I’m trying to introduce the main cast of characters before I go down too many of the meandering tangents I have planned for my comic strip. This week was dedicated to Sarah.

It’s easy to figure out wacky adventures for the boys but Sarah has much more poise and grace. It makes her a difficult character for me to understand and portray. I think I did a decent job of it although I’m a little worried that the strip has too many inside jokes.

It might be helpful to know for example that Sarah is working on a children’s book, Aaron has an imagined shark fetish, and Lou has whatever version of tourette’s syndrome causes a person to randomly bring up beetles in everyday conversation.

Pat - “Hi Lou, How’s it going today?”
Lou - “beetles.”
Pat - “Yeah, I hear ya bro.”
Lou - “hymenoptera.”

Comic - Collective Nouns

Cerealsa is the first of my “Cooking with Lou” series. I’m hoping to make it an occasionally recurring cooking show starring everyone’s favorite kitchen curmudgeon. I was heavily inspired by the “Microwaving with Marge” segment that took place in Gremlins 2: The New Batch and of course by Lou’s kitchen antics.

This strip took waaaaay too long to put together. Part of the reason is because I’ve been working at an unwieldy resolution, much higher than needed for computer monitor. It will be nice to have the larger images if I ever decide to print a collection of these strips but I need to figure out a better way to work at that scale so I don’t have to spend so much time on each strip.

Comic - Cerealsa

Snicker-snack life drawing is back! Tuesday nights 7:00-9:00 and this coming Sunday 2:00-5:00 in the Ruby Room. Just $10 to sit in on the two hour sessions or $15 for the three hour sessions.

Want more information about the sessions? Interested in modeling? Please contact Rob Roys at Two Crows gallery.

• Sketch 11
• Sketch 12
• Sketch 13
• Sketch 15

Salami Slicing is when you steal something in very small increments.

In Superman III, Richard Pryor’s character hacked a banking system so that it would round down on fractions of a cent and send the remainder to his personal account.

In Johnny Cash’s song, “One Piece at a Time,” an automotive worker builds a car from the stolen parts he smuggles off the assembly line each year.

It also happens to be the same method I use to feed myself most days of the week.

Comic - Food Skimmer

I have the biggest baddest desk that state surplus had to offer. It’s some kind of cold war era relic devised to block nuclear explosions while providing the maximum amount of work space. It has a surface area roughly equivalent to that of great plains. I should be losing things on this desk because I can’t see them over the horizon… and yet… I still can’t ever find a workspace larger than a postage stamp.

Once a year I just tip the beast over, rake everything into a pile and light the whole mess on fire. It’s getting to be about that time of year. If I don’t clear it out soon I’ll probably get buried in an avalanche of dishes, paperwork, and miscellaneous electronics.

There should be enough old food in there to keep me alive, just dig along the mouse cord until you find my hand.

Comic - Cleaning Day

I thought my first cartoon for the Alaska Robotics website should be about our launch party. We didn’t really throw one but I’m sure this is what it would have been like. Just a bunch of people crowding around a screen wearing silly hats waiting for a progress bar to finish loading. Oh wait a second… I think I just described New Years Eve.

My strip will post weekly (if I can keep up) and will be mostly about life behind the scenes here at Lucid Reverie / Alaska Robotics / JUMP Society. Dani Byers and Cristina Reitz are also working on comic strips for the site. Dani will post her “Geek Fetish” strip on Wednesdays and Cristina will post “Guilty Pleasures” on alternating Fridays. Who knows, maybe we’ll even get some comics from other members of the crew?

Comic - The Big Website Launch Party

I am leaving.

It will be a long journey.

There will be many adventures.

I will probably be killed by space eels.

This print, “Launchpad Blues,” is the second in my adventure art series. Here’s my first rough draft and another one I printed off and colored with pastels.

I have a third print planned for the series but I didn’t get it done in time for our show so it might have to sit a while. It’s going to be green.

The heat is unbearable.

I’ll survive if I can just make it to the kitchen sink.

It’s all my stupid brother’s fault.

I wanted crocodiles but he chose lava.

Damn. There goes the television.

This “Lava in the Living Room” print was one I put together as part of a series which looks at imaginary peril and death through the eyes of adventurous children. My sister and I used to play every variation on “can’t touch ground” you can imagine so this was one of the first ideas to pop into my head. I started by drawing a rough draft in Alias Sketchbook Pro and then put it together using Sketchbook, Photoshop and Illustrator.

If anyone would like to order a 16×20 Giclée Print I’ll sign it and drop it in the mail for $90US.