A rare non-cartoon post to tell you what’s happened to American Hell. It hasn’t stopped.
Ever since my drawing tablet died I’ve been producing the cartoons by drawing with my finger on the touchpad of my laptop. Yes that little rectangle of space that’s just over 2 inches wide. For accuracy and (relative) smoothness of line I would magnify a drawing space by 4 then draw a line but keep having to drop back out to the normal 1:1 view to see where my line was going.
When finished drawing I would reduce the picture to 40% of its original, making it smoother as well as the right size for the screen. And doing the words is the same process.
And that’s why you haven’t seen too many cartoons over the last, em, while. Because I rarely find myself with the hours necessary to produce one cartoon. But I’ve kept writing them.
But now, in a matter of days, new hardware is arriving that should return me to not only producing cartoons again but getting back to the more prolific rate it started with.
But.
Things won’t happen immediately. For I’ve bought the tablet to be first used in another project, my painting cycle tour of Ireland. It’s an Android not a drawing tablet, as it’s intended to replace my falling apart laptop as well as let me blog etc. from the road on the trip – but I’ll be able to draw on it.
Or in short, new cartoons are a coming.