So last week I grew restless and tried to escape my boredom by visiting the location of a botched horse cremation. I didn’t really comprehend it was at the top of a mountain and REALLY messed myself up and spent the rest of the week recovering… which brings me to today, Monday, where I am sitting here staring at a blank screen wondering what the heck I am going to draw for this week’s Glen comic.
Finding no real inspiration I procrastinated by scrolling aimlessly through my Twitter (@TheophanesAvery) feed. For some reason it was inundated with references to Satan this morning?! I didn’t figure I had the emotional bandwidth to look into why Satanic Panic was trending so instead I just let my mind wander and BAMB! Inspiration for a Glen comic!
The Making of Glen
Today’s comic was SUPER simple although I did learn that I have completely forgotten how to draw flames… ah well, can’t keep everything in my head. The one thing I did differently was giving Glen a considerable dialogue that was in and of itself the joke. I don’t know if this will fly but at this point I’m calling it good. Maybe next week will be less stressful and allow me proper inspiration. One can always hope.
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.
Why not start out your week with no less than THREE butterfly puns. There’s something for everyone in this comic – bugs, opera references, a prison escape, and a beloved science theory!! We really outdid ourselves and I hope delivered a chuckle or two.
The Making of Glen
This week I had NO IDEA what I was supposed to be drawing. Between a three day migraine and being super busy on top of that I didn’t have the luxury of free mental space for Glen. That being said I don’t think this last minute drawing was all that bad! It brought together a bunch of random things kicking around in my brain.
Do you have any idea how hard it is to make a butterfly that looks like a geisha?! HARD. But at least the wallpaper was a super easy cut n’ paste. All and all I am not unhappy. I think it’s pretty cute. Although I do think these comics with too many words or obscure references perform poorly. Oh well, I like it, and I guess at the end of the day that’s all that really matters. That and if I can get one person to clap so these comics don’t die…
Alright, I know we’re all running on empty this week, looking on in horror at what’s happening in the US. I’m no different. It’s been disgusting, heartbreaking, worrisome, and enraging. But through all the anxiety what I felt I needed more that anything else was unapologetic joy. So here it is – I redrew an old concept and it’s still whimsical and adorable. It’s completely lacking in a punchline but at this point I just don’t care. It’s time to sing everybody! SING! LOUDER!
The Making of Glen
I actually took a lot of time on this comic trying to figure out how to draw a frog and how to make it’s skin look… frog-like. And I am proud of how it came out! I also got completely misdirected when said frog insisted on a wooly hat and a weird puffy coat. I have no idea where that came from but hey, whatever makes him happy!
This week I let Glen off his leash and gave him a few shiny shillings to spend…
The Making of Glen
Did you know that what Americans call pudding and what British people call pudding are two COMPLETELY different things? Here I am eating this amorphous puddle of sugary goo and the Brits are stabbing some sort of cake-like thing. This threw off my initial idea for a comic (which was going to be a riff off the “You can’t eat your pudding if you don’t eat your meat!” line in The Wall.)
Despite these difficulties I am really loving the retro psychedelic light show background….
I’m not sure what’s up with Glen lately but it seems like every panel I draw just gets increasingly cutesy. Today’s duck heavy theme came from an unusually hostile reaction to Ducks on a Wall by the Kinks which I personally find hilarious but apparently other’s consider audible torture. Oh well, can’t have it all.
The Making of Glen
I was hoping my illustration program would already have bubbles as an effect option but alas it didn’t so I had to resort to drawing them all one by one. I debated if I wanted to make them more realistic with little light glares on each but I realize this is a cartoon and maybe not the best place for realism. Meanwhile everything else came pretty easy as I have learned I can draw any aspect of this comic as huge as I please and just shrink it to size. This seems to work better for me. Other than that this is a simple comic with not too much fancy going on.
I admit, I’ve been swimming around a void as far as inspiration goes so I decided to go back to the basics and basically use Glen as a paper doll like I used to do as a teenager. Isn’t he a peach?!
I know, these music genres seem really random, and they are! I chose them by which I thought would be amusing to draw. I may have missed the mark on a few but the rest? Adorable. And yes, circus and bubblegum are real music genres, if you don’t believe me ask YouTube.
The Making of Glen
This week’s Glen started with a random image in my head of Glen covered in bubble gum, weeping piteously because it popped on him, but could I make that into a whole comic?! It was a stretch but yes, I managed.
