I knew that Pinky won't appreciate real barbecue yesterday. Even though the theme for Artstorm contest was "Barbecue" I couldn't just draw pork ribs being roasted in the fire. Pinky would freak out, of course. So I made an alternative barbecue with red beats and I'll tell you how I got the idea.
A couple of weeks ago @laputis and I went to celebrate her aunt's birthday and among the wonderful meals with chicken, salads of various sorts and sweets they had red beat chips which they made in front of our eyes. It's actually very simple to make, taste delicious and is a healthy snack. First, you cut red beats in small circles and put them on the cooking plate on top of the special paper so that they wouldn't burn. Then you add a little bit of salt on every circle and add good olive oil. That's all! Then you need to put this plate into the oven and let it roast. After they are crunchy, you can eat them hot or cold. Either way their taste is amazing! So having this red beet chips experience I drew a big pot and a fire underneath it. On top of the pot I drew many red beet chunks. Then on either side of the fire I drew Pinky and Spiky sitting comfortably in their armchairs. On the poles Dietrich and Cornelius are cooking red beets and Betsy with Victor are resting on Pinky and Spiky's heads. Pinky commands, "Guys, add more salt!" and Spiky yells, "I want those red beet chips!" Poor Dietrich who is working hard replies, "You could at least sing us a song!" and Cornelius adds, "A motivational song!" I hope this silliness will put a smile in your face! Let Me Draw Pinky And Spiky Comics For You Check out my Patreon page: https://www.patreon.com/pinkyandspiky
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I honestly didn't know what to draw yesterday for Artstorm contest. The theme was "Cold Drinks" but all the options seemed too obvious. Unless I don't have a choice, I don't want to go the easy way. I don't want to simply draw colas or cocktails. I need to create a little story. A weird story would be even better.
So without much thought I drew a frame, my name and a date and started drawing Pinky's hooves. Then a glass in these hooves. Then a large tongue sticking in this glass. Then Pinky's beautiful nose. Then two greedy eyes looking to the right. Then when I wanted to draw her ears, there wasn't much space left in the top so the ears had to be bent. Maybe that's even better - Pinky is so focused on drinking. Then I drew her hands and the rest of the body. I did the same for Spiky on the right. First - the paws, then - the glass, tongue, nose, eyes greedily looking at Pinky and spikes. Even when the two of the characters were drawn I still had no idea what they would say. Unlike other times, they just wouldn't start talking! But since both of them drank greedily, it seemed appropriate for Pinky to say, "Who has better manners?" Now obviously Spiky would normally say, "Me!" but suddenly I noticed an empty space besides Pinky. What member of the gang could fit there? That's where I drew Betsy. So Spiky's answer was kind of unexpected when he said, "Betsy!" Where is the focus in this comic? I think it's in their mouths... I have just recently drawn Spiky having sunburns so when I saw that Artstorm's theme for yesterday was Sunburn I decided to draw something different.
I was sitting on my armchair with a pen in my hand and a pocket notebook in another looking for an idea to draw. Started wondering whether I should use portrait or landscape format and for some reason chose portrait - it looks bigger on the phone. Which characters should be on the page this time? How about Cornelius and Dietrich. They always come up with something funny to say. OK then. I wrote my name, a date, a title and began to draw huge Cornelius looking at his spread out wings. Since it was a large version of him I also added some feathers. This time he wasn't pooping as he usually is. :) Then I wanted to draw Dietrich but I didn't leave too much space at the bottom of the page. And Dietrich was lying on his back and looking up at Cornelius. Now my friends started talking to each other. Cornelius said, "I should have payed more attention to what Pinky said about sun..." Because Pinky just recently advised Spiky not to forget to turn when sunbathing which he obviously did. Dietrich said, "Yeah! Pinky is never wrong!" Then I wanted to also include Pinky and give her a chance to reply but there wasn't enough space at the bottom. Nevertheless I drew a small Pinky and she said, "This is so true!" Piglets are never wrong because their IQ is 130. And it only increases with each potato peal they eat! Or with every time they are right? I forget which one... I hope this silliness will put a smile on your face! I drew this comic yesterday after I got home from town. The theme of the Artstorm contest was salad and @deemarshall sent me a video with 10 most interesting salads of the world. She said one one of them must especially appeal to Spiky because it might have worms in it. :)
I have drawn worm salad before so this time I decided to go with something different instead. Because my last comic was with Cornelius and Dietrich, the turn came for Betsy and Victor to be the heroes. I pictured in my mind them sitting in their armchairs facing each other and Victor is holding a salad bowl in 4 of his arms. Usually he's trying to eat Betsy but this time he says, "You've got to try this fly salad, Betsy! Lots of protein..." What? A fly salad? For Betsy? We all know she loves flower nectar but this... So she says, "I don't know... Might be some distant cousin of mine..." Victor replies, "Yeah! A bad cousin..." I wanted the walls and the floor to have different shades of blue because it works well with orange and yellow. I don't know if you can see but in the background on the wall there hangs a painting of Victor chasing Betsy and she's crying, "Help!" I hope this silliness will make you smile... I'm writing these words while waiting for Ausra (@laputis on Steemit) to finish her classes and drive her to the doctors to get her medicine. I want to use my time efficiently and creatively so instead just surfing the phone I'm going to write about how I drew the comic yesterday. It was my entry for Artstorm contest and the theme was "Summer Flowers."
