Notes In The Margin

Drawing Faces

2009-07-02T02:26:00.008Z

One thing I could never do was draw the human face. Due to the constant difficulty I have with getting everything in the right proportions, eyes would end up oddly spaced, the mouth would end up minuscule, the nose would be reshaped fifteen times and eventually I'd just give up and hide half the face with hair or something. Occasionally I wonder if this kind of problem is what drives many untalented people to manga-style art - it stays shit, but occasionally you assume they're just bad at drawing manga, as opposed to bad at drawing anything remotely human. In fact, I suspect that the terrible, over-the-top styles seen in such garbage as Dragonball Z originates from this kind of thing.

Nice shading on the clothes. Shame it still looks like delusional self-portraiture of Eric Cartman. If anyone ever mentions or makes me watch this garbage again I will personally wage war upon them and the TV stations which continue to spew this forth at a new generation of kids who could be watching something better. Raze the fuckers to the ground. Make them watch their own programmes on permanent loop. That sort of thing. Fucking hell, I despite this tosh.

Tosh is a good word.

I digress. The point of this post was to talk about how awful an artist I am, not to rant about how utterly, appallingly bad DBZ has always been. I've mentioned before how I basically only ever draw glorified stick-figures, and you will have noticed a distinct lack of facial features in this stuff too. Quite aside from the fact that this entire series of doodles originated from my idle scribblings in high school, the simple fact of the matter is that, through out my life, whenever I have attempted to improve my skills at drawing people, I have failed. Quick sketches to capture basic shapes - failed. Attempts to draw singular facial features, such as the nose, to improve on individual areas before putting things together - failed. Using grids to map out features and line them up correctly - failed. I just seemed to reach a point where I understood how to put shading on smooth simple objects and stopped there, unable to convincingly draw anything that wasn't a cube, cone or sphere.

Rather irritating, considering I rather wanted to be able to illustrate things and paint pretty pictures. I still get rather wistful whenever I look at one of Drew Struzan's posters. He's the guy who painted every single Star Wars poster, by the way. And all the Indiana Jones ones. EYE-KON-ICK. I want to go see the movies every time I see those posters, and when I've done that I curse that artist for making me waste more hours of my life again. His art is far superior to some of those films. That's the kind of thing I always really wanted to be able to do, but after years of 'no progress' you eventually start to give up.

I was recently told that I just suffer from a negative attitude. I probably do, but then I was pretty positive before I failed to get any better after years of trying. You try consistently failing for months on end and tell me how you feel after that. Still, I took that as a personal ~~affront~~ challange to try again. Knowing that my style is currently quite 'blocky' and a bit exagerrated and it would probably be best to start with something that fits with that, I picked up an art deco book, flicked through to a picture of a woman and started sketching what I saw. Plenty of smooth lines and harsh shadows present in this style. No focus on realism yet, just getting things to 'go together'.

I stopped again pretty quickly. Looks off, to me.

I managed to identify all the shapes fairly well.
Again, however, they're all out of proportion. Huge eye, nose and mouth too small. The shading, though unfinished all over, is actually quite close to what I'm trying to achieve (though I'll go back to the iris later, too strong an outline) but, again, mouth is wrong. Got to work on that chin, too - probably needs to be a little larger. Or maybe I'm just confused by its comparison to the mouth, I think that's throwing me off. It all looks wrong and I can't go further until I pick out what's going wrong and fix it.

See what I have to work against? Me. There are some aspects of this I'm quite pleased with for a quick sketch but proportions are really important to me. They go wonky and the whole thing gets thrown off.

Nose or the mouth. Or both. The eye's too long. I didn't even notice all these things until I got to this point, and now I'm stuck.

Bugger. Try again.

I'll let you know how I get on.

#47 - Three Books, Three Subjects, One Headache

2009-04-07T00:18:00.002Z

#46 - The Donktor Will See You Now

2009-01-03T19:30:00.000Z

#45: Hygiene

2008-12-30T16:18:00.000Z

#44 - The All-Nighter: 6am

2008-10-06T21:47:00.000Z

Lazin' around

2008-09-02T20:50:00.001Z

So, why no more posting?

Broken scanner is one reason. Taking photographs worked well for a previous webcomic but NITM looks better and is easier to edit without a load of grey wash and uneven tone everywhere. Rest assured, I'm not dropping this completely.

#43 - Drinks

2008-08-12T01:52:00.002Z

Gosh, it HAS been a while, hasn't it? My scanner broke, I completed high school and I met a bunch of new people, for whom I made this picture to illustrate a minor daft event. I decided I might as well put it here with the rest of the NITM series. Whether or not this is a new start is yet to be seen. Enjoy!

#42 - Flying Sporks V

2007-08-26T19:29:00.000Z

#41 - Maths 5

2007-07-31T15:12:00.001Z

From the distant archives of absent-minded classroom scribblings, a Maths installment! I believe this is from the dying days of Higher Maths.

Exam Season

2007-05-28T00:25:00.001Z

#40 - Oh, the pun! The WIT!

2007-04-15T01:16:00.000Z

#39 - Greetings from middle-girth!

2007-04-01T14:26:00.000Z

I know. It's a terrible pun.

#38 - Talking Heads

2007-03-27T21:39:00.000Z

Just one o' those days

2007-02-14T19:27:00.000Z

Guess who's discovered a scanner lying around her house? Mmhmm, mmhmm... no. Not your aunt. Although I'm sure her's is a lovely scanner too.

