Donkeyblog Donkeyshines is the Land of Absurd T-shirts!

I am now up to page 3 of my still untitled webcomic. I didn’t make the 2nd page available when I finished it because I felt it was too dull on its own. Anyway, here’s a teaser panel from the newest one:

It has been a while since I put up that first page, so I strongly suggest readers start at the beginning of the story and read all three pages in sequence. I still don’t have a title or url for my comic, and I haven’t built a finished site yet. Come to think of it, none of my characters even have names yet! Well, one of them does, but I won’t spoil the surprise by mentioning it here. I still have a lot of work to do, so it looks like I am going to miss my March 1 launch date. It’s taking me about a week and a half to do each page from start to finish, and I’d like to launch with at least 5. I hope y’all like what I’ve done so far…

Here is the card I made Vanessa for Valentine’s Day this year:

In case it isn’t obvious, this is supposed to be a reference to the famous scene in the Disney movie, Lady and the Tramp. The gorillas were supposed to be nonchalantly looking away, just as they do in the movie right before they accidentally kiss. However, here it looks as though they are breaking fourth wall, anxiously waiting for the viewer to go away so they can eat their banana in peace. While this wasn’t what I was going for when I drew it, I think its kind of funny.

Here is the card Vanessa made for me:

Today is both Valentine’s Day and Chinese New Year, and CNY actually has special significance for the wife and I. We started dating on Chinese New Year 5 years ago. While the date of this holiday changes every year, we like to observe it as one of our anniversaries, along with the day we met, and our actual wedding. Vanessa did a pretty good job drawing the dragons, didn’t she? She is a biology instructor at MIT, and I always say that she’s way better at art than I am at biology!

For the past few years, I have been doing this 12-week fitness program through MIT, called Getfit. I’m on a “team” with Vanessa and 4 other of our friends. It’s really not supposed to be competitive, all it requires is that you keep track of all of the minutes you spend exercising each week. For me that is always a lot of minutes, but it doesn’t really matter too much. Anyway, each year they have a t-shirt design contest to come up with the shirt they’ll give out to all the participants. I entered last year, and did not even get nominated. This year, I am hoping to change that. Here is my entry:

So in case it is unclear, that is a fitness machine, along with two figures at “before and after” stages of the fitness process. I am actually really happy with it, and would  wear this shirt even if I had no affiliation with Getfit. We’ll see how it goes. In addition to all the prestige that goes along with winning this competition, the winner also receives an iPod Touch. That would be a nice thing to get for free. Wish me luck!

Now that I have a huge 12″ x 18″ scanner bed, it’s much easier for me to scan my artwork. Therefore, I can go back to showing works in progress without having to take crappy digital photos or composite scans. Here is the pencil sketch for my latest painting, The Jesus Turtle:

In an effort to save time, I was considering doing a mixed media piece instead of a full-on painting. I thought of just using graphite for the faces and arms, and then acrylic paint for the t-shirts. However, since I ended up buying gesso board instead of illustration board, I decided I should do it all with paint. For one thing, graphite does not work well on the solid surface. It’s like trying to write on plastic. Secondly, I figure since the gesso boards are 3 times as expensive as illustration boards, I might as well use the medium for which it was intended. So now, with all the other stuff I have to do these days, I am not expecting to finish this before February. But at least I’ll get to show y’all updates as I go along! Incidentally, The Jesus Turtle T-shirt is our Shirt of the Week, and is on sale for $13.99 through Sunday, 1/17/10.

I started this painting back in September because  PS Print was having a sale on greeting card printing, but then I realized even with the discount, it wasn’t going to be cost-effective to print and sell them for the low price that I would want to. I also wasn’t sure how well it would sell at Donkeyshines since there were no animals in it, and it wasn’t all that interesting or funny of a concept. I ended up finishing the painting, though, because I had fun painting the ice. I printed up a few cards which I’m sending to family members, although they probably won’t get them before X-mas. I just finished this on Friday and the cards won’t go out until Monday. Next up is the painting for the Jesus Turtle, and then the Donkey Pegasus Hat.