Making My Presents Known

I'm sure everyone wants to know about how well our family came together over the holiday. Sorry, I'm going to talk about presents.
To be fair, we all know that despite the turns-for-worse and stress April and Kevin went through last weekend, they got a better gift than everybody I know this year. It's a huge relief to hear how well things are so far progressing, and I hope Aiden gets to see his new digs VERY SOON.

It was a fun Christmas all around. Karissa and I had our little Christmas last Friday, and let Isabella open most ofher stuff first. Karissa got me a business card holder for my Bone Daddy cards, and a "harmonica case" the reason that's in quotes is because neither of us are sure it really is a case for harmonica's, but that's what the description was when she bought it. Unfortuantely, the gift I bought for her the day or two after Thanksgiving still hasn't arrived yet. I know, I'm pissed too. I'm giving it until tomorrow, then contacting PayPal.

Isabella's getting that terrible toddler behavior again, which means it's hard to go to the mall with her. Could be the time of year. She was okay at Karissa's mom's on X-Mas Eve, though she had more fun unwrapping presents than playing with them. Karissa's mom got me a Tom Waits cd which EVERYONE who visits us will eventually hear and one of those harminca holders that sit on your neck. Yeah, shut up, they are NOT that geeky. It fits in my brand new case. The next morning, we packed up & went to my dad's, making 2 pit stops along the way--one to our house to drop off our gifts, another to the hospital, where we found out what was going on with Kevin & April the night before while we were opening gifts.

At my dad's, you would have sworn they hadn't had X-Mas yet, there seemed like a lot of presents under the tree. Actually, some were ours, some were held over to open when we got there (I thought that was polite of them), and of the latter some were rather large. My dad got Emberly (my 13-year old niece) a cell phone (I know, sign of the times), which he wrapped in about 5 boxes. Sound familar? I've been known to give the gift that keeps on giving--smaller boxes. By the time she had unwrapped the second to last box, he called her on it to mess with her (she didn't know at first it was a cell phone). Even the third or fourth time I've seen this, it's still just as funny.

I asked for a harmonica from my dad. I'd mentioned it to him a while before, and when I formally asked he informed me that he had already got it, plus one for isabella that I also asked for. This worried me just a bit, as I had only recently begun to learn about different harmonicas, and he went andpicked one out that he thought "looked good". Well, I got a harmonica. It's a chromatic harmonica, which is at least twice as big as the usual ones, with a little button on the side that changes pitch, used almost like the black keys on a piano. I really wanted one, but figured that would be too much to ask. But my dad managed to surprise the hell out of me by being a better Ebay shopper than I am.

Also, I mentioned "hey, if you find a classical style guitar for cheap, I've been looking for one. Classical guitars usually are shorter in scale, wider in neck, and the three high strings are actually nylon instead of metal. I forgot to tell him that I like weird. So imagine my surprise to find a pure white classical style acoustic waiting for me with no name brand and better tone than the acoustic I currently own. If one were listening at the door of the Hunters' during this time, then they're perverts who need to be taken into custody, but they would have heard awkward harmonica blurts and the strums of a guitar tuned down 1 1/2 steps low. He even got Isabella a Chinese harmonica, which is also different from the usual ones you see. F.Y.I.--My new harmonica fits in my brand new case with my old on, my harp tabs, and my new harmonica holder.

My brother got Isabella a ukulele--a real one. After a couple days, I made up my mind that some day I'm going to get myself one, because I can't put hers down. And I'm learning "Tip-toe Through th Tulips" just for Kevin. I might even sing it Falsetto, ya bastard new-dad.

I also got a couple cool graphic novels I've been wanting, which I'll be posting more about as soon as I read them.

Happy X* Mas *Symbol for train crossing. Happy [train crossing] Mas.

I haven't done this in a while, so here is another "How does Doug draw it?"
I'm your host, and I'll take you through a quick overview of how my last Clothed Figure Drawing assignment was done.
I decided on a holiday theme, mostly because I've always wanted to do one, but also because I happened to have a perfect reference in mind.
Follow the steps down to see how I did it. Or, just skip down to the bottom if you're an impatient fuckface buttass.
Proceed.

