"I'm kind of miffed at Scott, to be perfectly honest," Barber said. "I bought toilet paper the last time we ran out, so it was clearly his turn to do so. We said we'd share the basic necessities 50/50, so I don't see why I'm the one who always has to buy them."

"I'm what you would call a non-confrontational person by nature," Barber said. "I prefer leaving notes or other subtle hints and hoping people pick up on them and act accordingly. Unfortunately, Scott wouldn't be able to pick up on a subtle hint even if it came right up and bit him in the ass."

According to Barber, this latest conflict - which he has dubbed "WC-gate" - started a little over a week ago when he took the last roll of toilet paper out of the bathroom closet because the one on the dispenser was getting low. As a message to his roommate he left the empty plastic packaging out on the bathroom sink, but after a few days threw it away because it kept getting in the way whenever he wanted to wash his hands. "Besides," Barber added, "the message wasn't getting through."

Next, Barber left a number of coupons for toilet paper on the kitchen table and counter. "They were for $2 off a pack of 12 rolls or more, so I figured that would attract his attention," he said. "The 'SAVE $2.00' was in big, purple letters, too. Alas, they just sat there, undisturbed."

With their last roll running out, Barber was rapidly running out of options. "I realized I had let things go too long to risk leaving a note," he said. "That's when I arranged a chance meeting in the kitchen."

Barber said he waited until he heard Cowell leave his bedroom to get something out of the refrigerator, at which point Barber appeared and asked him how things were going. Cowell is reported to have replied that things were "all right."

"I tried to be casual about it," Barber recalled, "so I said, 'Oh, hey. We're almost out of toilet paper.' Scott nodded and said, 'Okay,' so I figured that meant things were in hand. But lo and behold, a whole day went by and he still hadn't gone to the supermarket to buy more."

The situation reached the breaking point for Barber late Wednesday night when he was dealing with a bout of diarrhea after eating some undercooked kielbasa. "I'm just lucky there was enough paper to get me through my first attack," Barber said. "As soon as it subsided, though, I grabbed one of the $2 coupons and ran to the store. Luckily there wasn't a long line at the checkout, otherwise things could have really gotten unpleasant."

As it turns out, toilet paper isn't the only thing Barber finds himself buying with more frequency than his roommate. "I always seems to be the one who had to buy light bulbs as well," he said. "And don't get me started on paper towels or trash bags."

When reached for comment, Cowell, a 32-year-old video store clerk, said, "Wait, we were low on toilet paper?"

If the dark tones in this one blend to much together, please let me know. My LCD, although very good, sometimes shows more separation in darker tones than CRTs and prints.

Speaking of memories, while working on this I was listening to a great new album called "Sahara Swing" by Karl Hector and the Malcouns. It's basically a bunch of Germans playing Afrobeat (think Krautrock meets Fela Kuti). Made me think of one of my favorite bands, Can. So I listened to Can's "Soon Over Babaluma." It was good.

Prints: chrisleavens.imagekind.com

**NOTE** I'm in the midst of a major behind-the-scenes site overhaul, so if your comments don't show up right away, don't worry, they still made it through.

In other Chris-art related news, it looks as if my painting, Seed Tax, will be appearing in a separate publication and another possible solo show is also on the horizon. More details when they arrive.

In site news, I've begun some under-the-hood tinkering, but you more than likely won't see any of the results for about a week or so. Apologies for any bugs or inconsistencies in the meantime.

Acrylic on canvas, 16" x 20"

My fellow freedom-lovers:

Let me set the scene for you, citizens. It's Friday night [August 8 -ed.], and I'm sitting on the couch in my apartment watching a movie called Trapped Ashes. Screwy title, huh? Sounds a bit like Slapped Asses, which would also be a pretty screwy title but would not sound quite as gloomy and high-toned as Trapped Ashes. I'd been watching the Opening Ceremonies from Beijing earlier in the evening, but the Parade of Nations soon got to be monotonous, a seemingly endless procession of people dressed up like Century 21 agents, smiling and waving to the crowd in the manner of hometown beauty queens. Snoo-zers! So I succumbed the siren song of Trapped Ashes, which comes billed as a gore-riffic horror anthology, just the thing to substitute for my beloved AWOL Fear Itself. Anyway, the disc starts with previews, and normally I would automatically skip those but I figure, "What the hell? All the better to recreate the true experience of seeing a real movie in a real theater. Let the trailers commence!"

