Sunday, April 04, 2010

Black Ink

I've got black ink all over my fingers: I'm doing a page from the Medea comic.
It's taking ages, because I have a gothic take on Beano-style drawing and that involves layers and layers of inky cross-hatching.
Also the paper I'm using (which is now no longer available but I think I've got enough for this comic) is coated with avery fine layer of china clay, which means you can scrape away mistakes with a surgical blade when the ink is dry.
I'd forgotten how long it takes the ink to dry- it needs to 'set'- and there are lots of smudges on the paper and on me, which means lots of scraping tomorrow.
So I'm having a poppadum and blog break.
If I"d finished earlier I would have gone out and bought some multibuy Lindt chocolate bunnies from the supermarket and gorged on them, but at least there's a whole pile of poppadums left over from yesterday when Offsprog 1 and her friend came round unexpectedly and made it necessary to make a curry which they gobbled up in a trice (students with empty fridges).
Life is surreal, still: the kitchen is awash with pink balloons from Offsprog 2's surprise party for her friend. She won't let me pop them, and because the cat died a while ago I'm respecting her request (there's some sort of logic in that, I think). They drift towards the cupboards as though they want to put themselves away, and make the cupboard doors bounce open if you try to slam them without hooking them away with a foot, so many normally-swift kitchen procedures are happening in slo-mo today.
There's a bowl of lemon and orange sweets on the table from the same event (they were horrible sweets anyway and the lemon and orange ones are particularly rubbery-chemical in flavour).
No-one is going to eat them but I can't bring myself to throw them away just yet.
There is also something mysterious and brown under a tea-towel next to the cooker, but I'm too frightened to look.
Well, off to the poppadums. There's no space for me to work in this mini-house and I've been following the sun around with my drawing book; evening is drawing in (I'm not drawing it though), the light is going and my black and white working day is over, though I'll be playing some colourful music later on.
N.B. I was asked to do the Medea comic because I know how to draw loud drawings!

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