September was supposed to be a month of forgetfulness, but what it became is a month of new beginnings. See, here's what happened. I was at work and I mentioned offhandedly that I've never used a fountain pen but kinda always wanted to. The next day, one of the guys gives me a fountain pen that he had sitting around, from a brand called Ellington. It seemed cool but the ink it came with was blue, and the cartridge didn't fit besides. I then proceeded to make a terrible mistake.

"Hey," said the part of my brain that remembers reading Stan Lee and John Buscema's How To Draw Comics the Marvel Way, "Comic artists use India Ink. To its credit, this part of my brain is right. India Ink has been the comic artist tool of choice since teh beginning. Except, if you know anything about pens, India Ink contains shellac and other chemicals that dry hard and will completely destroy a fountain pen's ink feed. You're only supposed to use india ink with a dip pen, where dried ink can be safely obliterated from the nib if necessary. I definitely do not have the constitution to ink with an open container of ink to dip, so that's totally out of the question.

As it turns out, my bad luck ended up being my saving grace. The india ink I found was bought in desperation from the worst craft store option in the area, and it was skunked. I was having feed issues and in my troubleshooting I extracted what can only be described as a tar worm from the converter in my pen. The ink was obviously bad, and when I talked about my bad ink experience on social media dozens of pen sickos were quick to point out my fundamental error and advised me to get a proper fountain pen ink instead.

Oddly enough, despite the ink debacle I rather enjoyed using the Ellington. I've been using Tombow fudenosuke pens for years (mainly the hard tip variation) and while I like the expression I get with the pen I'm terrible at controlling my line width and often go too fast for the pen to produce a solid black line, especially for longer curves. The fountain pen had no trouble putting down ink as fast as I wanted, and had much more consistent lines while still allowing for some variation. The best part is there's little doubt as to how much ink is left in a fountain pen, unlike my Tombow pens which I invariantly push farther than I should.

So, on the advice of my pen sicko friends I went to Jetpens and ordered a Pilot Kakuno Extra Fine, as well as a Kuretake Karappo brush pen. I figured these two could replace my hard and soft tip Fudenosuke pens. Well, as it turns out "Extra Fine" is no joke, so I got a Kaweco Perkeo Medium in a subsequent order to have something in between the hair thin Kakuno and the (relatively) chunky Karappo.

So far, I like them a lot! It's once again a learning curve and it'll probably be a while before I'm as comfortable with them as I've grown to like the Fudenosuke pens, but I've got time and now seems like a good time to lean fully into being a traditional art sicko. Now, click through and see what I've managed to cook up with my new tools.

Has this year been going by fast for you? To me it feels like someone dropped a brick on the accelerator and I'm left wondering where it is we're headed. Maybe this is the rubber band snap from time feeling frozen in the years after the pandemic? Or maybe I'm just losing my mind.

Anyhoo, I've been watching anime lately! That's fun, isn't it? So far the best show I've watched is Witch Hat Atelier, and if you look closely (read: at all) you might notice young Coco, witch in training, is here among us now. Less surprising is the addition of a Merry, because of course July is the home of Draw Merry Day, everyone's favorite day to draw everyone's favorite Stuart Gipp Original. Least surprising of all, a collection of Natashas and Bries for your viewing pleasure. I hope they grant you as much pleasure in the viewing as they granted me in the drawing.

Well, that's another year in the books. A lot of folks like to celebrate the end of the year with a look back at what they accomplished. Not me! It's already here for you to see, all the way back to 2022 or maybe even earlier. Other folks look to the horizon to talk about what is to come in the year ahead. Not me! I refuse to consider what might happen in the future. I exist in a perpetual twilight, trapped in a moment of time forever drifting into the future at the typical rate.

November started strong with quite a bit of drawing, then petered out a bit toward the end of the month. I drew Kei and Yuri from Dirty Pair for some reason. Quite proud of that one. I tried my hand at drawing a character with white hair looking up and to the left, which was the style at the time. I drew Natasha a bunch. I drew Merry and Jess from Merry Hell as Peridot and Lapis from the Steven Universe episode when Peridot was most egregiously tiny. Typical November stuff. My situation has grown somewhat more tenuous in the last couple weeks so looking forward I'm not sure if I will deliver much in December. This is fairly typical for me, though, since I do most of my drawing at work and they typically close down the last two weeks of the month for the holidays. I guess we'll see!

Well friends, we've reached the end of another month, which in turn heralds the start of another. I dunno about you, but I have been feeling the psychic pressure of all this to a greater extent than usual. My pep has popped, my verve has swerved, I couldn't even really enjoy this year's Mad Ape Den. There may be some delays as my capacity falls behind my commitment.

In the meantime, please enjoy the attached atworks that I have helpfully drawn over the course of this month.

Well, hello there. If you're anything like me (statistically speaking, you likely ARE me) then the last month has not been conducive to the production of creative works. This is a time of great upheaval, and even if you like what's going on in the world (statistically speaking, you do not) you would have to be incredibly naive to not be worried about what the consequences of these recent events will be.

But that is not why you come here. You are here to see the art I produced last month. It is not much. You have my apologies for that. The worst part is after a flurry of activity in January, I have not produced a new comic page since February 1st. At this moment I still have comics to post until mid April, so it's not yet a big concern. If I can get my nose back to the grindstone in March I ought to be able to complete the next scene of the story, which includes an introduction to the power of Artifice. Now, please click through and see my meager offerings to you, my gracious viewer.