The Week in Which the Bugs Descended

Hello everyone!

Here is my first weekly update.

My original intention was to use this time in order to help myself learn how to use a tablet and work directly on a computer. So I sketched out something simple to work on.

After trying this out for a bit I can say that losing all of the hand-eye coordination I've built up sucks. Using a tablet means that your hand is in once place and you eye is looking another, leading to a totally disjointed experience. Having a whole art store's tools at your fingertips is awesome as is the possibility of editing and going back if the line you just put down is wrong. But it's going to take a while to re-train my hand. I also want to work on using color so I mapped out a basic scheme to work with:

And this is when I decided I'd had enough for now. I got a little further along but when it's hot and you're sweating all over everything and your hand won't do what your brain is insisting is a simple line I figured I might want to back off a bit.

In order to convince myself I could still draw I pulled out the sketchbook again and did these two:

This is my host dad from Agnam (jerk) when we were up north. Every Friday he would dress up in his grand boubou (jerk jerk) and his posse and stroll around town like he was the king of the town (jerk jerk jerk), because he thought he was (sigh).

And a donkey cart! For some reason even though people here use small whips made of string to get horses moving they feel that the only way to get through to a donkey is through a giant club. Interesting note, several donkeys around here seem to be African wild asses, an endangered species of donkey. They have zebra-type stripes on their legs.

Well that's all for this week. Let's see what the next brings.