Butterflies, you say? Most jolly.

#37 - Complete with wildy fluctuating heights!

2007-01-24T19:02:00.000Z

#36 - FlyingSporks IV

2006-10-10T19:07:00.000Z

Now I'm off for a bit. Celebratory dancing shall herald my return, I promise.

In response to Anonymous.

2006-10-08T09:05:00.001Z

Last night I received this delightful little comment on my webcomic, constructively criticizing my artwork and suggesting some improvements I could make.

"You are a man-hating clit-liking dyke queer scum. Eat my ass!!!"

Wow. I just love comments like that. They say so much.

1. 'Man-hating'. Certainly not, or I would not have had a boyfriend for nearly two years now, counted a male as on one my very best friends or have said, on multiple occasions, that women should have the same rights as men - for surely, if men are so terrible, why would I want to be equal, when us man-haters should just grind them into the dirt and RUUUULE THEEEEM AAAALL?! You, on the other hand, have shown yourself to be either woman hating, lesbian hating or feminist hating, the last two being subsections of the first. In other words, you are either sexist, a homophobe or both. Whichever one it is, you should know that that makes you the LEAST socially acceptable and most backwards of the two of us. Congratulations.

2. 'Clit-liking'. Well, yes, as a matter of fact I do have a clitoris, and so to hate it would be to hate a part of myself, which I refuse to do. Nor do I have a problem with clitorises in general, as they are a natural part of most women in the world, not some horrible disease to be removed.
As we have already established, you are some sort of wanker, which means that, in addition to being obnoxious and narcississtic, you make a regular habit of lovingly fondling your penis for a period of time, like millions of far more applaudable men worldwide. Normally, to spend so much care and attention over anything would suggest that one likes this thing very much - and thus, I deduce, you are a penis-lover. Following your line of 'argument', that also makes you gay - as you like penises, in particular your own - but as a possible homophobe I don't think you'd take very well to that suggestion. If you are a female (which I don't think you are, but I'd like to cover all possibilities) then replace the word 'penis' with 'clitoris' and 'men' with 'women'in the above.
Put simply, I do not not consider being told that you like your own genitalia as being an insult, though you clearly do.

3. 'Dyke-queer scum'. For the record, I have not yet established my own sexuality. I veer towards bisexual at times, but considering the presence of a much-loved boyfriend in my life, I think that it is safe to rule out the idea that I am a straight-out lesbian. Even if I were to consider myself a dyke, then I certainly wouldn't consider myself scum - after all, I do not participate in the defining behaviour of 'scum', which is basically obnoxious and antisocial behaviour including, at the low end, posting malicious anonymous comments on a webcomic which has neither provocation nor grounding (what on earth does this webcomic have to do with sexism or lesbianism?) and at the high end includes people who actually go out and deliberately cause harm of one form or another to others - rapists, murderers, domestic abusers, playground bullies, muggers, stalkers and the current President of the United States, for example. You are expressing low-end behaviour. I hope that, at the very least, you go no further than trolling.

4. 'Eat your ass'. I'm sure you would love to do that yourself, although you may regret it later when your head gets cold due to the absence of its hat.

5. If you are one of my friends trying to wind me up, thankyou for giving me a chance to vent. Now don't do it again.

Now for a word from the artist

2006-10-02T18:24:00.000Z

Sorry about the sparseness of actual comic updates recently, I've run out of both liquid ink and gel pens and can't find any fine-tipped felt tips in the house, all of which are suitable for the comic in a way that whiteboard markers are not. Not only are they big and thus bad for fine lines and eyes, but the fumes have strange effects on me.
At least my self-caricaturing's getting better.

#35 - I'm THAT lazy!

2006-10-01T15:46:00.000Z

Yes, I know. In theory, I can do better. In practice, I'm just bone-idle. This is why I occasionally refer to NITM as 'my glorified stick-figures'.

Buy her some easy-listening music or something.

2006-10-01T00:45:00.000Z

Isn't it BEAUTIFUL?

2006-09-16T15:40:00.000Z

4th place when you search the name of theis webcomic. I know it's not all that incredible, but this is the first time anything of mine has turned up on the front page of a Google search. I'm proud.

Next comic tomorrow.

#34 - Maths 4

2006-08-29T22:44:00.000Z

#33 - Anatomy Lesson

2006-07-24T16:37:00.000Z

There you go - graphitey goodness. Also, if NITM hasn't updated in ages, there is now a little corner of Wordpress where I invent reasons for the delay. I've added a link over there --->. This place will now be devoted to the comics only, and all excuses, extra stuff and so on will be in the other blog. You can also find a link to my DeviantArt spot there, so if you crave pictures to look at there are photos and stuff.

Don't worry, if anything really important comes up I'll post it here as well so you can't miss it. Such as...
I'm off on holiday for about a week or so. Whoopwoop!

(Oh, and I know it LOOKS like it says 'wind bones', but it's supposed to say 'hand bones'. Honestly.)

I will be lying, though.

2006-07-23T23:34:00.001Z

Mwezzi will have to write:

I will stop drawing offensive cartoons

Take the 'What will you have to write on the chalk board?' not-quiz-thingy at QuizGalaxy.com

And with that, I will try and get some comics up before I go off to visit the relatives. Happy holidays, one and all!

#32 - Why I draw everything on paper.

2006-07-10T11:45:00.000Z