Stinking and cross-hatching

[avram]

Cough cough! When I first got to Ground today there were no smokers, but as the day wore on it seemed to get extra smokey. Or maybe that’s ’cause I was chatting in the corner with jcb and his girlfriend and a buddy of theirs, getting smoked at from three sides.

My artistic blues are over, most likely ’cause I spent the afternoon cross-hatching like a mofo! (The cute girl head above is from a few days ago, as is the Melorne head shot behind the cut, but the rest of today’s catch is fresh.) tnh just blogged about a school program that’s got half the pupils at an NJ elementary school learning to knit, and she says that knitting “produces a sort of serene buzz”. I think this is a side-effect of concentrating on something, or maybe of making small, repetitive movements with your hands, because cross-hatching gets me slightly tranced out. On the downside, there’s the hand-strain; Carla Speed McNeil calls it “cartoonist’s black lung”.