Christmas in September

This is a caricature portrait of my brother Joey, his wife Jennifer, and their granddaughter, Everlee. This was a Christmas gift from Everlee’s mom, Autumn, to Joe and Jennifer.

I got back to basics when drawing these caricatures. Although my drawing tablet has its advantages, using just a primitive pencil and eraser on paper is much more enjoyable. I drew the faces with pencil, scanned them into Photoshop, and then created the rest of the portrait using the drawing tablet.

Would you like to give a caricature portrait to one of your loved ones this Christmas? Let me know what you want and I’ll quote you a price, then you will say, “yes or no”, then we dicker and haggle maybe, and then you say, “yes”. Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!

Contact Bob at oddboxcomics@att.net

Unphooey on Huion

When my Huion drawing tablet went on the fritz, I was saying, “Phooey on Huion!” I would like to take that back. I got it working again! The resulting Small Consolation that you see above was just me messing around with different line thicknesses and colors. A test, you might say. If you think it is funny… great! It wasn’t meant to be funny, though. It just happened. Art just happens, sometimes. I think it has a certain Anime flavor. Or is it Manga? Is Anime the moving version of Manga? That might be an interesting question. Happy Thanksgiving!

My first animation with sound.

This animation project has been a great adventure for me. It was just a straight forward doing and learning. I liken it to walking through a maze blindfolded. Of course, because I have a little experience with animation, perhaps I peeked here or there.

I explored three frontiers in the making of this video; Adobe Animate, placing sound in my animation, and a Huion digital drawing tablet. Animate is an animation program and I am like a kid in a candy store in there! Oh, the wonders…the wonders I have seen! At first, I was a bit bedazzled and confused, but soon, I was humming right along. My next challenge was to place sound in my animation. I had never done that before, but because of my enthusiasm for the task at hand, and the ease of working in Animate, I made short work of it. And to wrap things up, my brand new digital drawing tablet was instrumental in the creation of the video. With this technology, I can draw in the computer! That eliminates three steps: sketching on paper, inking, scanning. An incredible time saver.