What did I learn? I learned that making a caterpillar look angry is REALLY hard. I need to work on his facial expressions hardcore. Also it’s no easier to put make-up on Glen as it is myself. Fucking impossible. I don’t know how you ladies, painted gents, and other make-up lovin’ folk do it. Seriously. HOW?
Also I didn’t mean to cross dress Glen, and maybe I didn’t, but there’s a little playful genderfuckery in here. I appreciate that. I think so do these musical genres. I still have no idea how Glen ended up looking so feminine in the punk one though… that… I just have no explanation for.
Recently
I watched Interview with a Vampire in it’s entirety and it was hilarious. Don’t get me wrong – I have crazy mad respect for Anne Rice, she’s still
the only author I have ever come across that can make me vomit with her words –
and I mean this as a compliment not a criticism. I was reading William S
Burrough’s in my mid-teens and the visceral descriptions of gangrenous heroin
usage didn’t make me bat and eye but Anne Rice writing about her vampires
feeding? That sent me flying to the bathroom twice. RESPECT.
Maybe
that’s why I find the need to relentlessly make fun of vampires. I don’t
know… but Glen is more than happy to indulge me in this. So here he is all
floofy and fluffed burning shit down just like in the movie (and I presume book?)
Meanwhile
we see Depressed Teddy in the background getting a little mixed up in it all
for that adorably disturbing touch as if having a fire bug in the foreground
wasn’t enough.
I
don’t even know how long I spent on this week’s comic. I lost count of the
hours. Apparently drawing fire with absolutely no experience or instruction is
obscenely difficult. And conflicting because I want it to look real… but this
is a comic and nothing else looks real sooo…. What is my problem? I DON’T KNOW.
Suffice
to say I started out with this little attempt all on my own. It’s cute. And I
think the idea of fire is pretty good here. It’s basically just a “for effect”
pen in different colors. Not bad… but it does sort of also look like crate
paper blowing on a fan…
Then
I looked it up on YouTube and wow – were those tutorials shit. The first one told
me to just do the same thing but add some blurring effects. Somehow it came out
looking weirdly like a big smudgy pastel blob which was super disappointing at I
spent about 300 unnecessary steps making it. Pushed all sorts of weird buttons….
Still don’t know what half of them were supposed to do.
And
then I watched another tutorial – with no sound – which was fun. That one told
me I should draw the flame free hand in vaguely squiggly blobs, overlay different
lighter colors of vaguely squiggly blobs, and blur the crap out of it manually
rather than with a filter as the first suggested. The first time I tried this
it came out PERFECT. And then I wasn’t able to do it again…
Meanwhile I came across additional struggles when I decided to draw Depressed Teddy. I really want to add him to more comics doing a Harold and Maude sort of gag in the background – mocking scenes of suicide for attention… I hope people get the humor in this or at least the reference! Else it comes off as odd. That being said it’s not easy drawing a teddy bear and AGAIN I find myself wanting it to look more realistic…. Whhhhyyyy…. I don’t know. Maybe I am going somewhere with this drawing thing and it isn’t normal comics? God forbid I start drawing everything in 3D. Please send help.
It’s my favorite month of the year – October! And since Halloween is just around the corner I thought this week’s comic should be about something spooky – and that’s how I came up with spiders. Keeping to my musical theme the only song I could think of was The Who’s Boris the Spider and for some reason that combined in my head with Charlotte’s Web and before I knew it there was a torrid break up scene wheeling its way through my strange mind.
So there you have it. How spider break ups work. An answer to a question no one asked.
So this week’s comic has really thrown me into the surreal. It plays on an old folktale about Baba Yaga – the witch who lives in a house on chicken legs and eats small children unless you trade their lives for a blue rose. It’s a bizarre Russian fairy tale that I have loved since I was young enough to still believe in such things. But there was always several questions I never got answered… why did the house have chicken legs? And where did they come from? So I sent Glen to find out….
And the results are in! They come from a giant chicken on wheels. Makes sense. Now what happens after this little show down? I have no idea.
Although this comic wasn’t inspired by music I am however going to add some anyway because I now have two songs on my roster about Baba Yaga – this delightful heavy metal cover sent to me on Twitter last night and of course this steamcrunk favorite. So now you get to see the mixing of three medias – old fashioned story telling, comics, and music. Got to love it! And also love these comics. They are getting seriously complicated to draw… and I almost feel like I am wasting my new illustrating skills on something so frivolous but nah. Glen’s fucking amazing and that’s all there is to that.
Do you have another Baba Yaga song or inspiration? Feel free to tell me about it in the comments!