We'll start with my dad, who has that "Santa in his off-season" look. This is form Isabella's first birthday. 

I needed to kind of splice in a more recent shot of Isabella, so this one works. The pose works for me and the lighting is good on the clothes (thanks April). 

The initial drawing is already there, but I'm just showing you basically how I set it up at home. I have an actually drafting desk in the basement, but it's not a good work environment. 

All drawn in graphite, now to break out my charcoal sticks... 

Here, I'm retracing over lines I had drawn in graphite with charcoal. Moving along... 

This is what it looked like after I smeared the charcoal. Now, I erase to bring out highlights, and maybe shade a little darker in some other areas... 

All finished! Yes, I'm a little proud of myself. 

Loser Story Pout, School's Almost Out, and a Sick Baby (no rhyme there)

Hope everyone enjoyed the intermission! Sorry about the long short story, but I'm proud of it. The winner's story got published in the East Grand Forks Exponent, and it sucked. Seriously, not just me being bitter (I would only have got $50 for 1st prize anyway), but the story described ritual a girl went through to become "one of them".
Anyway, like April posted over a week ago, Butto came over with his Wii, and we finally got to try it out. Although I have no intentions of paying what Nintendo is asking for that system, I will say it was an assload of fun and I'm surprised there weren't more dents in April & Kevin's ceiling.
The night before, we got together at Kevin & April's, had some pizza, and later Ben finally brought over his cello for us to check out. I checked my archives (for other things at first), and found that I'd been asking Ben to bring over his cello off and on since July 2005. Of course I could have gone over there, but I still think it would be a little rude to walk in there door and say, "Shut up--I just came to play the cello," and then make way to the instrument. But, it was fun. I've never played a cello before, and doing so slightly drunk made me sound better. Now we just need a guitar accompaniment...and maybe a harmonica, and we can form the first death-bluegrass band.
School's coming down to a close this semester, and I can't wait for that. Not because the semester sucked, though. I actually had fun doing these assignments, we were given a LOT more freedom with my two classes, I've been wanting to learn more about drawing clothed figures and drawing in different types of perspective, and I all around didn't feel as stressed as I had the first two semesters. I'm definitely feeling better than Spring semester. I'm thinking about doing a summer session too, although I don't think my loans cover that. My comic assignment was the last one in Perspective, now I just have to sketch a mansion in various perspectives to show I understand them, and one last composition in Clothed Figure which I already have in mind.
Isabella got really sick Saturday night. She hadn't been eating very well and had nasty diapers. That night, she was screaming bloody murder in her crib. I picked her up, heard a gurgle, and watched her throw up on me and the floor. Neither Karissa nor I have weak stomachs, but the smell was just nauseating, and seemed stuck in our noses the whole night. I went out to get some medicine, and ran into an old friend from my Budget Inn Express days, who now works at Altru. She said it was probably Nora Virus (spelling?). It's been going around like crazy, and Isabella had those symptoms. I got back with some children's Pepto (her tummy was the worst thing bothering her at that point). She finished chewing it, then threw up all over me again. Later, w tried to get her to lay down on the floor with a blanket, but she kept getting up, holding her tummy, which was now a little big and firm, then running around one of us in a circle before settling down. At one point, she stopped behind Karissa, and most ungodly sound came out of her ass. Her tummy deflated slightly, and she was finally able to sleep by about 1:30 AM or so.
Sunday she seemed fine and ate really well, but I got a call from Karissa about 2:30 AM that Isabella had thrown up again. Hopefully this is the last of the virus, it's hard to see her like that.

Just a Short Intermission From Sequential Art...

