Yes…this week’s cartoon is…uhm…a tad late, isn’t it? Sorry…but my paying job took precidence this weekend. It’s been a hectic rush to get stuff done before our mid February deadline, but it looks like we’ll be fine. I have the cartoon for the week nearly done, it just needs the charcoaling, and a bit of ink wash.

Perhaps in the meantime, can I bribe you with something from my sketchbook…?

The graying out in the lower left hand corner is from the way my sketch book bulged out from the scanner plate. I’m using a thread bound sketch book lately, instead of wire bound and it won’t lay flat on the scanner. The smudges are because it’s a pencil sketch, and I like to work in a very soft lead. I used a .5mm technical pencil and a wad of kneaded rubber for this one, which is the same as I use for the roughs of my political cartoons.

I wish I could draw more from life. I’m at that point now where I know I can improve vastly if I could do that on a regular basis. But for now I have to make do with photos, and a little imagination. This one came from a photo that I found in some forgotten corner of the internet, that I printed out and tacked to the wall in front of my drafting table as an exercise. I adjusted the body proportions and hair style to taste, and made the guy’s jeans resemble something more like I was used to seeing, back in the 1970s, when guys, even straight guys were allowed to be sexy below the waist. I don’t think anybody, anybody male that is, wears hip huggers and flared jeans anymore. Or wide belts. That’s all strictly 70s stuff. As a nod to the present, I resisted the temptation to make his hair longer. Actually, not every guy wore his hair long back when I was a twenty-something either, and some of them still managed to look sexy.

I need to do this sort of thing more often. Just sketch for the sake of it, instead of to produce anything specific. And I need to practice from life, instead of from pictures, and my anatomy books. But I haven’t the nerve to actually ask someone to pose. So I reckon I’ll just have to make due with magazine clippings and the random internet photo.