Hey everyone! I know that it’s still early for most folks, but since I’m already gearing up for the upcoming convention season, I thought you guys might like to do so as well. After all, when you’re going to Geek Prom, it’s often best to come well dressed.

Here’s our two new t-shirt designs: Orc Love & Displacer Kitty

But the new shirts aren’t the only new thing in the store – there’s also some ORIGINAL ART for sale! More original art will be posted over the next few days, so please check back often. And, if there’s a piece of original art that you’ve had your eye on (either a particular strip or some of the Friday sketches), please send me an email!

Was in the mood for doodling fairies, (I’m sure the Changeling game I’m playing in has nothing to do with that urge!) and decided to do a take on the small, petal-clad fairies that you usually see. These one are bug fairies, the more badass cousins of the flower fairies of Cicely Mary Barker fame.

These particular drawings were just me futzing around with my sketchbook and a ballpoint pen, but now that I’ve got the basics worked out, I really want to try a watercolor piece in her style. I think the dragonfly fairy could be particularly ethereal and malicious looking with a little work on the design.

My comic has not gone black, but a lot of the internet has and I support them fully. SOPA & PIPA are a poorly thought-out bills that will have a huge impact on small business like the webcomics you enjoy on a daily basis – even ones not based in the U.S, like mine! As I Canadian, I don’t get a say in whether or not these bills pass, so it’s all up to you, American Weregeeks.

Here are a few easy things you can do:

- Educate yourself about how SOPA and PIPA work.

- Print and mail letters to your state’s senators and representatives, urging them not to support this. Physical mail is harder to ignore than email. It piles up. You can find representatives’ addresses here and senators’ addresses here. Remember that PIPA is a Senate bill and SOPA is a House of Representatives bill.

- Call your senators and representatives on the phone and urge them not to support the bills. See above links for phone numbers or click here to get a quick list of representatives based on where you live.

I had someone ask recently whether or not I sketched out the panels before I drew them, and so decided to scan in some of my thumbnails.

As you can see from the bottom two drawings, the sketches I do before I draw a comic are VERY rough. They are really just to work out the different character’s placements, as well as to rough in a background. I also rough in where the word balloons will go, since I add them once the picture’s been drawn and scanned in. See if you can guess which two strips these thumbnails belong to!

The image at the top is not a thumbnail, as you can probably guess. It’s more of a joke, actually. You see, while at a friend’s wedding this past fall, there were several comic-y type people in attendance, and as happens when artsy folks all get together, we all wound up sketching together. Mostly, we were drawing random caricatures, but since one of the guys wasn’t overly familiar with my strip, he asked me to sum it up in three panels and about 10 minutes.

This “comic” is the result. I still think it’s pretty hilarious, if only because it makes no sense at all!

If there’s one piece of advice I can give regarding dancing at the goth club, it’s to watch out for all of the sharp bits. I can think of few dance floors that are more hazardous than a goth club on foam night…

I actually had to stop wearing my really awesome spiked bracers because I’d forget about them while dancing and nearly take out my own eyes, or go to hug one of my friends and gouge them in the spine. And, in one particularly painful incident, I managed to crack my funnybone against a nearby dancer’s spiky shoulder piece. Owwwww!!!

Thankfully, I’ve never danced with anyone skinny enough that their mere flesh was a hazard, but I *did* lift Ravenia’s description from one of my RL friends, who described her dancing partner rather similarly.