Here it is, the last PerCaDraMo cartoon. I kept it simple, yet I think It's appropriate. The month is finally over and I've got 30 cartoon sketches to show for it. Some were very simple, others quite elaborate, but all 30 are done now. I also completed my NaNoWriMo goal of writing 50K words this month. I had not planned on doing both PerCaDraMo and NaNoWriMo at the same time. I just sort of got sucked into doing NaNoWriMo as I realized there would never be a good time to start a new novel so I might as well start now. So far I have 62K words of notes, outline, research, and a small handfull of actual scenes with setting and dialog. That counts, as far as I'm concerned, even though I haven't finished the story yet. Maybe in another month I'll have a decent, complete outline of that novel worked out. But back to PerCaDraMo. I figured out a few things this month. Namely... I love drawing with brush pens. I'm actually pretty good drawing with brush pens. I'd rather draw with just brush pens than start with pencils first, even though I might make a horrible mistake. I'd rather draw with brush pens on paper than draw on my iPad, because as much as I love my iPad, it's not as responsive at times as plain old pen and paper, and the iPad 1 severly limits how big an image I can draw. However, I draw more with the iPad because it's convenient and because I don't have to bother with scanning anything in once I'm done because it's already there in digital format. And finally, there is something called NaNoMangO that occurs every November (I think) where artists draw a page of a graphic novel a day for a month. Yeah, 30 fully inked pages in 30 days. Think I could do that next year? All this drawing has given me a serious hankering to draw some more, and maybe even to try my hand at a graphic novel of my own. So tomorrow I'll be at my local craft store picking up a few supplies in preparation for that. I can't make any big promises, but I hope to have something in the works soon. I hope you all enjoyed PerCaDraMo!!

The following cartoons were drawn at my in-laws house over Thanksgiving week. I used a Prismacolor brush pen with other Prismacolor fine point pens for cross-hatching in some cases, and Faber-Castell color brush pens for the illustration of the Empress. These were drawn on Canson Comic and Manga Drawing Pad paper, 9x12 inches. The Canson paper is fantastic, and the Prismacolor brush pen is by far my favorite inking pen. These were all done free hand, no pencilling before hand (as you can obviously tell in one drawing). In order, the drawings are...

Zombie Mermaid, the first one I drew at my in-laws and by far my favorite. I misplaced my Prismacolor brush pen half-way through and had to make due with a Faber-Castell brush pen, which is slightly larger, but I don't think it hurt the final drawing.

Man in a Tentacle Top Hat. I like the idea of this one, but man do I need practice drawing profile views. His face and head are far too narrow for that hat.

Empress Olgadevy Grants Her Benediction. I don't know exactly what inspired this, possibly the Ukranian style icons that are in my in-laws house. It has a very Ukranian/Russian feel to me. I also wanted to draw something without tentacles that day, as tentacles seem to show up a lot in these drawings.

The Original Doctor Octopus. I just started drawing this one, starting at the face, and ended up with a mad scientist pretty quickly. I had the brain in the case drawn, but no legs for this guy, when I decided to add the tentacles. I think I should have added something in the upper right corner, maybe a window or some such thing, but this came out okay. The brain case is based on a gumball machine we have in our house. Mmmmm, gumball braaaaaaaaiiiiiiiinnnnssssss...

And that's the last of the PerCaDraMo images I drew over the holidays. There's one more cartoon I need to draw tonight to finish off the month. After which I will have 30 drawings, some very good, some very strange, and some... whatever. I'll sum up my thoughts on this experiment tomorrow or Friday and let folks know what I think was the end result of all this. If you have thoughts on PerCaDraMo, be sure to let me know, either in the comments section of the blog, or by tweeting me (@Cynical_Woman) or you can send email via the contact link in the website menu above.

Don't forget to buy your Zombie Santa holiday cards!!!

If you like the artwork you've seen here for PerCaDraMo, you can have something very similar in style on your holiday cards this year. Zombie Santa cards are available in the Cynical Woman Zazzle shop, so be sure to buy yours today! And if you see something else you like there, buy that too! Trust me, I will not scold you if you do ;)

When drawing this, I had to wonder, what side of the bars are we on? And what constitutes a prison? I drew this one with ArtRage for the iPad, an app I don't use much anymore because it's so slow on my iPad 1. I'm waiting for next Spring to upgrade when supposedly a new iPad will be out. Until then I'm saving up my pennies.

I feel lousy. I have the flu. This is what the flu looks like this year. I think someone keeps bashing me in the face with a hammer. My teeth hurt.

I have a bunch of cartoons to upload from the past week. I was without internet connection most of the week, so here are a few of the drawings I got done while in DC. As soon as I can scan in the others, I'll post them as well.

"Sideways Swan"

"Zombie Baby"

"Eyes of the Soul"

I once read a line somewhere that said, "When in doubt, draw a fishie." I prefer drawing robots, but the idea is the same. When you don't know what to draw, have a fall back idea. Drawing tha will usually loosen up the ol' creativity and lead to other drawings. Drawn with SketchClub on my iPad, using the sketchy tool. My favorite drawing app, by the by.

Playing a bit with SketchClub's pen tool. It doesn't have smoothing, but it does have a velocity setting, which gives it that nice variable line width. This is Claire, by the way. I've drawn her before and you'll be seeing more of her as the months go by.

I wouldn't really call old age a disease, but sometimes it's treated as such. People get old, unless the die young. And getting older means watching your body decay, which I think everyone hates. I know I hate seeing the lines that have become permanently etched upon my forehead and around my mouth, and my neck these days looks more and more like my grandmother's, which kind of horrifies me. I'm trying to appreciate the process of growing older; I'm only 42, after all. But even so, I find myself fighting it tooth and nail. Some days I wish I could just accept that there's no cure for old age. Today's entry was drawn on the iPad using ArtRage and SketchClub. I discovered there are some nifty features to the pen tool in SketchClub and I may start using it more often for cartooning. I like the look of the artwork I get with that program.

I just wanted to draw an angry flower. He sure does look pissed.