Once again I’m indebted to Sunday for this. When she was annoyed or agitated she shouldn’t thrash her tail around in the manner that Smudge is demonstrating here. Instead all she’d do was raise her tail once and let it hit the ground again with a resounding THWACK!
As this series of strips progresses, Jones’ bandage will gradually morph into a plaster cast…
Time to start playing catch-up on the blog again! Here the storyline takes a left turn into something completely different. Anyone who has had to take a reluctant cat to the vets will understand this…
This was originally planned as a story that was going to be told by the tracks alone, but I decided that it required Smudge on her wall to make it obvious what had happened. I tried drawing paw pad prints in each one of the impressions in the snow, but by happy accident they ended up looking like smiley faces.
Another one of those strips where the colouring worked out just right. And look! Perspective! And an aerial view! You don’t get that from me very often. Enjoy it while it lasts.
A merry Christmas to everyone everywhere.
Having established that that strip has a ‘giving’ tree, the opposite of Charlie Brown’s kite eating tree, it made sense for it to join in with the Christmas festivities.
If today’s strip is flashing in an alarmingly epileptic way (like it has been on my iPad) try reloading. That cured it for me.
Normally a sequence like this would end of Smudge’s waal, but this time around I had a better topper, with Smudge trying to turn the tables on Smith and failing.
I haven’t updated this blog for a while – huge apologies for that. It’s been a hectic Autumn and I’ve been concentrating on making sure the strip is always updated on GoComics rather than posting on this blog. But now I have a holiday in the States coming up, spending Christmas with Linda’s family, so that’ll give me the chance to catch up.
I’m writing this on my new iPad pro. Yes, I’ve finally given in to temptation and bought a tablet. Why did I wait until now? Because up to now tablets have just been about consuming material rather than creating it. The Pro comes with a huge screen, a cover that concerts into a real keyboard, and best of all, a stylus which means I can start drawing straight onto the screen as if I was drawing on paper. That is going to save me so much time – not only that the 4G Sim card means I’ll be able to draw or post whenever I get a snatched moment no matter where I am.
I’ll be catching up at a succession of different airports on the way to Albuquerque, so expect to see a lot of posts suddenly appearing on Saturday 12th December.
Guy Fawkes night… That seems such a long time ago. Note the properly drawn fireworks explosions in this year’s Bonfire Night strips. Up to now I’ve tried to recreate fireworks using Photoshop filters but was never happy with the effect they made. Now I’ve gone back to basics, using a combination of ink and a ballpoint Tipp-ex applicator to create these explosions full of Kirby crackle. I think they’re much more in style with the rest of the drawing.
Back when this was a simple all-in-a-line strip cartoon I would have used one of my continuous backgrounds to get the idea of the litter tray moving through a landscape across. Now I have to draw the same background four times.