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.
This post is coming to you in 5 Parts, so let’s get right to it!
Part 1. If you did not see it yet, I finally posted something on the Women Warriors Project. You can check that out here.
Part 2. My awesome friend Chloe sent me volumes 1 and 2 of The Heroic Legend of Arslan and I am SUPER EXCITED, because we both mutually love Hiromu Arakawa and it’s great to see her work on other manga.
Chloe also sent me some fanart a classmate of hers made, which also looks fabulous.
I’m going to write and post a review of volume 1 this upcoming Tuesday, reviving a feature I introduced last year, “Review Day Tuesday.”
Speaking of recurring segments on the blog, that brings me to,
Part 3. Favorite Artist Friday!
I’m going to rename this feature “Featured Artist Friday,” so it’s not just my favorite artists being featured.
Featured Artist Friday is going to feature lots of different types of artists. So expect to see comics artists, painters, mixed media artists, sculptors, or just people I find while I flip through my stack of business cards I’ve accumulated over the years from conventions.
Speaking of art, though,
Part 4. New Mini-Comics!
I made and finished a new mini-comic recently called “Duck for Dinner.” It’s a short little autobiographical story.
Duck for Dinner… the mini-comic!
It’ll be up for sale on Storenvy soon.
If you would like a digital copy of the comic for, say, $0.99 (US Currency) please leave a note in the comments. I’ve been thinking of offering short 99 cent digital comics for sale through Gumroad, but let me know what you think?
Speaking of Storenvy, though, that leads me to,
Part 5: Crafting Stuff!
So I had a ton of excess paper and decide to bind some new books (because bookbinding is one of my new hobbies). I used a new technique I found the other day called the Slot-&-Tab method, which requires no thread or gluing.
Hand Made Books!
The thing is, I don’t have a use for these (although I’m keeping the grid paper book), so I’m thinking of selling them as filler notebooks or something on Storenvy. If you’re interested in getting one of these, drop a comment below.
And if you would like to see a tutorial, let me know about that, too, in the comments.
So what other things am I crafting?
Well, I have some T-shirts I don’t wear anymore…
These shirts either don’t fit me or are just too bland.
I’m going to repurpose these into tote bags. Because tote bags are awesome, and you can totes (HA) use them in lieu of plastic bags when you shop, which is my favorite thing to do.
I’m not confident enough in my sewing skills to consider selling the finished totes, though, so it may be a while before I offer any for sale.
That’s all for today, but come back tomorrow, when I talk about a new artist for Feature Artist Friday!
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!
So one of my New Years Goals was to write 1000 words a day. Which sounds pretty lofty, but really I can accomplish that in about an hour. Sometimes less.
In writing 1000 words a day, I’m actually getting a LOT of writing done.
It’s not just blog posts either.
Thanks to my 1000 words written a day goal, I’ve revisited an old script of mine, and am now in the process of writing it and continuing off of it.
I’m talking about my post apocalyptic lesbian love story with zombie-killing, starring Claire and Tracy.
I finished editing Chapter 1, and I powered through Chapter 2. It’s a GREAT feeling knowing there’s progress finally being made on a project that’s been on hold for months.
I’ve been revisiting this project in my sketchbook, as well.
A Work in Progress (click to enlarge)Sketching out an idea of the world they explore. (Click to enlarge).
And I’ve been doing some sketching to flesh out their world bit by bit.
I’ve also been looking at this list of post-apocalyptic tropes to avoid and what hasn’t been done yet. I’m hoping to add elements of things rarely done in post-apocalyptic stories, pulling inspiration from this list.
Like bike-riding. Oh my shit there need to be more bike riders after cars become useless hunks of metal.
What are some tropes of the post apocalyptic genre you can think of? What hasn’t been done in a zombie story yet that you can think of? Leave them in the comments below. I would love to hear about them!
