Author: Cynical Woman

Cartoonist, Artist, Geek, Evil Crafter, Girl Scout Troop Leader and Writer. Also, a zombie. I haven't slept in I don't know how long.
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Freaky Friday – Free Sad Robot Mini-Comic!!

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Because I love you all, and because I love my iPad even more, I created a mini-comic starring Sad Robot. It’s 4 pages of kooky robotic fun, free to you in PDF format. It’s licensed under a Creative Commons 3.0 license, so you can download it and share it for free, just don’t change it or sell it or claim it as your own work.

Download the PDF of Sad Robot’s first adventure, “Too Much Laundry!” right here!

(And if the link above doesn’t work, it’s because I screwed up linking the PDF to the blog post. Tweet me at Cynical_Woman and I’ll fix it when I get back from picking up the kids.)

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Rats! Episode 56 – Hair

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It’s absolutely hysterical for me to read this particular comic and compare it to my life today. Most days I’m up around 5AM. My wardrobe consists of what I call my Mama Geek uniform – funky t-shirts and recycled jeans skirts. As for the hair? I dyed part of it blue. You see, you can dress strange and still be responsible!

I wish I knew what pen I had used to draw this cartoon. The cartoons from this period have stood up very well to the test of time. The ink has not faded nor turned blue. The lines still look very crisp. Honestly, this is some of the neatest drawing I did on “Rats!” Over the four-year period that I drew this comic, I frequently changed pens and drawing pads, which led to some inconsistent results. I chalk it up to being a poor college student who could never find the same art supplies twice at Mish Mish.

By the way, does Mish Mish still exist in Blacksburg? I’d be curious to know.

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WIP Wednesday – Sketches from “The Little Death”

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“I Do Not Wish to See” by Helen E. H. Madden,
Character Sketch from “The Little Death” Podcast Novel

I took a break from my other work-in-progress this past week to do some other drawings and catch up on writing. Frankly, I haven’t been able to make it to my desk that much. But I’ve been doing a lot of artwork on the iPad (did I mention how much I LOVE my iPad?). This was drawn with a new app I picked up, Sketch Club. Sketch Club is a bit different from the other programs I’ve got, missing some of the bells and whistles of Sketchbook Pro like the ability to resize a layer as you work on it, but it’s got some fantastic drawing and painting tools. I love the rough scratchy style I can get with it.

Anyway, this is a drawing of Robin Helki, the main character in “The Little Death,” the novel I’m currently podcasting at www.heatflash.libsyn.com. I’ve shared snippets of the story before. Robin is a telepath who reads psychic information by touching things. She collects evidence for the violent crimes division of a police precinct in a dystopian society, and is slowly going mad as a result of her work. You can find all the episodes of “The Little Death” on the Heat Flash Erotica Podcast. If you like the story, feel free to pass on the episodes. They run under a Creative Commons 3.0 license, so it’s free to listen and share.

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ACW Episode 110 – Ravencon!

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Sorry this is a little late today, but I’m still pretending to be recovering from Ravencon. That means I’m really just being lazy and sleeping in instead of getting up early to write my blog posts.

The following cartoon was drawn on my iPad (have I mentioned how much I love my iPad?!) while at Ravencon. The event depicted here actually happened during the con’s opening ceremonies. Con Chair Mike Pederson OWES me for my many hours of hard work this past weekend (not really; I was just as lazy at the con as I’m being at home today).

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Sunday Contentments – Ravencon

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I spent the weekend in Richmond at Ravencon, one of my favorite sci fi conventions. Normally, I just go to hang out, but this weekend I ended up working on staff, filling in at the very last minute as volunteer wrangler. It turned out to be a low key job, and I enjoyed it enough to do it again next year. Meanwhile, I got to hang out with lots of friends and in general be a con lobby slug. Perfect weekend indeed.

After I got home, I did a quick robot drawing. Liked this app a lot. It’s called Sketch Club, I believe. This was 10 minutes work.

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Rats! Episode 56 – Recruiting

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I don’t recall recruiting new cadets on campus for the VTCC, but obviously we must have done it. Otherwise, why would I have drawn this cartoon? I’m sure any rat who brought in a prospective new cadet would have received various priviledges as reward, and any company that failed to meet its recruiting requirements would have made life living hell for its rat class. At least I think that’s how it would have worked. Again, I can’t really remember.

I do recall going to my old high school to recruit for the VTCC. One of my former teachers saw me, dressed up all in my uniform, and was shocked. She actually told me she was very disappointed. The military was not a path she thought I would have chosen. I used to like that teacher, and while I did only join the military and the VTCC thanks to some arm twisting, I was rather hurt by her comments. I may not have been overly enthusiastic about my career as an officer, but to this day I am still rather proud of the work I did and the obstacles I overcame, both in the VTCC and in the Army Reserves.

Do you recognize the prospective cadet captured in this cartoon? Yes, that’s Mick, from the previous year’s adventures. I had a number of civilian friends, many of them just as counter-culture as Mick, who could not fathom the VTCC lifestyle. And yet they were never disappointed in me. Gobsmacked by some of the wacked out things I ended up doing for the military and ROTC, but never disappointed. My thanks to all of them. Even if you didn’t understand, you did stand by me.

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ACW Episode 109 – Sometimes, they really do mean “Don’t try this at home!”

