This Is HUB #3 In My Series: Trying To Draw A Graphic Novel The Old School Way (I Mean With a Pencil)

I've got GOALS! ME! And one of them is to have illustrated a portion of the little sci-fi novel I wrote by August 29th. I saw a woman on TV (yes, I watch more TV than I would if I was working right now) - and she said that if you have a goal but don't write it down and figure out ways to accomplish it, then it isn't a goal, it's a fantasy. So I wrote it down - and I'm using you fellow hubbers or anyone who happens to read this to keep me accountable! That's right! So I hope you don't mind being used :)

Now back to work!! I have drawn the image you see below (in part) a total of SIX times. And it's driving me a little nuts....

It's driving me crazy because I imagine that if I had a "wack" (Wacom drawing tablet), or an HP Touchpad or something, I could probably cut and paste the hand squeezing the other over and over without losing what is left of my mind. I'd need a Mac Pro or some powerful PC too - now if you really want to talk 'fantasy'…. Also, if I'm not drawing it correctly, feel free to tell me! It looked weird to me, so I looked at my own arm when I drew it the first time. My Mom says it looks fine. The big "O" on the guy's sleeve is a hole in the notebook paper I'm drawing on. More on digital drawing tablets later -

The character in the drawing below has had more facial contortions than a Cirque Du Soleil performer has moves. I loved Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson, from when I was a kid, he’s the person who said when he is drawing and he needs to figure out what happens to your face when you - make a face - he looks in the mirror and draws it. That's what I've been doing for all my chars. It's funny really. My Mom and sister are watching the tube and I'm sitting here on the sofa with papers spread all over, making faces in a little mirror!

And another thing that I have noticed about my drawings is their tendency to be asymmetrical. If you looked at one of my drawings in a mirror, you might swear that I needed to go back and change a few things. Weird! And man, I'm sooo picky, drawing the fingers on some char's hands, or their feet in boots is a massive pain.

For hands I have just stopped trying when I wanted to finish a page and just drawn a kind of weird glove looking thing in place of a character's hands, or I'd NEVER get a thing done! (Something else odd that I've noticed about my drawings: Everybody seems to have a nice, large, head. I've had to erase a ton of work trying to fix that problem!)

In my hub # 2 of this series, I mentioned something about the clothing females wear in outer space, at least in the sci-fi world: Slacks, revealing tops, or skirts with revealing tops, if they are a captured innocent or a prostitute or something.

Now about the clothing we tend to see on males and various out space “officials” - they all seem to wear Nehru jackets! I think the thing with the jackets is they kind of seem timeless, if they don't have a collar. Fashion changes and the Nehru jacket now seems to symbolize a sci-fi, outer space, other worldly, "who needs lapels?" attitude. Agree?

I heard somebody say the other day that sci-fi characters all wear Nehru jackets, so I had to look it up online. They were right! A Nehru jacket, I found out (after trying to spell it "neru" or "nayroo" which is how it is pronounced) is a kind of suit coat with a stunted collar. EVERYBODY male on almost every sci-fi program I have seen in the movies and on TV wears them! So, at some point I'll be sure to draw a character who wears one - for the sake of tradition! I tried to find out why someone would call a jacket "nehru", but I only discovered several famous Indian people (from India) with the name "Nehru". According to M-W Online, Jawaharlal Nehru 'was the son of Motilal Nehru, an Indian nationalist; who became prime minister from (1947–64)'. I guess he’s the guy that brought the jacket to the world’s attention. Yikes, I don’t know. So for now I'll leave it at that. If I come to any more clothing discoveries, I'll clue you in later.

I put a picture of a Nehru jacket up for you to see. It came from this website:http://www.marinhistory.org/wishlists.html.

Hey all: I previously mentioned that I'd like to maybe get an HP Touchpad or something, prob a Wacom tablet, nicknamed a "whack" or "wack". Some people pronounce Wacom "WAY-COM", so you know, which means then my nicknames won't work :). Today I was on my favorite tech site and I learned that the Touchpad is to be no more, thus are my dreams of using it.... Since you should be making a list of the goals you want to achieve, then listing the steps you need to take to get there, I had to do some brief research on what I might get to replace the Touchpad. I found the new Wacom Inkling, which would be awesome – here are two links, one to an article about it by Serenity Caldwell, for Macworld.com and a link to the tech site CNET were I check out lots of product reviews. http://www.macworld.com/article/162046/2011/08/digitally_sketch_on_paper_with_wacom_inkling.html, http://reviews.cnet.com/tablets/

On another note, it seems the heroes in outer space (guys) tend to always have somewhere a pair of very tight, never ripping and yet somehow comfy, pair of pants which I will refer to from here on as tights. They sometimes don't look like tights. Look like a nice pair of khakis sometimes. But they always seem to have remarkable tight qualities, like they don't rip (on camera anyway) and they bend and move and look painted on. Eye candy for you girls. If the clothes aren't meant as eye candy for the ladies, why are guys dressed like that, anyway?

I started drawing my "graphic novel" and discovered that I practically had to draw everybody nude at first, just to get the placement of the action right. Now my Mom looks at some of the stuff I did and says that it looks like ALL the "elbows are too pointy". She has made that comment more than once and we had this big throw down about it. My bad, as they say. It's the drawing the characters without clothes first that does it. Look at the situation depicted below:

Music I listened to while writing this hub:

"Dig", by Incubus, off of Light Grenades

"Let It Die", by Foo Fighters, off of Echoes, Silence, Patience and Grace

"Born of Frustration", by James, off of Fresh as a Daisy - The Singles

"Hole in the Earth", by Deftones, off of Saturday Night Wrist

"I Get It", by Chevelle, off of Vena Sera

"Mess of Me", by Switchfoot, off of Hello Hurricane (Deluxe Version) Switchfoot is one of my all time favorite bands! And "Mess of Me" is a loud, loud song

"Move Along", by the All-American Rejects, off of The All-American Rejects (LOVE this video, I can really relate)