Ugh!

I was looking over Children of Light #1 today, wondering if I should reprint. Wow. This is pretty bad. Granted, it was my 1st effort at comics, but it does seem to get a little better as I go along. If I just reprint, there's information that's horribly out of date. One day, i'd love to do a totally re-mastered version. Maybe after #3, which wraps up the "origin" storyline. For now, I think I'll just do a 2nd print with some updated credits and "extras" pages. Get the original print while you still can over at Comixpress!

A little better scan, but not the whole thing (I miss my 11x17 scanner). About 2 hours in. Pencils done. I'm pencilling much looser, and tightening up in inks. My style I've been doing lends to a more sketchy/loose style in ink. I've never been good at doing really tight, slick art. So I try to go with a style that suits my strengths.

Progress

Sorry for the sucky quality, takes too long to set up a scan, so I just take a pic with the Macbook! Worked for about an hour on this today. It will be pages 1 & 2 of Children of Light #3. I'm drawing it at pretty much print size because I didn't want to mess with 2 art pages.

New drawing! kinda

Just a thumbnail, but that's progress, right? Right? In case you're trying to figure out what you're looking at, this is a very rough sketch for the 1st page of Children of Light #3. There's a huge monster thing at the top crushing building tops in its hands, and the kids are below peeing their pants looking at it. I had a little trouble figuring the layout because of the perspective. I started with a 1-point perspective shot, but that made the monster look way bigger than I wanted, like it was at the horizon. I solved that by changing the street view like you're looking across the street at it. This is going to be a 2-page spread. What a way to get back into work!

Had a good night's dive the other day. There was almost 2 dozen boxes of cereal (an organic raisin bran and a kid's puffs thing) I took about half, since I had seen others diving there before. We could have used it all, but the half I took is a great find. I don't mind sharing, especially since we're not desperate. This is where I disagree with Master Diver John Hoffman. He says take everything you find. If competition approaches, try to keep them away.

The great part about that find is, Wife said to try to get some cereal as I was leaving. I had never found cereal before, and kinda rolled my eyes at her. It's not out of the question to expect cereal, I had just never seen any. Finding more than we could use seems like a small miracle to me. After having what seems like a crappy year, we're beginning to see God blessing us and answering prayers. We also received a financial answer to prayer we thought would be near impossible. I think God likes us:)

Satisfied

Not a lot of diving lately. Sunday, wife and I went together, and didn't get too much. I tried this morning to see how that would go, but nothing to interesting. Really haven't needed much. Our freezer is pretty full, and we are lacking nothing. So I'm being satisfied in that. God is a great provider.

Matthew 6:25 "Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? 26Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? 27Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?"

Moving out of the valley and towards the mountaintop, getting motivated to start drawing again. Next post, I'll show you something, promise!

Food poisoning!!

Just kidding! Yes, we do eat most of the food I bring home. In the dark, I grab what looks good, and we sort when I get home.

"But isn't that food diseased?"

No. Places throw stuff out when it hits the sell-by date, gets dirty or crunched, is discontinued, sometimes no discernable reason. I'm reminded of the Seinfeld episode where George ate the donut from the top of the trash. What was wrong with that dounut? Does moving it from the counter or refrigerator to the trash change the chemical composition of the food?

200 years ago, maybe even 100 years ago, we ate fruit that had imperfect spots, drank milk with no sell-by dates (they used a fancy system where they opened the container and smelled the milk), and ate meat that hadn't been in a constant refrigerated state.

So sarcastic rant aside, we test our food using our brains and senses. If it smells bad, away it goes. Many times fruit is past the freshest state, but still perfectly fine and safe to eat. Meat I bring home is still cold from the store, and if still in a sealed package, is cooked thoroughly. For example, I found a 5-pound tube of ground meat. There was a small break in the package, but the meat was still cold, so had just come from the meat case. We saved everything except the portion near the break in the package, and didn't die after eating it.

If there was a ridiculous amount of the same item in the trash that hadn't expired yet, that could be a suspect of tainted food. Often these scares aren't as serious as they're made out to be (bird flu, anyone? Swine flu?). So again, common sense, sound judgment.

I'm not an expert on food science. I just use common sense, and that's gotten us by so far.

Peace!

Dumpster-Diving 101: Where & when

There's some good books you can read on diving, most notably JOhn Hoffman's The Art & Science of Dumpster-Diving. A pretty entertaining read even if you're not interested in applying John's lifetime of knowledge, but you probably will be after reading it! I'd like to offer some basic, quick lessons I've learned so far. I'm still an amateur at this, hopefully to one day gain the rank of Master Diver, but I have learned a lot quickly.

Where: Well, depends on what you're looking for. For us, we like food & books (more on food saftey later). So we target local markets that don't have the big trash compactors that I don't care to try to get into. I think that might count as breaking & entering. So smaller chain stores, and health food stores often have regular dumpsters. But whatever you're interested in or like to shop, shop their dumpster! It's usually a good idea to scout your location during the day.

When: After store hours, preferably at night for me are the best times. You could get away with looking through a dumpster during daylight store hours, but you risk being hassled by employees or managers. If they see you, you risk having them lock the dumpster or something. My favorite place is next door to a bar, and often employees come out the back door & can see me. I think they called the cops on me, but the cop didn't care that I was lookin'. Still, I don't like the hassle risk factor. Sunday evening they're closed, so I pick at my leisure that day! Ideally, I would go out after midnight every time, but I do work a 9-5 job. Gotta sleep!

Last night was good (Sunday!) Got 3 half-gallons of milk, 1 chololate!, lotsa yogurt, but some turned out skunky, 4 boxes of donuts, a little ice cream, broccoli, a few bunches of bananas, a few dozen small quickly-ripening tomatoes that I made yummy sauce out of today! Nummy! 6 cases of discarded books, too. Some light reading!