If it walks like a duck

New Cartoons, as my printer has started working. I'll post every day or so.

I'm open to any suggestions.

Presenting through a middleman

The snow and the Cold are welcome travellers with me on my path.

To be honest, I don't mind walking in cold and snow. I find that after about 10 minutes, I'm pretty warm. after about 3 hours I start to tire, and my feet get a little cold, but other than that i'm ok. I grew up in a brutally cold area, with a lot of snow, at least for parts of my life, including stints in NYC, upstate NY, Chicago, Iowa and Massachussets (where I lived outside, in a tent, for four years in my early life). Once, out in the woods in Mass, I was first subject to two feet of snow , which encased my tent. Then, it started raining cats and dogs, which filled my tent with water! I Had to get up in a pouring rain and put on my jacket (which was wool, I also had some wool sweaters) which along with my other things was soaking wet, and walk over to the road, where a nice police officer gave me a ride to a local college where I spent the next three hours warming up in a lounge. The next day my stuff was frozen solid, so, I crashed on a friend's couch for three days, until the ice thawed a little. Then I pulled all my stuff up and took it to the laundry. The weather here is a.mild compared to those conditions (one night it was -34deg. in MA at night) and b.I live inside, and pay rent. Back then I lived outside for about 8 years straight, four of which working for Greenpeace. I figured I was young and strong, so, I would live "without" as much as possible. As a result, I was always seeing animals, talking with them, having staring contests with them, and listening to them late at night, all year round.

As those who read this know, I often live this way for a year or two at a time, in the old days working for non-profits to raise funds for them, and now as my own little cartoon business. I once figured out I've lived outside, or travelling, 12 of the last 22 years.

I really like Boulder, and this will be the second run of it when I'm done (which is coming up). Today I redid a building (every door) of students that I had been in 7 months ago, and actually did pretty well. I only ran into six folks that recognized me, and three or four of them bought either a page or book off me (again).

I really appreciate all the support everyone has given me in this project.

I'd also like to put out that I'm looking at this point for an animator who can help me with that part of this. My end goal, for those new to my world, is to have an animated site with all my jokes/cartoons even more developed.

At this point, commuting to Louisville, Lafayette and Gunbarrel are my immediate options. Maybe I will go to Golden sometimes as well. I've done well in the first two, and I'm sure I'll do fine in the others.

This job is really interesting, in that I often find myself staring at amazing landmarks, like the Flat irons from Baseline and 17, or the cherry creek resevoir, or some amazing looking tree, or some very interesting looking house. The best is when someone invites me in and I see an amazing living room. Figure, most folks have 30 folks, maybe, who visit, so, here I am, one of the few that gets to see this person's amazing place.

Good luck: the ticking clock

This was a pretty brutal blow-off:

I give my rap to a lady at the top of a flight of stairs, her 12-13 year old daughter below. She has a slight accent, maybe German or East European. After I'm done, she says, "let me see if I understand: you are selling your cartoon books for 1 or 2 dollars?" I explain that I give singles for a buck or two or a book usually gets five. She says, with this incredibly imperial air of disregard, "we don't have anything for that," or something similar. It wasn't the words: it was the tone. I just auto said "good luck" and spun around, but, remembering the other day a few weeks ago, I chimed in, "Have a nice day!"

The Blue Pencil

I'd always had trouble balancing pre-drawing with actual drawing, and worse, had trouble erasing pencil marks, which made my cartoons drubby looking. I had adopted free hand cartooning, because it's cleaner, though there is really no room for mistakes when drawing in ink. But finally, after poring over different books and constantly looking online for tips about my art, I discovered the value of the blue pencil. The blue pencil does not show up easily on copy machines, so, it can be used as a base for your cartoons. Better yet, you don't have to erase it (with some exceptions), because it's almost invisible, so, you can sketch and then just resketch without erasing it, then ink it in with a much darker line that can be done effectively "free hand" unlike the problem with regular pencil, where you have to exactly follow every line or it looks like junk.

My first Pay Pal transfer

Well, I deposited 9.41 into my bank today from my first ever online purchase/donation. Obviously, I'd like to increase my fan base. Still, just the fact that someone has bought one of my cartoons over the internet is pretty cool. I sent the contributor a cartoon book in the mail.