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Ah, the things we do in the name of beauty. I liked my first try at blue hair, but it wasn’t blue enough for me. So I decided to push the effect a bit farther. I found a blue hair coloring kit in my local drugstore, of all places. When I double checked the brand online, many of the reviews mentioned intense and long lasting color, so I decided to try it. First though, I had to redye my hair bright red, because the first time I dyed my hair blue, I sort of did my whole head and that killed the red, which made things too dark over all. So I redid the red, which completely removed all the blonde highlights I had the hair dresser bleach in some weeks back. Now for the blue to really stand out, I had to rebleach those spots. I figured I could do this. I’ve been dying my hair for years, how hard could bleaching be?

Fortunately, I did set aside an entire evening to do this, because the whole process of bleaching and dying took HOURS. I had to put on a tipping cap and pull through the strands I wanted to bleach. Then I had to mix and apply the bleach. Then I had to wait an hour for the strands to bleach out. Then I had to rinse out those strands and then I finally got to apply the blue hair dye. And it was an hour before I washed the dye out and could see the results.

Not satisfied with doing all that, I had also decided Friday afternoon to make a pie from scratch. I had bought a new cookbook on pastry desserts and wanted to try it out. So whilst bleaching and dying my hair, I was also mixing up pastry dough and pie filling, two activities that also took hours to complete. While the hair dying was finished Friday night, the pies didn’t get made until Saturday evening, and then I ended up making tarts with the leftover pie crusts on Sunday afternoon.

Anywhere, here are pics of the results of all my hardwork. And let me just say, next time I decide to dye my hair blue, I’m going to see how much my hairdresser will charge to do it for me.

Blue hair…

and Apple Blackberry pies!

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Move It Mama Monday! Sink or Do Deep Water Aerobics

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Huzzah! Had my blood pressure checked on Friday. It’s back down to 110/62, my normal level.

Life is calming down, and I love it. I made it to all my karate classes last week, and though I was sore from all the exercise, it still felt good to get back to the routine. I also finally made it back to the Y for water aerobics. Normally I do shallow water aerobics on Fridays, but there have been some schedule changes and now on Fridays they’re doing a deep water aerobics class. I’d never done that before and wasn’t sure I’d care for it. The only deep water classes I’d seen had been led by an instructor who took things very slowly, very casually. It looked more like people bobbing about aimlessly in the deep end of the pool than actual exercise.

Not this past Friday’s class though! The instructor who led the class is someone I’ve worked out with before. She’s very energetic, to say the least, and she got everybody into the pool and moving fast. We were pumping our arms and kicking our legs so hard the pool looked like it was boiling. I was already feeling tired half-way through the class and by the end, it felt as though my bones had been melted right out of my body. Getting out of the pool after an hour of kicking and paddling and treading water was probably the hardest thing I’d done all week. I almost thought the life guard was going to have to haul out winch and pull me out of the pool, then carry me to the hot tub and dump me in!

Needless to say, after a workout like that, I will be going back for more deep water aerobics. I need that kind of intense exercise. I need an activity that will work every muscle in my body. With deep water aerobics, I’m spending as much energy just trying to stay upright in the pool as I am doing the actual exercises, so my core muscles are getting a solid workout along with my arms and legs.

On Monday, I’ll go back for shallow water aerobics, since I’ve got a friend who expressed an interest in attending then. I’ll save Wednesdays for karate practice, which will probably work better since that will be between days I do karate class. In any event, I have a feeling I’m going to be very buff after a few weeks of this schedule. Or very tired. Or maybe both. That’s not a bad thing though.

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Sunday Contentments – Princess and Rosa Parks

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It’s a chilly spring day here at la Casa de Madden. Pixie and I are in the backyard, relaxing. Hubster has taken the Princess to church. They have an all-day Sunday school today, in preparation for Princess’ upcoming First Communion.

It’s hard to believe that Princess is old enough to be preparing for such an event (especially since yours truly is Buddhist). Not that long ago, she was a chubby-cheeked baby, who screamed all night and spit up into my cleavage at random intervals. Those were the days! Now she’s going to school, learning science, taking karate… She’s gotten so big!

Last week, Princess had to do a school report on an important figure in American history, and had to dress up as that person for the presentation. She chose Rosa Parks. This left me a little confounded, as I had no idea how to turn my goofy 8-year-old daughter into one of the most important figures in the American Civil Rights Movement. Fortunately, my sister, the actress, came to the rescue. She found a website that listed the details of the outfit Rosa Parks was wearing the day she was arrested. We also did a search online and found Rosa Parks’ arrest photo. A quick trip to the clearance rack at Target and our local craft store got us everything we needed, and I only had to do a little sewing to pull the outfit together. Then we spent quite a bit of time reading about Rosa Parks and discussing segregation and the Civil Rights movement with Princess. Those were very interesting conversations, you can be sure.

Here’s a picture of Rosa Parks on the day she was arrested for refusing to give up her seat on the bus:

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And here is Princess in her costume:

What astonishes me most about these two photos is this: over 50 years after Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat to a white man, a small white school girl with a serious addiction to Disney Princesses wants to look just like her, because Rosa Parks was the coolest person in the world.

Of course, Rosa Parks probably didn’t have spaghetti sauce all over her face when she was arrested…

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Rats! Episode 55 – Self-doubts

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I’m putting this up real quick before I have to run out the door today. Let’s just say being a sophomore cadets kind of sucks. You’re no longer a rat, but you don’t have any real power. You just end up being the dopey sidekick to some junior. I never liked the sophomore cadets when I was a rat, and I hated being a sophomore cadet later on.

Got to run now!