Well, I pencilled and inked all but one of the GWAVAMan strips that run in February and March, and the last one in the queue has been mostly pencilled. It awaits approval of character design, so unless I want to ink the other stuff on the page without seeing how the missing character fits, I’m done with pen-and-ink.

My hand hurts a lot. This means I’m a) holding the pen too tightly, b) pushing down too hard, rather than using a light touch with a larger nib, and c) out of practice. This is not multiple choice. This is “all of the above.” S’okay. My hand will be better tomorrow.

I’m really pleased with the way these strips turned out. I spend a little more time on them than I do on the daily doses of Schlock Mercenary I crank out. I know, it hardly seems fair that 20,000 fans don’t get my “A” game, but let’s face it… youse guys ain’t paying more than about 20% of my monthly bills. My generous commercial patrons, on the other hand, get my “stretch” work.

This is good news for Schlock fans… I’m being paid to stretch my artistic abilities. The Sunday coloring has already benefited from the techniques I’m developing as I work on GWAVAMan, and I’m sure that the rest of the art I do for Schlock will follow along similarly.