Well, I originally said they would be printed and ready by January 31st. I’ve been talking to the folks who will print the book (who are the same folks that printed the book edition of Validation), and I have pretty much everything together.
However, I’m fixing some formatting errors before I send the book off to print. I want this book to look its best, darnit!
But that means the book won’t be available on January 31st.
The latest the book will hit the market is February 13th (and yes, that IS a Friday the 13th. No, I’m not superstitious about it).
You can still pre-order a copy, so I can reserve a book JUST FOR YOU from the printer (because I like you, reader, and you are awesome). It’s $10, and that price includes shipping.
A few years ago, back when I lived closer to Columbus, my big sis wrote this, in permanent marker, on a dry erase board.
We have never been able to wash this off, so nearly ten years later, we still have this list tacked to the refrigerator, and it makes us laugh.
Seeing this inspires me to try a new idea as a warm-up writing exercise.
The exercise?
Make an absurd list.
It doesn’t have to have a theme like “What to Do When I Grow Up,” but if it helps you get your silly gears going, then go for it.
So I just did my free-writing list of “What to Do When I Grow Up,” and this is what I came up with:
Learn to Cook a Unicorn
Speak Cat
Shave my eyebrows
Lint-roll the dog
Make a sweater for the Eiffel Tower
High five Adolf Hitler in the face
Fly with the owls
Stretch my toes into Nickelodeon slime
host a Dalek tea party
Put sunglasses on Shakespeare’s dead body
arm wrestle the sun
The fun thing about the Absurd List is that it gets your creative muscles moving, and that means you’ll be more receptive to ideas and suggestions, whcih is always a good thing in creative work.
Share some of your absurd lists in the comments below!
As I wrote before, for the month of January, I’m drawing one new superhero lady every day. Once the month is up, I’ll be compiling the sketches into an eBook.
Today I want to show you one of my favorite ones I’ve done so far.
Her name is Malarkey Maddie.
Malarkey Maddie!
I loosely based her on a fan I met at Phoenix Comicon, who wore a shirt saying something like “Crush the Patriarchy!” My response was, “Down with the Patriarchy! Up with the Malarkey!”
Malarkey stayed floating around in my head for a while until this sketch series happened. Then I thought back on that fan and that phrase, and went, “What if a superhero lady incorporated that into their superhero name?”
And Malarkey Maddie became a superhero.
She may not fight against the Patriarchy, since it’s an abstract concept and not a person. So she has yet to get an arch nemesis.
She IS, however, super strong and has the ability to fly.
She doesn’t have a story yet, but she’ll be mentioned in other stories I’m working on. Maybe she’s the favorite superhero of Charlie from Charlie & Clow? Or Tracy’s favorite comic book hero?
Who knows what the future will hold for Malarkey Maddie?
If you have any ideas, I would love to read them in comments.
The Superhero Ladies project is coming along nicely! I have 17 ladies already drawn and the month of January isn’t even over yet. Hopefully I can keep up the good work and have lots of awesome superheroines by the end of the month.
There’s a few characters in the project that I’m thinking of branching off into their own stories, or maybe even comics. So who knows?
Another project I’m working on is one I’m reviving from hiatus.
At the time, there was a lot of freelance work going on and I couldn’t update it consistently.
It was hitting an artistic wall, where I felt like every piece I made for the series was getting worse.
I wanted to experiment more with tools like watercolors and acrylics, and I didn’t have the resources or time to do it at the time.
But I’m bringing it back! With a few changes.
Firstly, there will be a new finished painting every month. Acrylic, watercolor, doesn’t matter. It’ll be a painting.
As progress is made on the paintings, I’ll be posting them on the Women Warriors Project blog. The intention is to make a chronological series of posts, showing a painting from initial sketch to finished piece. Tonight I made a sketch to develop an idea for the first painting, so expect to see it on the blog soon!
Know any cool historical women warriors? Leave their names in the comments below!
A while back I wrote a post about how I wanted to do a series of illustrations showing Superhero Ladies, dressed and posed like human beings, not like…whatever comic books thinks is sexy.
While there are ladies in comic books and graphic novels that are in charge of their sexuality, and there are superhero ladies who are clothed, they seem to be the exception, rather than the rule.
Thus, I came up with the idea of the art series Superhero Ladies: a series of illustrations showing superhero ladies dressed and posed like…actual people.
Number 1 in the series.
I put it on the back-burner, though, because I wasn’t sure how I wanted to exactly tackle this series.
But then I wrote about my Goals for 2015. And one of my goals is to make more eBooks full of sketches.
So I had the idea, “How about I make my first eBook of sketches be the Superhero Ladies series?!”
So that’s exactly what I’m doing.
This actually ties in well with another one of my goals, which is to draw two sketchbook pages a day. So I’ve been drawing quite a few superhero ladies this week already.
Here’s a peek at just one of the new ones:
Mary Wildfox (Click to enlarge).
I forgot to mention that the Superhero Ladies series will feature entirely original characters.
So, no, I’m not going to be doing re-designs of famous superheroines like Spider Woman, Power Girl, Captain Marvel, or anything like that. That can be addressed in a different series of sketches altogether.
Nope. This series will feature only original characters, costumes, and (hopefully) powers.
I’ll post more sketches occasionally. I don’t want to post them all online because I don’t want to spoil any surprises I have in mind for the eBook.
Speaking of books, though, Johnson & Sir have a book on pre-order. I talked about that in this post.
I’m working hard to make sure there’s new prints, books, and more for you. If you have any suggestions or ideas of what you would like to see more of, leave a comment below!
