Life’s been pretty chaotic lately. I spent nearly a month fighting with my travel blog Catching Marbles which was displaying the dreaded White Screen of Death so I was a bit preoccupied to do too much with Glen. But I love Glen. And after watching the new Start Trek cartoon I couldn’t help but join in on the amicable spoofery. (Also why is my spell check accepting spoofery as a word? That cannot be right.)
The Making of Glen
This week’s comic was the first time I tried to incorporate a real place that I’ve actually been to – the Valley of the Gods. Now, if you don’t know what the Valley of the Gods is I’ll tell you. It’s this absolutely stunning spot out in the middle of the desert that just about every Western you’ve ever seen and a great deal of the original Star Trek was filmed. I’m not sure if they were specifically at Valley of the Gods or just somewhere really close – either way look at all that orange sand! HOW ALIEN!
Also going to note it was weirdly hard to draw the little Star Trek insignia AND I discovered it’s gone through several changes over the years but was basically a spiraling squiggle back in the day…
Oh, it feels so good to be back after this unanticipated two week hiatus! I apologize for our conspicuous absence – it was a combination of technical difficulties and illness but we’re back on track now! And we’re tipping our hats to all you wonderful sci-fi geeks out there. You know we love you!
The Making of Glen
As with everything lately this comic started out as something completely different – a joke about space grasshoppers – but do you know how hard space grasshoppers are to draw?! I THOUGHT mechanical space spiders might be easier but whew… I’m not so sure now! Even so I had fun with this one and with the additional jokes coming from the mouths of the spiders themselves. The sci-fi genre should be careful or these little buggars might unionize and demand at least one series show them in a positive light!
I decided to do another homage to one of my all time favorites – the original Twilight Zone and it’s insanely iconic It’s a Good Life episode where one little boy gets to wish people away for not thinking happy thoughts. Where do they go? The cornfields! I know the sting of this no longer reaches most people because most people no longer have first hand experiences with cornfields but here’s why that’s so scary- because they’re extremely disorienting. It’s just rows and rows of corn with no way out. It’s a terrifying thought, probably first implemented in old German fairy tales where magic umbrellas would fly bad little boys and girls away to the proverbial cornfield. (Doesn’t that put a whole new light on Mary Poppins!)
Still – in this classic horror scenario Glen always manages to find a way to make it adorable. And I couldn’t be more proud.
The Making of Glen
I was actually lacking in inspiration this week when this idea popped into my head yesterday. I had spent all day fighting with technology on a different matter so by the time I was ready to sit down and illustrate it I was already on the punchy side which is not a great place to start with such a complex illustration. I had to look up cornstalks in an attempt to draw them. I drew one and copied it many times over to make a field and I applied the same process to the pile of corn which I moved the corn into different angles in order to make them look like a more convincing pile. I think it came out well! And I am proud of myself for once again pushing the boundaries of what I could do – going so far as to find an appropriate brush stroke for the top of the corn stalks to make them look loaded with pollen.
Initially I drew the image in color. I thought turning it into a black and white image would be as simple as applying a filter like you do with photos. HAHAHAHA. No, when I looked up how to do this in Clip Studio Paint I got a bunch of grotesquely long multi-step tutorials which I looked at with glassy eyes before cheating. I totally uploaded the illustration to LunaPic (dot com) and applied the black and white filter. Took all of two steps and 15 seconds from upload to black and white. I regret nothing (fully realizing that if I were to be professional about this I’d totally learn the correct way which probably allows me to do this without compressing the image. Whatever, I’m not making this into a billboard so it doesn’t matter.)
Ah! Another week and another horror related comic! This one was inspired by a spirited discussion on The Monkey’s Paw. It all got me wondering, what would Glen do with a monkey’s paw? What would he wish for? And his very innocent (but potentially horrifically backfiring) answer had to be this! With any luck the monkey will be pleased and won’t curse his remaining wishes… but that’s up to you to decide what happens next.
The Making of Glen
So, since I was doing so well with posting a Glen every week and I am getting into other illustrations and tattoo design I thought it would be a great idea to invest in a gaming PC (which is coincidentally the same kind of PC illustrators use.) And I must say this combined with the better drawing tablet and a kneeling chair is SWEET!! LOVING the new set up! So sleek! So fast! So easy! I must be moving up in the world.