Now it's winter in Lithuania so it's hard to imagine summer but still I wanted to make the best comic I could for this theme. I drew it yesterday evening while watching news on TV about teachers in Lithuania going on strike and among their demands were better pay, less students in their classrooms and respect for human beings in general. I thought that summer flowers would obviously associate with Betsy or Victor so I didn't want to go down the easy road. Instead, I chose Cornelius and Dietrich as two of the characters in this comic. What could Cornelius do to make action seem more interesting and not just to stand there and say some dialogue? Well, the first idea that came to me was maybe he could water the flowers. After I drew Cornelius among the flowers and watering them on the left, I needed to draw Dietrich too. I made him standing on his four paws with his tail looking similar to a lion's. I didn't know that at first but as Ausra pointed out to me it was obvious, wasn't it? So now what could Cornelius say to Dietrich about the flowers? Well, how about that they needed to let flowers drink first before they do. Very generous of Cornelius... He's the one that is always thinking of others. Now Dietrich should give a punchline. And to make punchlines stand out and be funny you have to write something unexpected, something like if the reader feels there should be thing A, Dietrich should say thing B or even C... What could that be? How about changing the game asking if we should let the flowers do something first which they don't like doing. I mean they like drinking water so letting the flowers drink first is a generous act. But if they let flowers do something that they don't want to do, then it's funny... What Dietrich dislikes the most? At that moment I thought about myself. What don't I like to do? I like doing dishes or pealing potatoes but I don't get to do that too often. How about flossing the teeth? It's a burden which we have to do in order to keep up the hygiene of our teeth but it's not something I would be excited to get out of bed for when I wake up in the morning. So I let Dietrich say that maybe they should let the flowers floss the teeth first before they do which I think is funny for two reasons. First, that it comes as a surprise after a generous statement of Cornelius and second, that in general the flowers... don't floss teeth too often. In fact, they don't even have teeth! Oh and I have to finish this post now because Ausra is coming and we're ready to drive. I hope this silliness will put a smile on your face... It’s 4:46 PM as I’m typing these words. Today I have already practiced my organ music for 4 hours or more at my church until lunch. Even though I took some breaks, I feel quite tired, a little exhausted from sitting on the organ bench for far too long.
I feel quite good about myself, about today’s work. But something is still missing, I’m not complete. Because I haven’t created anything yet. I have just practiced performing what other people have created which is not the same for me. I started my day by reading 14 fascinating articles I came across on Steemit in the morning. Each of them helped me think about things I didn’t know anything about. I even tried to encourage these authors and wrote thank you comments with my feedback. Four of them replied and a nice discussion was born. All this time while I was reading those articles and playing my organ music I was aware of the idea that today I will need to create something. It might be my daily Pinky and Spiky comic strip or it might be some article written about some creative idea. I didn’t know yet. While I was consuming content, I also needed to let some of my content out today in the form of text, pictures, audio or video. You see, reading thoughtful articles and books is important, there is no question about it. But reading alone won’t let me feel complete. I have to let some of those ideas out into the world too. Maybe other people will be reading them. Maybe they will later interact with me. Now after typing 270 words, I’m starting to feel a little better. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that writing is not required to me. Playing is because organ playing is my profession and I will do it no matter what. So sooner or later it becomes like a given to me, like nothing special. Maybe for some of my students to sit down on the organ bench is a big accomplishment but for me it’s what I do. Therefore, doing something extra with my time, like drawing or writing things which nobody expects from me to do gives me this kind of satisfaction which I can’t get from anything else I’m doing with the time I have left. A few moments before these words where still in my head and now they are on the screen. Are they good? I don’t know. Is it a valuable content? It’s not for me to decide. Will they be important to anybody? I guess we’ll find out when I press the “Post” button. I don’t do it for somebody to thank me or to be moved by my words. I do it for a very selfish reason - to let the ideas out so that I would make space for new ideas tomorrow. What comes in, must come out (in a different form or shape, of course). The balance between input and output. I've noticed something weird about Messenger app today. Right at the moment when I meant to shut my phone, after watching YouTube videos, a notification pops up that one of my Messenger friends, John is waiving at me...