Dear reader:

I wish I could tell you something, anything about Trapped Ashes, I really do. I received the movie in the mail from Joe on Wednesday or Thursday - along with a letter written in eyebrow pencil on butcher's paper containing his thoughts on the film - and was all set to watch it last night despite Joe's warning by e-mail that "the movie is really, really, really bad, practically from the first frame to the last." I was the one who found it in the new release rack at Wal-Mart and sent it to him to review, though, so I knew I had to suck it up and take one for the team. (After all, Joe already had.) And I was all ready to do just that when I had another one of my mysterious blackouts. Well, it wasn't an actual blackout, per se, but... It's kind of hard to describe. It wasn't like what happened last time, I can tell you that.

Regular readers of this feature may recall the incident that occurred two weeks ago when I was so enraged by the discovery of Fear Itself's preemption in favor of the season finale of Last Comic Standing that I reportedly caused injury to several individuals and damaged some private property. (My case has not come up in criminal court as of yet, so I am still hazy on the details of what happened that night, and my court-appointed attorney has deemed it best to keep me in the dark about them. I believe his plan is to plead temporary insanity, which I don't necessarily agree or disagree with. I'd just like to know what it is I'm supposed to have done, although maybe I don't in light of what's happened since then.) The upshot of all that was my contact with a representative of a group called Lycanthropes Anonymous. I have attended several of their meetings over the past two weeks and was starting to feel that I was making definite progress on that front - that is, until last night.

It was a little after sunset when it started. I know this because I waited until it was dark to put the Trapped Ashes DVD in my player. (I still have a block about watching horror films during daylight hours, even cheaply slapped together ones.) I muted the TV so my ears wouldn't be assaulted by the previews, which always seem to be twice as loud as the movie itself, and got up and started pacing the room, occasionally glancing at the screen to check its progress. (I used to skip past the previews on DVDs, but occasionally I see something that catches my fancy and probably would have escaped my attention otherwise.) During one of my circuits I happened to look out the window and saw that the moon was full and very beautiful. I must have been entranced because my vision grew hazy and I began to feel sleepy. I retired to the bedroom, but left my clothes on, figuring I would only go down for a short nap before getting up and tackling the movie. Instead I immediately fell into a deep sleep and had extremely vivid dreams, most of which revolved around a hideous beast stalking its prey. The curious thing is sometimes I was the beast and sometimes I was the prey. Here's the dream as best as I was able to reconstruct it:

The first thing I remember was standing in the fenced-off deer preserve across the street from the apartment complex where I live. How I got there I don't know, but my sense of smell was most acute for I quickly homed in on one of the creatures and took off through the woods after it. The deer was surprisingly easy to take down - I was a much faster runner in the dream than I am in real life - and I greedily supped on its meat and drank its blood, quickly overcoming my surprise at my own bloodlust. Then, all of a sudden I felt the presence nearby of another bipedal creature (I could tell that it wasn't a deer or anything else on four legs) and instinctually made a break for it. Now I was the one being chased, first through the woods and then, after I leaped over the fence, the streets that bordered the preserve. Whatever was chasing me, I must have lost it because I found myself all alone on an unfamiliar back road.

Padding along as quietly as possible, I listened with my super-sensitive hearing for any sign that I was being pursued. I heard a door open to my right and, ducking behind a tree, watched as an inebriated man carried a garbage bag out to the curb. The beast within me awoke and in seconds I was on top of him, ripping both the man and the bag he carried to shreds with my sharp claws and fangs. I soon regretted tasting his blood, though, because of the alcohol it contained. Maybe if my senses hadn't been dulled by it I would have alerted to my pursuer's presence before it was able to get too close.

The creature let out a howl that chilled me to the quick. I squatted there, hunched over the dead man's still-warm body, for what seemed like forever before I shook off the paralysis and ran as quickly as I could. There was no escaping it this time, though, and at the end of the dream I was finally caught by the beast, which scooped me up in its massive, hairy arms and - after a disorienting trip back through the woods - improbably deposited me back in my bed, leaving me completely unharmed.

