Webcomic: Home Based Napping

Cartoon of a woman asleep at a home office. Caption says, "Carol discovers one of the benefits of a home based business."

This is an illustration I did back in 1996 for the sixth edition of the "New Rider's Internet Yellow Pages." New Rider's Publishing and me own the copyright to this image. Please do not use without permission.

Webcomic: Office Coffee

Comic of two men in a kitchen. One says, “My major disappointment from working at home is I have no one to blame for a bad cup of coffee.”

This is a cartoon I did back in 1996 for the sixth edition of the "New Rider's Internet Yellow Pages."

New Rider's Publishing and me own the copyright to this image. Please do not use without permission.

Spear-Cartoon_3483

Spear-Cartoon_3483
Originally uploaded by speartoons

Cartoon of Dad to son, "Don’t think of them as chores, but as opportunities."

I thought of this ideal because my kids are on spring break this week. My wife asked one of our kids to do a chore the other night. You would have thought we just told him to hold his arm in a barrel of leaches for a "reasonable" amount of time.

Suddenly, I thought of an image of a motivational speaker trying to get his kid to do his chores. Perhaps this speaker can challenge a corporation to reach for excellence and a government bail out. But I'm guessing even this captain of blarney couldn't get his son to clean the commode.

I've been experimenting with how to create my cartoons in Adobe Illustrator. In this instance, I used the shape tools such as the ellipses and rounded boxes to get the basic shapes. Then I warped them and distorted them how I saw fit.

I used my raw drawing right out of my sketchbook as the template.

When I had all the shapes just so, I converted them to a live paint object. This is my new, favorite tool in Illustrator. Not only can I use the paint bucket to colorize the fills, but I can also use it to apply different line widths to the strokes. It's a major time saver.

I am also testing wether I can handle just a black and white drawing for the weekdays and if anybody notices. I'd rather get several black and white cartoons out in a week than just one color. Alas, time keeps flowing and I'm caught in the undertow.

I drew this in Adobe Illustrtor CS2

Going on Vacation

That's right. I'm getting ready for vacation. I may have a cartoon tomorrow. If I don't, I'll see you in April.

Chores and Video Games

Caption reads: “That is some video game. Maybe we better do our chores now.”

I used to love video games until my son began beating me. Now, I feel like I need a walker and dentures whenever I try to play a game with him. Maybe that's what makes me so enthusiastic when I urge him to get of that video game and finish his chores. Sure, I’ll admit it. It’s sour grapes!

Illustration Friday: Red

The Red Sea counts as "red," right? Well here is good, old Moses parting the Red Sea. Charlton Heston is nowhere to be seen.

This is a cover illustration I did. It is a coloring book called "My Bible Heroes," and it's available through Warner Press.

The book has a profile on different heroes in the Bible.

Kevin

Off the Chip episode 219

"The company wanted to save money so they hired a new I.T. consulting firm."

I heard the other day of a consultant who's primary task was to keep himself working with a client. He didn't want to do anything that would put him out of work so he kept doing scrappy little pieces of work to look like he was bein successful, yet he was ensuring he wasn't reaching the ultimate goal.

I have also seen a few luddite I.T. guys before. Can't say I blame them. A new technology comes along and it's just new enough to mess up the whole system when implemented. There is nothing like starting from scratch just when you have all the computers talking nice to each other!

NAEN Ministries: Work is its own reward

They say good work is its own reward, eh?
I create a monthly comic strip for NAEN Ministries. Once in a while, I like to take a cliché and see what happends when I twist it around. Good work is its own reward, but it's still good to receive a paycheck from it.