I'm in the middle of my 3-page comic assignment, which will be posted AS SOON AS IT'S FINISHED. In the meantime, an intermission.
The following is a short story I submitted for shits n' giggles to an East Grand Forks contest at the library. The prize was only like &50, but I thought what the hell. I had an idea floating around in my head that same day, but didn't actually write the story for about 3 weeks, and got it submitted about 4 days before the contest ended (Nov. 30).
Anyway, I just got the winners' list back today, and unfortunately, I'm not on it anywhere. But I like my story enough that I decided I would post it after the contest was over, so here it is. It was 4 pages double-spaced, so I'd advise anyone interested in reading it to take a quick bathroom break. It's not a long story, but I don't want anyone getting a few paragraphs in and then having to pee. It screws up the rhythm.

The Punchline
Doug Hunter

There wasn’t much wrong with Harold attitude-wise. He always walked into the bar around 6:30, asked for a basket of popcorn and occasionally a pop, and sat in the far corner for about three hours, watching everyone who entered or exited. Mostly the girls, actually. The local girls knew him and saw that there was nothing in those drooped, unblinking eyes that suggested malice or misogyny. Out-of-town women were easily and visibly disturbed by the gaze, and it occasionally got him caught in an altercation with the men accompanying them.
Locals knew Harold because of his extraordinary birth into the world. He was one of a set of triplets born of a Sicilian woman attending college in a neighboring town and her husband who had been born in the very same hospital just eighteen years prior. Sammy, the first of the triplets to emerge, came out healthy and screaming. Kelly, the second, came out with a full head of hair, but was jaundiced. Harold came out silently, eyes half closed as though entranced. If not for healthy vitals, the doctors might have thought him dead. Once out of the hospital, he began acting like a normal, newborn child.
It was a simple car accident that disrupted what might have been an otherwise average childhood. An old woman pulled out in front of them at a stoplight, and was hit at more than fifty miles per hour. The mother, father and the old woman died at the scene, and Sammy followed two days later. Kelly suffered a severe back injury, which would cause neck pain all through her life. Harold suffered head trauma, but otherwise appeared okay. When paramedics reached the scene, they discovered him looking through the windshield, as though concentrating on something far away, and laughing.
Harold and Kelly were placed under the care of a paternal aunt, who gave them a good home, but was perplexed by Harold’s odd behavior. He didn’t talk much. During the most humorous moments of a television show, he wouldn’t even crack a smile. He never read anything, he had trouble with schoolwork and he didn’t get along well with other kids. When he cut himself, he would look at the wound without reaction and watch it bleed. This stoic behavior kept their aunt from finding out about the cut until it became infected, so Kelly often had to accompany him out of doors.
The only times he did smile were disturbing. His expression would fall blank, and the smile would appear with the same far-off concentration, as though he were trying to relive the experience of the traumatic accident. Doctors thought he had autism at first, but a visit to a Neurologist revealed that Harold in fact had epilepsy. The periods of dazed concentration were seizures that were being experienced at an alarming rate, though short-lived.
Kelly could not stand the laugh. It was low and rapid, like a hail of vocal machine gun fire. After the accident, he only laughed at her pain. Every limb she sprained, the girls in grade school who frequently accosted her on account of her weight (she was guilty of bullying herself), even the popular high school boys who teased her for dressing like an old man. She would arrive at the side exit of the school to find him cackling to himself. Sometimes the laugh itself would induce a seizure.
Even though Harold was of average intelligence for his age, his seizures prevented his receiving a proper education and often disrupted entire class sessions. He never minded the teasing, but he felt humiliated when he was placed in “special” classes. After that, his resentment at being called a retard furthered the rift between him and his former peers. He left school before tenth grade and soon made up the time wandering about town. His aunt had stopped lecturing him long before, realizing that she couldn’t get through to him the importance of graduating. Every time they fought, he would get overly excited, bringing on another seizure. He would often be seen sitting near the corner store, muttering incomprehensible lyrics to songs only he knew.
His uncle never had much to do with him. One moment, he would be convinced Harold was criminally insane and should be locked away before he hurt someone (and become someone else’s burden). The next, he would be convinced Harold was faking his seizures to get his way.
He would fly into a rage when Harold would play his Tom Waits music, comparing Waits’ voice to that of a drunken bear. Harold found it cathartic to hear the gravelly voice with the down-on-his-luck lyrics, and he never had a seizure when listening to it. He could never remember the lyrics on his own; he had to have the song playing for them to come to him. Kelly would often come in and listen with him, and when she did, he would always play “No One Knows I’m Gone”. It was the one song he could sing to her in perfect imitation.