I couldn't even begin to tell you what any of it meant, but when I awoke this morning I was again in tattered clothes (but thankfully not languishing in the city jail), and felt more exhausted than I had when I had gone to sleep. Rolling out of bed, I returned to the living room to eject Trapped Ashes from the DVD player - no use letting the menu keep playing on a constant loop - when I discovered that it was missing. The DVD case was also gone, and taped to the TV set was a hastily scribbled note. As I reached for it, I noticed that I had an alarming amount of dried blood on my hands and, when I looked down, my clothing as well. Feeling unsteady on my feet, I staggered to the bathroom to wash it off and discovered to my horror that it was also on my face and matted in my beard.

I have no idea what's happening to me, but I do know one thing: I need to call my sponsor.

The textures in this one almost brought my computer to its knees. Also, if you're ever wondering which Mouse on Mars CD is best to rock while working, I'd suggest Glam.

Prints: chrisleavens.imagekind.com

I was given this pearl of wisdom at the beginning of my third year of college, when Trenton State's Television/Theater Production department - which had just been introduced the previous spring - was in the process of defining itself. I had initially registered at TSC as a theater major, but was informed on my arrival that the old theater department had been phased out and was being reconstituted to reflect the changing times. The result was TTP, which was so amorphous at the start that we students were essentially able to make up our own curricula. Since I was in college to hone my skills as a writer, that's what I decided to base my curriculum around - my writing.

I persisted and, over Dr. Wegner's objections, produced three episodes of a program I called Radio Show #47 (so numbered because its theme song was Bob Dylan's "Rainy Day Women #12 & 35"). Since most of my fellow TTP students had little of substance to show for themselves at the end of the school year, Dr. Wegner was forced to acknowledge that I had at least produced something - regardless of its worth - and I got an A for the course. The following fall, when a different professor was in charge, I made one more episode and all four were broadcast on WTSR, the campus radio station. I have no idea how many people were listening to WTSR those four weeks, but at least the show got out there and everybody who worked on it received a tape to remember it by.

Of all the things I've done over the years (and I'll refrain from dragging them all out of the closet), Radio Show #47 is one of the ones of which I'm most proud. When I listen to it now it feels like the work of somebody who just wants to goof off with his friends and earn some college credit while doing so. Most everything I've done since then has had that same vibe - up to and including my pieces for Pork Pony/Unloosen and my online comic Dada. My work now may be, by necessity, of a more solitary nature, but I'm happy that people still take the time to read it at all. And somewhere in there I sailed past Dr. Wegner's magic age without once thinking, "Aha! Now is the time to begin writing things of worth!"

That said, I have noticed a change in my writing of late. Over the past six months, since I started posting a story a week, I've been letting more autobiographical details slip into my stories, or I've used incidents from my life as jumping-off points. I actually was named employee of the month and, more often than not, didn't get to park in the designated spot. I actually was verbally threatened in a bathroom and walked so much it felt like my feet were killing me at a prominent music festival. I actually did order a side of hushpuppies at Long John Silver's. And a coworker actually did ask if it was cold enough for me in the depths of February.

Of course, things in real life rarely turn out the way they do in my stories. Even the most thinly veiled anecdotes have some exaggeration in them. After all, where would we writers be without the ability to reinvent and reorder our own lives?

And prior to this, all was calm.

Feeling better about this painting than the last one.

Acrylic on canvas, 24" x 30"

“Those jobs pay good money,” she told him, “but they won’t hire nobody who has no long hair.”

Seizing his opportunity to be a smartass, Dermot replied, “Ah, so they’ll hire somebody who doesn’t have short hair?”

“No, that’s not what I said.”

“But it is what you didn’t say.”

“What?”

“Exactly.”

Dermot was ushered into the HR manager’s office. Someone with tact might have called her portly or even pleasantly plump, but someone without it would have just said she was a fat cow. She extended a hand for him to shake, possibly as a test to see if he had an aversion to touching morbidly obese people. He took the hand and shook it.

“I’m Miss Cross. Pleased to meet you, Mr. Rooney.”

“Same here, Miss Cross, although I’m curious why you asked to see me right away. I didn’t even finish filling out my application.”

“There was no need. We have an immediate opening available in our packaging department and you looked like a prime candidate, so I plucked you out of the applicant pool, so to speak.”

“Isn’t that somewhat unusual?”

“It is very unusual, Mr. Rooney, but if you stick around I’m sure you’ll find we here at the factory do very few things by the book.”