Looks normal, but wait a minute... How does Messenger know that I'm about to stop watching videos and go to the church to practice playing the organ? I have a feeling that Messenger watches me and when I feel like I'm fed up with the phone, it starts to send me these notifications. I'll tell you what's happening: John has hired some of the students who were eating at the same cafeteria I was in to take turns of watching me. And as soon as I was done with the phone they were supposed to message back to John saying that I'm about to leave. "Get back to the phone. Messenger is paying me to keep you on the app." Or maybe it was this way: My church organ was fed up with me playing his pipes, forcing the air go from the bellows to wooden wind canals into the windchests. "I'm sick of you touching my keys and pedals with your greasy fingers. That's it! I'm calling John to wave at you and keep you focused on the phone. I'd rather have woodworms eat my wooden pipes than you touching my keys again..." "Yes I'm talking to you! Wave back at John now!" These 16 ants were so focused on their breakfast that they didn’t see me pick up this bright red juicy and a little bit rotten apple on which they were standing. They didn’t even move when I slowly turned the apple around. Only when I blew them away they slowly fell down on the grass one by one.
All of this happened this morning when I came out to do my pull-ups in the garden. It’s this time of the year when every morning I find more and more apples on the ground. This also meant I have to do more and more pull-ups in between of picking them up! So I did my ladder 1-2-3-2-1 and then continued to do one pull-up once every two minutes. I’m pretty sure I did at least 4 additional pull-ups this way but then lost the count. In case you’re wondering, there were no farts this morning while exercising! The gas wasn’t ready to come out as I haven’t had my breakfast yet… But the ants already were having one. And I could only imagine what they were telling me: “Hey, mister, want to join us eating this juicy apple?” “Oh no, thanks! I’d rather not fart while exercising.” “That’s OK. We’re in an open air.” Or maybe angrier: “Hey you one with the fitness gloves and not so big biceps! You bother us every day when you jump on those rings. That’s our lawn. And you’re not paying any rent! Good for you you’re so big. Otherwise our gang would pee on you with our acid!” For several days now I was itching to do my maximum number of pull-ups, just to see my progress. I could feel I could do more than 3, if I gave all I got at the first set.
Today, after I came home from the university I wanted to take out hedge twigs I cut last weekend to the special holding place for green waste. As I was putting the bags into the trunk of the car with my fitness gloves on, an idea came to me that I should use this opportunity and go to the rings right away. So I finished with the bags, jumped on the rings and pulled myself up not 3, not 4 but 5 times! Yes, you’ve read it correctly! Today I did 5 pull-ups in a row… Then I almost wanted to get into my car but thought what if I did my maximum number of pull-ups again. Maybe I would do more than 2? Sure enough, after resting a while, I did 3 pull-ups. I repeated the same process 3 more times and completed 3, 2 and 1 repetitions of pull-ups with every set. So, 5-3-3-2-1 gave me the total number of 14 pull-ups. That’s my record so far. Then I got into my car and drove to the green waste lot. My hands and chest were burning. Even my legs felt somewhat tired. Will I be able to repeat the same set tomorrow? It was nice to read supportive comments after yesterday's post about the ladder method which helped me do the total of 9 pull-ups. Maybe some people can try this in various activities and challenges that they do themselves.
Today was the first day of school for Ausra. But not for me. I quit teaching at National M.K. Ciurlionis School of Art at the end of the last school year because I want to focus more on the work I’m doing online. So this morning she went to teach and I - to the church to play for the opening of the academic year of the Philology Department of Vilnius University during which I improvised some organ music. Then I worked on compiling Ausra’s new Pinky and Spiky comic book which I hope to complete by her birthday this September and after that came to meet Ausra for lunch. We then went home and I picked up some fallen apples in the garden and did the ladder of pull-ups: 1-2-3-2-1. The feeling when doing exercise was different than when I used to do them in the mornings - my body was awake but a little heavier because of lunch. Nevertheless, I finished the ladder a little easier than yesterday. Then I drew a couple of Pinky and Spiky comic strips and had some coffee with leftover cake from our book club meeting after which went for a walk with Ausra in the woods. We saw several families of ducks swimming in the river and communicating among themselves. Very nice day! |