Harold liked to walk at night, much to his family’s chagrin. Kelly wouldn’t go out at night much, so he often snuck out on his own and went down to the river. Some nights, he wouldn’t come home, and Kelly would go out to look for him in the morning before school. He was always in the same place, thankfully, sleeping under a train bridge in a concrete cubby-hole. His uncle would remark, with visible sarcasm, that “one way or another, he’s always headed off to no where.”
Kelly never dated until her senior year. She was still a little heavier than what was deemed acceptable by other senior girls, but she was pretty nonetheless. The derogatory remarks from the popular boys faded as they found in her a jovial personality who always managed to get cigarettes for them from an unknown source. It took longer than she would have liked to evolve into the kind of girl they could see dating, but she figured it was better late than never.
Her newly acquired social life left Harold at home to contend with his apathetic aunt and forever-angry uncle. Before long, Harold was out again and found himself a new haunt. It was a college bar about a mile from his home. The owner was a friend of his uncle’s, and figured it wouldn’t do any harm so long as he wasn’t served alcohol. When Harold kept returning, the owner thought it better that he spent his nights there than under a bridge.
Kelly found David B.’s Epileptic in her school library and cried most of the way through it. She saw so many parallels between Harold and Jean-Christophe, but had to quit reading toward the end when Pierre-Francois fantasizes about having an articulate conversation with his brother about what they both went through; she suffered the same frustrations of not being able to fully understand what went through his mind during these periods.
Jimmy was one of those kids that one couldn’t help but like. He was a good listener, he dressed nice, and he had a persuasive air about him that made even the strictest of teachers simply smile at him when he walked into class late. Harold knew him only briefly before dropping out, and didn’t care for his eyes. They always had a sparkle in them, and Harold didn’t like things that sparkled. He thought they acted as a marquisette obscuring the real Jimmy. Besides, sparkling things, if bright enough could bring on a seizure.
Jimmy liked Kelly, however. She made him feel at ease, as though he could tell her anything and she would accept it without judgment. The more he talked to her, the more he felt drawn to her romantically. It took him three weeks to finally work up the nerve to ask her to the school dance, a request that was received with overjoyed affirmation. Harold was not as thrilled to hear of the good news, but he was always happy to feel that Kelly was going somewhere positive with her life.
On the afternoon just before the dance, Harold lumbered slowly into Kelly’s room just as she had pricked her finger on her broach. He looked exhausted, his eyes were sunken in, and his smiling lips were terribly chapped. “Are you okay?” she asked.
“Yeah, “ he replied, “I guess.”
“You should lie down for a while.”
“I might, when you leave.”
“Thanks for taking the whole dance thing so well. I’m sorry you’re not coming.”
“It’s okay. They never play my music, anyway.”
“People around here don’t know how to dance to Tom Waits.”
Harold chuckled and turned to leave. On his way out, Kelly could hear him softly singing “No One Knows I’m Gone”. She still worried about him. People like her were strong, they could take care of themselves in the real world. Harold was her twin brother, and yet his maturity fluctuated wildly. At times, he would seem older, mostly in the way he moved. His innocent nature, however, made him seem more like a child.
She also feared that his Epilepsy would one day win out and bring on a seizure that would never stop. She didn’t know if she could handle her twin being a vegetable. She often wondered how circumstances of the accident worked to kill the rest of her family, make him the way he was, and only damage her physically.
She couldn’t keep thinking these thoughts just now. The doorbell rang, and Jimmy was behind it, waiting to take her to the dance, fall in love with her, and embrace her with the realization that she was the only one for him, and all the other girls didn’t measure up. So she hoped, anyway. She’d carve out a place in her little heaven for Harold later, after the magical evening.
As she walked by Harold’s room, she heard the strained voice accompanied by a mournful piano, doling out “Georgia Lee” from his boom box. She thought of popping her head in and telling him goodnight, but realized it might just be better to leave. He looked so terrible tonight, but she didn’t want to dwell on his condition, otherwise she’d have no fun at the dance.
Harold could hear the footsteps stop by his door, then move along. He could hear muffled cries of delight about a beautiful corsage from such a handsome man, the faint click of a camera, then the slam of the door. The smile faded from his lips and the thin veil of sleep covered him.
About an hour later, he awakened. The CD had long since stopped. He’d only been asleep for a couple hours. His stomach hurt, and he felt the way he did after a seizure, but he swore to himself that no such thing had, in fact, occurred. Within minutes he was at the front door, ready for egress into the falling snow outside. His uncle, who was reading in the living room, looked up and asked, “Where are we off to tonight?”
Harold, without looking back, muttered through once-more smiling lips, “No where.”
It was about two-thirty in the morning when Harold’s uncle jerked awake to the ringing phone. His sense of dread brought a little indigestion as he answered angrily, “Hello!”
It was the bar owner.
“Yeah, it’s Harold. I think he’s had another spell. A pretty bad one.”
“Shit,” his uncle replied, “alright, I’ll be right over to get him. How is he doing right now?”
“Oh, better. It was weird, though. I couldn’t figure out what was so damned funny.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, he’s been laughing like crazy since he wandered in.”