“Does that mean you're offering me the job?”

She was, and she never once asked him to remove his hat. This was turning out to be a lot easier than he had anticipated.

Next thing Dermot knew he was down on the factory floor, being shown around by the foreman. He was also on the heavy side, but Dermot held his tongue in check. It would not do to get fired on his first day. He didn’t even know what he was doing yet.

“Did they tell you up in HR what your new job will entail?” the foreman asked.

“Not really,” Dermot replied. “Miss Cross said it was in the packaging department, but I’m not even 100% certain what you make at this factory.”

“Of what percentage are you certain, then?”

Dermot looked around, but couldn’t identify what anybody was making or doing at their work stations. There seemed to be some kind of assembly line, but what they were assembling was a complete mystery to him.

“Uhh… zero?”

The foreman let out a hearty laugh and clapped him on the shoulder.

“Well, follow me into the back and I’ll show you a thing or two.”

When Dermot got home that evening he was visibly shaking. After he left the factory he had stopped at the nearest bar to try to calm his nerves – and get his courage up. How else was he going to tell his mother that he had quit without completing a single day’s work? A couple stiff drinks later he still didn’t know.

“Dermot, is that you?” she called out from the kitchen.

“No, Mom. It’s the Tooth Fairy.”

“Oh, always such a cut-up. I kept your dinner warm. Do you want it now?”

Dermot thought of some of the things he had seen that day and felt his gorge rise.

“Uhh, no, Mom. Thanks.”

He plopped down into the easy chair, a shattered young man. His mother walked in and, seeing the state he was in, assumed what she considered the worst.

“Oh, no. What happened? Did you get fired?”

“No, not exactly.”

“Well, what, then?”

Dermot wearily removed his hat and let his hair fall down to his shoulders. He instantly knew what to say.

“They… didn’t like my hair.”

His mother shook her head as she returned to the kitchen.

“What did I tell you? But do you ever listen to me?”

Dermot waited until she was out of earshot before replying under his breath.

“Last time I take your job advice.”

**DISCLAIMER**

What you are about to read is not a tutorial. If you're new to vector illustration, it may be mildly enlightening, but I'd look elsewhere if you're you're looking to get educated. In breaking down my process, I'll get into technical details, but I'm not really interested in teaching; other people on the web do a much better job of it. Also, I'm pretty opinionated when it comes to digital art and, well, life in general, so consider yourself warned

Part 1: Why vector art?

I've been working in graphic design in some capacity for a decade at this point and vector illustration has been at the core of much of my professional work. I realized about five or so years ago that I'd become better at drawing vectors than I am drawing or painting conventionally. I also REALLY enjoy the process and I think I personally find it more satisfying than conventional methods. GASP! I'm a heretic! Burn me at the stake while you discuss your love of Mark Ryden and sip your vente lattes.

All methods have their pluses and minuses and, honestly, I really don't care how something's produced as long as the end result looks good and no one's harmed in the process. That said, I can't tell you how many cringes and looks of disbelief I've gotten when I've told other artists how I work. It's pure snobbery, in my opinion, but to each their own. The snobs actually bother me less than the "it's digital so it must be easy" crowd. I'd say a good 50% of the non-artists I've shown my work to have been shocked when they've seen me draw conventionally. "You can draw? I thought you were just good at computers." Swear to God, this happens all the time and it bugs the crap out of me. When I mention that I work digitally, they envision me pressing some magic button that draws my images for me. Anyone who's worked with vectors will tell you that it's just as difficult if not at times more challenging and time-consuming. Unless, of course, you're using Illustrator's Live Trace function to outline something; you're just giving the rest of us a bad name (I just lost half my audience).

Now that all of that's out of the way, here's why I love vectors so much:

1. Mixing and changing colors is super fast and nearly effortless.
2. Nearly-endless levels of Undo help iron out mistakes.
3. Every element is endlessly "wet" and mutable. Nothing's fixed until the image goes to print.
4. The lines and curves can be smoothed to give a clean, precise look that appeals to me.
5. Scalability without degradation!

