I don’t know why I’m always drawing faces.
This was done with Photoshop. I created the background texture, but then instead of drawing on a separate layer, I drew on the background layer. After drawing the first few lines of the face, I couldn’t clean it up by erasing them because it erased the background. Ooops.
I didn’t finish a longer post, so I thought I’d post a sketch I did earlier today. Noel, who, coincidentally, just returned home from Somalia a few days ago, put up a post, alerting atheists who are Considering Visiting Muslim Majority Countries. He gave a link to the Godless Spellchecker’s blog in which GS posted translations of what people are saying in Arabic about atheists on Twitter. Back on Noel’s blog, the very funny (and occasionally offensive – you’ve been warned. Don’t blame me if you click the link.) Armchair Pontificator made a quip and I drew a quick cartoon. Being caught postless, I decided I might as well post my cartoon here.
It has often occurred to me that there is no way to know how many people are really Muslim in countries where there are severe punishments for atheism. The thirteen countries that execute atheists are Afghanistan, Iran, Malaysia, Maldives, Mauritania, Nigeria, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, UAE and Yemen. Another four, Bahrain, Gambia, Jordan and Kuwait, imprison atheists. In Nigeria, it should be noted, the constitution protects freedom of thought, but rights are often violated by local governments and non-state militias and Islamist groups. Hence, I put different words on the picture.
I was working up a little dialogue to be rendered in a comic format. Since it’s just two guys talking, I thought doing it in a vector program would allow me to reuse portions of the drawing. After making a little sketch in a raster program, I brought it into a vector program. As usual, everything took longer than anticipated and there is no way I will finish it today, so I figured I’d just put up the sketch of the first character as is.
This is a charcoal sketch that was probably done sometime around the year 2000.
I’ve been meaning to draw more, but I never know what to draw. Sometimes, I just let my hand go and my mind follows. Most frequently, I draw faces. I don’t think that’s unusual.
So, I’m calling this, “The Twinkie Bandit.” Long ago, I had a boyfriend that used to use that phrase all the time. I guess it’s sort of nasty, but he was aware that it described himself as a pre-adolescent. I don’t know if they have them outside of the U.S., but Twinkies are mass-produced vanilla cakes that you can buy in convenience stores and drugstores. They come as two small oblong cakes to a package and they’re inexpensive. When my sister and I were young, we’d ask our mother or grandmother for a few quarters and go to a nearby candy store. It was just about as far as we were allowed to go without supervision. It had a soda fountain, comic books, candy, popular paperback books and newspapers. We’d buy a package and split it. As it happens, I preferred Devil Dogs or Yodels because they were chocolate.
My doodle doesn’t really resemble my former boyfriend when he as a kid, but it does a little bit. Next year, he’ll discover girls and cut down on the Twinkies.
I haven’t drawn in a long time and I really don’t know why. So, I just tried mucking around a bit. I didn’t set out to draw anything in particular. Unsurprisingly, considering what I tend to draw, it developed into something that resembled a figure. It’s not really finished, but since I probably won’t finish it, I thought I’d put it up.
My apologies for not answering everybody’s kind comments on my last post. I went today to sketch from a model with some other people. These are all graphite on paper.
It might be inadvisable to put up unfinished work. I don’t know. Anyway, I spent a large part of yesterday working a few comics panels. I’ve been experimenting with different ways of working using the computer instead of working at a drafting table. I haven’t added the word balloons or anything yet. I’m not really sure how the panels will be integrated into pages. The question of the medium in which it will be viewed is problematic.
fojap 
