Toying with a possible comic strip character. Don’t get too smitten; this is the very first rendering of her. By the time I figure everything out, she’s liable to be an old lady, or Chinese, or a talking horse.

I also did this drawing to try out a principle from Andrew Loomis’ “Fun With a Pencil” (a nearly 80-year old book available for free here), which is why she has that big `ol ugly shadow behind her.

In the book, Loomis diagrams how to determine the shadow position by triangulating the direction of light and angle of light.

I decided she’d be standing with a street lamp in front of her; as you can see I even drew the lamp it on a separate sheet of paper!

I’m not entirely certain I got it right; it looks weird. But maybe I just put my light source where no sane artist would.

Today my Aunt Susie sent me a great photo of Nana, age 24, around the time she moved to California from Mexico. Click the gallery below to see the before and after.

Take that, `11! Overall, it wasn’t a bad year, but it certainly walloped my family at the tail end. So here’s to a better 2012!

I was a bit awestruck by a photo my cousin Stephanie posted to her Facebook page, of my grandfather’s hand with my late grandmother’s wedding ring on his pinky. Besides the obvious poignancy, it was the first time I had really paid attention to the innumerable folds in his century-old skin. And I realized it would be a whole lot of fun to draw.

After about an hour of drawing, I looked down at my own hands, and they seemed completely smooth and boring and devoid of character. Crossing my dainty fingers that I can someday wear hands like Tata’s as a badge of a long life well-lived.

Guess I was in an arts and crafts mood today–I created a custom comic strip sketchbook using a cheap notebook from Staples, and mailing labels printed with a basic template for sketching rough layouts to be scanned and inked. I can also used the lined pages to work out dialogue and plotting.

Now I just need some ideas.