Part 2: Concept

I usually come up with most of my ideas while I'm running. Yes, running. If you've seen my work, you know it's can be a bit absurd, surreal, and sometimes just wacky. Running allows me to meditate on different ideas and draw them in my mind. No illicit substances are ever involved. Ever. People always assume I'm on all kinds of drugs because I create what they consider "trippy" illustrations. I'm not really interested in putting anything into my body that makes me dumber (and there goes the other half of my audience).

After I have the initial idea, I usually try to do some rough sketches with pencil and paper to flesh out the ideas. When people say, "It's all in my head, man," it rarely ever is. Getting something -- anything -- on paper really helps firm up my concepts and, if nothing else, points me in a better direction. Here are some of the crappy sketches that came in the days before I sat down to complete the piece this article relates to:

Yep, I know, they suck, but quality isn't the point when you're sketching ideas. The idea is ideas and, even though the finished product in this case looks absolutely nothing like any of these God-awful sketches, I wouldn't have produced it without them.

Part 3: Killing your what?

When I was in college, one of our teachers always talked about "killing your babies." It's a horrible term, one I won't use, but the concept is a good one. The idea is that you're willing to take even your most treasured ideas and toss them in the trash if they're working against your goal. In the case of my moose, it wasn't going where I wanted to and it was stifling my creativity, so I decided to change course a bit. I thought, "What if the antler were made entirely of monsters?" and went from there. I actually started drawing swoopy, flowing antlers in Illustrator and when I began covering them with monster shapes, I knew I was onto something better.

Part 4: Let the vectors begin!

The most difficult/depressing part of creating any artwork for me is the beginning. When I'm working with vectors, I always start by drawing and positioning brightly colored shapes, basically the outlines of my finished forms. Usually -- but not always -- I hold off on shading, textures, and color choices until I've got a pretty good idea as to what the composition is going to be. It's really hard to do because color and shading are for me the most deeply-satisfying parts of my process and I often doubt myself until I start those finishing touches. Here's the good ol' moose after the outline/composition stage:

The colors are sort-of close to the finished product. I use bright, garish colors for this part of the process because they help me identify regions of my illustration and sometimes can help ease the final coloring process when used in conjunction with Select->Same, one of the most rudimentary and useful of all Adobe Illustrator functions (more about that later).

One other thing I should mention that goes along with this part of my process is that I use layers -- a lot of layers -- to keep my images organized. I label each layer with a clear, easy-to-understand name (like "moose"). Not only does this help when you're weeding through a complex vector piece trying to find a certain element, it also allows you to hide, lock, or isolate an area if necessary. Usually all of my layers are locked except for the one I'm working on. Here's an example, with a ton of sublayers hidden in the "monsters-right" layer:

What a hypocrite -- I didn't label "Layer 11." Actually, all it contains is my signature, so it doesn't really matter anyway.

Part 5: The good stuff, the fun stuff, the stuff that takes me forever.

Colors

After all of the basics are complete, I get to work on the details, my favorite part of drawing. I didn't go to art school, but I've taken a few art classes and one of my best and favorite teachers taught me an invaluable lesson: don't focus on one part of the image; move around and keep balance within the work up until the end. I cannot tell you how much that one tiny piece of advice has helped me over the years. When I move past the basic composition/outline stage of my illustrations, I try to build up the rest of the work in unison without focusing too hard on any one region. It not only allows me to see the entire piece come to life, it also helps my psyche deal with the process. Like I mentioned earlier, looking at the beginning phases in which the work looks patch-work and unfinished is a bit demoralizing for me. Maybe I need a therapist.

Back to the process, this is when I firm-up my color choices, usually opting for toned-down versions of my original, super-bright colors. I try not to "spike" any of the CMYK sliders and I usually use a little bit of all three "colors" (cyan, magenta, and yellow) in each of my mixes to help give the blends a more organic feel. I also try to avoid the stock, pre-blended color swatches (even though the CS2 stock swatches are pretty excellent). Of course, there are always exceptions, and in this piece I used a stock orange-yellow from the CS3 stock swatches because it just worked with the final piece. I also keep one of the swatch folder sets that came with CS3 for what I call "key colors," colors I use specifically to isolate regions of an image that I'm going to change with the "Select->Same" function. Here's a snap of the moose's swatch palette (it may look a little off due to the fact that it's RGB now):

Shading

As far as shading goes, there are tons of different techniques and approaches available, but I use a combination of just a few: gradients, transparency/blending mode set to multiply, and masked feathered objects. I think my shading techniques are probably where I diverge most from other vector artists, but I could very well be wrong. After reading this, someone's going to comment and tell me how I could do everything with Gradient Mesh. I really, really dislike Gradient Mesh and I wouldn't recommend it to my worst enemy. Yes, I've used it. Yes, I understand how to use it. It's counter-intuitive, the points used in the mesh have an entirely different feel and set of rules than do the standard AI points, and I really don't like the color blends it creates. If you like to use it, more power to you, but PLEASE, don't try to convince me. I despise the mesh.