Rasputin

I had to use myself as a model, which meant adding a bit more hair. I don't like that I put too much hair on his right side, but oh well, I still kind of like it.
I got the pencils done on my comic, but I'm not going to post it until I ink it. So, just a little bit longer!

R.I.P. 12/8/2004

We still remember.

Family Meeting: Revising Schedules

Things are getting pretty busy around here lately. At least it feels that way, though it doesn't look it. April & Kevin are due in just under 2 weeks, my semester's done shortly after, then Christmas.
I have some bittersweet news, however.
The good part: This weeks lesson in Perspective is storyboarding. Storyboarding, for those who don't know, is simply summarizing a story using sequential art. It is generally used for television & movies, and can also be used as a rough sketch of how a comic page should be laid out. Now, I like storyboarding, and wouldn't mind simply doing an assignment of storyboards, but then option B pops up--a 2-page comic. I practically melted in my chair reading this. I'm very excited about doing this, and of course everyone will see it once I get it banged out. I have a notebook full of ideas I have to whittle down & pick. Which leads me to-
The bad part: Golden Brown is going on hiatus. You know what hiatus means, it means it's just a break, not permanent. So stop crying and banging your fist on the keyboard. Seriously. It harms the keyboard. I do have the last page all done, however, and it will pop up Friday. I wouldn't leave you guys not knowing what's making all the noise behind Kevin. Of course, there will be other questions left unanswered, but that's why it's a hiatus. See? You got a Golden Brown guarantee on that. That's as good as gold...brown gold (se what I did with the word play?).
So there you have it. The finished version of my homework comic will show up on the Bone Daddy blog (that's what the blog is actually for), and the pimp daddy heroics take a back seat for a bit while his namesake gets ready to become a real daddy (a whole new uniform there).

Sur-"Render"!

I went to a much better place with these two pictures than a lot of my previous ones this semester. My folds have come out much more dramatically, and I don't have that feeling of dread while putting them on the blog or on my assignment board.
Good Job, Doug.

This is from when Kevin & April were visiting Em, and they went to the Jamestown village thing. In the photo reference, Kevin is sitting in an oversized rocking chair.

This is April's cousin, I think. Aside from not really caring about how I portrayed the soles of her feet, I did pretty good. I was determined to not do the same job I usually do on girls' faces when I sketch.