The new PC with its much larger screen has also allowed me to see the details in the things I draw so much better! I don’t know how this is going to play into my Glen comics in the future but for now it’s mesmerizing.
This week’s Glen has been brought to you by a Julia Child cookbook and a tale of culinary school horror. To think until last week I had no idea what a fluted mushroom was. This explains why in Glen’s world fluted mushrooms are musical…
The Making of Glen
For the first time in a long time this week’s comic came to me long before I had to draw it. I still wasn’t sure how to draw an anthropomorphized mushroom but I think I did somewhat OK. And I admit I did not spend a lot of time on the flutes… but I didn’t think it really mattered. It was really just the idea I was trying to get across.
I was going to draw Glen being pursued by earless chocolate Easter bunnies but somehow that turned into him hatching all goo-covered out of a Cadbury egg. both scenarios are terrifying and sadly hilarious so I make no apologies.
The Making of Glen
There were A LOT of layers in this comic and it seemed like every time I forgot to make a new layer I had to pay for it by re-drawing whatever it was into a new layer after erasing the first attempt. I am slowly learning how to draw freehand better so everything on this strip was done this way – no tracing! I am content in how far I have come and where I am going. The future of my illustrations seems bright. The only thing I had difficulty with was making a basket that looked woven… which I think I failed but at least it’s basket shaped and no one is going to nit pick at this tiny detail – save for me.
After a surprise week off I am back and so is Glen! Up to his usual chatting with the other bugs in his world, this time it’s the Itsy Bitsy Spider who seems a bit banged up…
The Making of Glen
As of late I have been really getting into the illustration but most of it has been creating designs to use as tattoos on leather scraps I have. I just want to see if I can grow my talents and make this little doodling hobby of mine actually useful in some way. As much as I love Glen he’s… a poor fundraiser. To date no one has ever bought anything from his shop or thrown me a few bucks for making them smile. It just doesn’t happen.
Happy Monday everyone! I hope Sunday’s Valentine’s celebrations have found you well – even all you beautiful single people out there (both willful and not.) I know with the ongoing pandemic we’re all a bit… shut in. So why not daydream about the summer reading programs most libraries host for small children? And have a bit of ice cream while we’re at it!
The Making of Glen
Big news! I have decided to invest in Glen a bit and have upgraded my Wacom tablet with a Gaomon tablet that has a screen. To anyone who doesn’t illustrate things on the computer this doesn’t sound like much but it’s a HUGE improvement. I no longer am experiencing lag when I draw and it’s made the whole process all the smoother and more intuitive. I am excited to see what I can do with this. As you can see by today’s comic I already accidentally learned how to give Glen and his friends a healthy glow. Now let’s see what other trouble I can get into!
Well it’s the first Glen of the New Year! And I have been having a *super* stressful life at the moment which has sapped me of my creative juices. As such today’s comic was dreamed up at the last minute and drawn just as hastily. I’ll try to do better next time.
Did you know this week is Christmas?! I didn’t! Between all the Covid restrictions I’m not really celebrating this year so it slipped my mind…. but with that being said Glen’s kids sure didn’t forget and they are up to their usual mischief.
The Making of Glen
I really pushed myself with today’s comic. I knew what I wanted to do but was at a loss on how to illustrate it. I decided I had to step back and draw the tree like a artificial Christmas tree is built – with a tinsel covered pole in the middle holding up several layers of branches also wrapped in green tinsel/pipe cleaner? I drew the base and then copy and pasted it several times on different layers, making sure to shrink each successive layer to make that lovely pine tree shape. And then I decorated it and added Glen’s kids between the layers so that it’d look like they were in the tree. When I finished that I copied the whole thing and threw it behind an opaque black fill-in to make it look like the lights were out. I tried to make the Christmas lights glow but somewhere between all the layering I wasn’t sure how to accomplish that… Even so I am super happy with how this one came out.
Recently I have decided to try harder not just with Glen but my other illustrations. For instance I am trying to illustrate a book of dreams I wrote down and I am having a lot of fun with it. I also continue to dream of animation so who knows where I will go from here. My artistic ambitions continue to grow as I teach myself new skills.