First I choose a light source. It doesn't even have to be present in the image, it just needs to provide direction for the light/shading. After that, I usually start by applying a subtle gradient to one of the objects I'm looking to shade. By subtle I mean a low-contrast gradient. High-contrast, extreme gradients usually result in cheap, amateurish images. Of course they're necessary and useful sometimes, but as a general rule, I avoid them. After I apply the gradient, I deepen the dark, shaded area with objects in the shape of the shadow I want to create. I usually use the same fill color that the original object has and then set the transparency/blending mode to multiply. This darkens the area. Then, depending on the type of shade I want (soft or hard edges), I feather the edges of the object using Effect->Stylize->Feather. Sometimes I create two or three of these shade objects to enhance the effect. After this, I copy the original base object, paste it on top, and create a clipping mask. Sound confusing? Here's a step-by-step diagram:

Texture

Sometimes vector images look too clean and digital. Different people have different methods for texturizing or dirtying their images. My preference is to keep every element a vector. Also, I enjoy the challenge of coming up with new methods for approximating texture within the confines of vector-based work. I'm only going to use one example, that of the "fur" I've applied to my creatures in this illustration, to explain how I approach texture.

This is where the blessed "Select->Same" comes into play. I use "Select->Same" A LOT. For this image, I created an art brush shaped like an elongated triangle. I made it 100% black, allowing it to take full advantage of the "tint" function AI allows you to apply to your brushes. by doing this, your brush inherits the color you choose for your stroke. I then draw in my textural elements using the brush tool. I use what I call "key colors" depending on the direction each triangle is facing. I do this because I intend to replace the colors with multiplied gradients to give the textural elements a blended-in look. Here's what this image looked like after I drew in the majority of the garishly-colored texture:

You should notice that each "direction" is given it's own color. First, I select all of the newly-colored triangles them (Object->Expand Appearance), and get rid of the leftover empty paths with the clean-up function (Object -> Path -> Clean Up). Then I select one of the triangles of a specific color, do a Select->Same Fill Color, and apply a predetermined style containing a directional, multiplied gradient to the an entire direction all at once! Basically I create one complete triangle for each direction first and add a new style swatch containing their individual attributes (fill color, gradient direction, transparency, blend mode) to the Styles palette. Here's a peek at my Styles palette:

Part 6: Wrapping Up

Aside from all of the color, shading, and texture business, I also add in details (like the eyes, mouths, etc.) and make any final adjustments I feel are necessary. Originally, I had a baby tree sprouting from the cloud former-moose was holding. I changed this to the mustachioed little creature that presently sits atop the cloud. Also, I changed the background color pretty drastically because I didn't think the monsters "popped" enough against the grey-brown background. In all, I worked for a whole day on just the details to get this where I wanted it. It's the happiest I've been about something I've done in a while. Here's a look at the finished product one last time:

Hope this was somewhat enlightening and only mildly to non-offensive. Once again, this isn't a tutorial and I never intended it to be, so please, please, don't ask me to delve too deep into technical specifics unless you're willing to come to Los Angeles and buy or cook dinner for my wife and me. I'm always happy to help people out, but there's some great information on the Internet that's written by extraordinarily-talented people who have put the time and effort into creating exactly what you're looking for in much greater detail than I have the time or patience for. In fact, here's a phenomenal link with tons of great tutorials (they were even nice enough to include two of my pieces in their "best in practice" section!): http://www.noupe.com/tutorial/vector-illustration-60-illustrator-tutorials-tips-and-best-practices.html

Thanks for stopping by! More of my work here, here , and here.

In all honesty this is the best I've felt about anything I've done in weeks. It's also one of the most complicated vector pieces I've done in a while. If anyone's interested, here's a breakdown of the process.

Prints: chrisleavens.imagekind.com