Friday, July 20, 2012

Kitty's Random Jargon on the High Road


Very not daily doodle: Kitty Cat!
Every now and then I try to branch out and try to draw something other than people, cartoon people, naked people, and...well...more people. I really should work more on still life, landscape, and architectural drawing, among other things. That said every now and then I do lay down the graphite to produce something other than yet another humanoid rendering.

I'm pretty sure the photo reference for this drawing came from deviantart.com, but whatever the source I had a lot of fun rendering a more or less realistic cat face that is only slightly cartoony around the eyes.

I like to think this is plaintive face cats give you to lure you into petting them. Once you're touching them, that's when they strike.

Random thoughts
I drew a picture of a woman making an...ecstatic face on my notebook at work. I got away with it by calling it "The Sneeze."

Frozen Gogurt...not as good as advertised.

Have you ever driven at night with your pants off? Just to pass people on the street and think, "they have no idea i'm half naked?" I have to think that would be a liberating feeling. To get pulled over would suck, though.

Homemade food rocks. It's a lot more effort, but when you start being able to cook food without turning it into building materials or poison the results are better, and cheaper, than you can get in most restaurants.

The hardest thing about working a job where you don't feel a lot of satisfaction is watching people get bent out of shape about things you think don't matter.

Business Jargon That Needs to Die: The Asks Edition
The business school habit of turning verbs into nouns for the purpose of giving a catchy name to something that doesn't need it has perpetrated yet another obscene violation on the English language. Have you ever had a business person tell you to increase the number of "asks" in your sales process?

Comic Book Review: Taking the High Road Edition
Title: Higher Earth
Publisher: Boom
Issue: 1
Price: $1.00 (Holy shit! An affordable comic! Worth. the price. alone) 

Although this book has a high quality cover with well done, engaging artwork, I must confess that what swayed me to buy this was the price. At one dollar the price tapped into my sense of nostalgia and transported me back to the early days of my blossoming geekdom. All comics were a buck, or a buck-twenty-five, and you could spend twenty bucks and get enough reading material for a whole afternoon (back when I had the luxury of being able to spend a lazy afternoon reading comic books). Beyond the sentimental mist forming in the corner of my eyes and the great price, I wasn't expecting much from this book. I mean, c'mon, it's a dollar-comic. For that you usually get badly drawn knock off Archie-porn.

Once I cracked the pages there was a pleasant surprise waiting inside. Too often these days comics will feature a high-quality, well crafted cover drawn by a recognizable name, only to fill out the interior with artwork drawn by the Editor in Chief's six year old nephew who actually wants to be Spider-Man when he grows up. To a great degree, those were my expectations going in, but the artwork is sound throughout. Solid line work, good layout, and really well done color that evokes different locations throughout the book were a treat for my optic nerves.

With that in mind a cynical person might say, "Ok, so, the price is good and the artwork isn't crap, so the story must be utter shit." No? Maybe that was just me, but this book defied conventional wisdom again and provided a story with a good blend of excitement and carefully placed exposition, plus a solid a hook at the end that I would feel no shame in picking up issue number two.

Overall I feel good recommending this book. It's well worth the "$1.00" cover price. Even if you don't like it, you're only out a buck. So what the hell?

As with all my comic reviews the cover art and interior art are used without permission from the publisher or the creators. This is why I use small, low-resolution images and link those to the comic's listing on HeavyInk.com. If you would like to read one of the comics I've reviewed for yourself I encourage you to order from HeavyInk.com, or (even better) support your local comic book store and buy your comics from them.