog’s name. You can probably figure it out, though!
HORSE is not one of the prompts, but for the sake of my headline, pretend it is.
As I pondered whether to take part in Inktober 2024, I looked over the list of prompts (they reveal them all in advance now) and whoever came up with the list really likes exploring/camping and the like, because almost the entire list fits these themes. It’s actually easier to list the prompts that don’t fit:
Grungy (though an argument could be made for it)
Scarecrow
Jumbo
Violin
Here’s the full list:
Looking over the official blog, the list was unveiled on August 26 with no additional description or anything, but ain’t no way words like expedition, hike, roam, trek, uncharted and backpack are a coincidence. A lot of these words would even inspire the same sketches, which is kind of weird. Maybe the idea is to inspire some “outside the box” thinking by including so many similarly themed words.
In any case, the first prompt, BACKPACK, is not inspiring me, so I probably won’t bother this year. But that’s OK–I’m still drawing! In fact, I’ll post something later today.
During Inktober 2019 I did a sketch of a frog wearing a crown for the prompt ENCHANTED:
It’s perfectly cromulent for a quick sketch, but it exhibits one of the issues I had when I started drawing again after many years: uneven, wobbly lines.
There are two things I did to change this:
In the primary drawing program I use, Procreate (iPad-only), I have turned on smoothing, which automatically smooths out lines as you draw them. The smoothing effect is kept low, because it gets weird and laggy as you crank it up, and I only need a little smoothing to balance out my hand’s natural wobble.
The other thing was just draw better. I used to draw lines in segments, then fix each segment if I erred, resulting in ugly, blobby lines. You might generously call it a style if it was intentional. Over time, I learned to just draw longer, more balanced lines. If I messed up, I’d redraw the entire line, not just a section of it.
I recently did a simple coloured version of the same sketch and ended up redoing all the line work, so it’s effectively ENCHANTED 2.0. Because I was rushing, there are a few little bits that should probably be cleaned up, and I may do that at some point. Mainly, this is just another chance for me to take an older piece, and show how just a few minutes with a more practised hand can make a noticeable difference. To my eye, anyway1Yes, in a way, this post is the world’s longest way of humble bragging about how much better I think I can draw now than in 2019..
Colour frog (I lost the original reference, so the colours are just my best guess for something frog-like):
Eventually, I’m going to try more experiments in line thickness, so I can get a result somewhere between the wonky lines of the first sketch and the rigid uniformity of the colour update. Still, progress!
Based on a photo I took at Burnaby Lake this summer.
This is the first time the background1I’m still not sure I’m entirely happy with it, either, but it’s pretty close. I may tweak it, I may not. took longer to do than the actual bird. Much longer!
I started about three different drawings, and they were getting too complex, so I started again with the idea of keeping it super simple. I drew a swoopy line and it turned into a purple onion thing. It took less than five minutes Ta-da!
UPDATE, November 13, 2025: I no longer check in with NightCafe and don't use AI anymore. I still kind of like the silly song, though, so I'm keeping it up. I apologize to the trees/lakes/glades that were murdered to produce it.
I am one of those who believes we are in a big ol’ AI bubble and that bubble is going to burst and leave a big mess that will probably leave tech CEOs unscathed, but result in more mass layoffs of workers. Such is our society as of now.
I understand and agree with those who object to AI companies hoovering up data without permission, then repackaging it in dubious and energy-sucking ways. Generally, AI is bad, and its positives are small. For me, it has been a silly diversion when I indulge in it, which is not often. For example, I have a NightCafe account (an AI image generation site) with over 3,000 unsued credits. You get 5 free credits per day. So yeah.
But I occasionally indulge and one of my interweb friends shared some silly songs he’d made using Suno. It was mildly amusing, but then he mentioned you can write your own lyrics, so I had to try it.
I brainstormed for several minutes (quite literally) and wrote a song called “Pickles and Cat.” I told Suno to make the song country and upbeat. It generated two versions. This is the first and “best” (IMO) and is likely the closest I’ll ever come to writing and performing music. I’m good with that. Garage Band is hard.
(I made the artwork in Canva, it was a labour of love.)
Pickles and Cat
I like my pickles and I like my cat My cat likes pickles, well, how about that?
I put my pickles in jars And I send 'em to Mars
Now the Martians have my pickles Nothing else rhymes with pickles
And the Martians they ate them all up I sent my cat but they wanted a pup I told them no sir, I can't do that Then they said OK, send the cat
Pickles and cat, my two favorite things Green and orange, they make my bells ring
Pickles and cat, you should get yourself some But not mine, I'm not sharing none
When my cat got to Mars he scratched a couch It was a Martian, and the Martian yelled ouch
My cat ran away to a big rocket ship Pressed all the buttons and went on a trip
Landed on a big space rock and scratched up the place Now no one goes there, it's his own private space
Pickles and cat, my two favorite things Green and orange, they make my bells ring
Pickles and cat, you should get yourself some But not mine, I'm not sharing none
This is me promising on the internet to do something. Maybe not today, but soon, as defined as “in the next couple of days.” In the meantime, to help inspire me, my bird art of a Sandhill crane:
With the site redesign mostly complete, I think I need a new logo, something that isn’t just literally the name of the site. Yes, I know it’s clean and efficient, but it’s also sterile and blah.
I still want something sleek and uncluttered. I will ponder.
When I tinkered around in Canva, I ended up with this:
It both does and doesn’t speak to me. It’s also full of hidden meaning that no one else would ever figure out.
But the actual logo will probably not feature a jar of pickles.
