“A Very Scary Portrait of Mich” by Helen E. H. Madden, 4 March 2011

Here we have a lovely drawing of Mich, my partner in crime over at VeryScaryArt.com. Mich is afraid of spiders, which is why I’ve drawn this lovely giant purple arachnid landing on her forehead. I’m sure she’ll get it though with her trusty baseball bat! Hit that sucker hard, Mich!

Seriously though. This drawing was another one done on the iPad, using ArtRage. I used the pen tool for the inking and the marker tool for the coloring, with a little bit of the palette knife tool for blending the colors. The marker tool has a “blending marker” setting, but it doesn’t give a nice smooth blend. The palette knife took care of that problem for me though.

I’m all off-schedule this week, both here and over at VeryScaryArt.com. I apologize for that, but between being out all last week due to my father-in-law’s death and then coming home and having to have a minor outpatient procedure done this week, everything’s just been crazy around here. We’re in the tale end of cookie sales now, with just one booth sale left to go tomorrow, and then hopefully things will start to ease up a little. I’m spending today locked to my computer so I can knock out some work, and will probably spend as much of tomorrow as possible doing the same. I need to get some stuff off my plate.

Speaking of which, I’m stepping back from some of the commissioned work I’ve been doing. We had a panel at Farpoint, moderated by Steve Wilson, about burn-out and overwork for creative people (writers, podcasters, and webcomickers among others) and we all talked about how we have too much stuff going on. What I realized that weekend was that I have so many things going on, I can’t properly follow through on many projects once they get past the first stages. I can write the book, but then can’t get around to promoting it. I can draw the comics, but I can’t seem to find time to set up a FaceBook page which I’ve been told would put readership way up. I can’t even find time right now to make new album art for “The Little Death,” which I desperately need to do. So I sent out some emails saying I was stepping back and stepping away from some work. Hopefully, this will make life easier all around. Of course, if I could just get past cookie season…

Anyway, I’ll be hard at work this weekend. Hopefully, next week and the weeks following will get better and easier. And maybe Mich won’t give herself a concussion trying to get rid of that SPIDER!!!

“A Very Scary Self-Portrait” by Helen E. H. Madden, 13 February, 2011

This portrait will eventually go up on the Very Scary blog, where I have been working with my good friend Mich to scan in, display and review several pieces of children’s artwork that we picked up at the March to Keep Fear Alive. I’ll be drawing a cartoon of Mich as well, one that includes her greatest fear which is spiders. Mine is snakes, as you can tell from the image above.

This was drawn on my iPad, once again using ArtRage. I think ArtRage is ideal for cartooning, especially on the iPad. I do like Brushes and Sketchbook as well, but I’m more familiar with ArtRage and the fact that it has a pen tool makes it perfect for me.

If you haven’t been over to Very Scary yet, take a moment and go look! We have guest reviews written by really cool people. Enjoy the art, leave a comment, and consider helping out with the Very Scary site. We’ve got over 500 pieces of artwork to review, so we could always use a few volunteers

BTW, I’m at Farpoint this weekend, so if you’re there and you see me, be sure to say “Hi!” I promise I won’t run away screaming.