My OIC (Officer-In-Charge, basically my boss) in Kosovo was a cowgirl. She and her husband owned a ranch and we even bought a side of beef from them (longhorn, very lean and delicious). She didn't look like this though.
After a long day of ranching, you need to have a plan for getting the baby to sleep.
2025-08-18 16:00:07 +0000 UTC
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Today, an Empires project!
I have been making very, very slow (but steady) progress on my Empires project, my military science-fiction action-adventure series. It is a reboot of a very, very old project I experimented with in the 1990's. Even though it has been a long time since I originally worked on it, it has actually always been my #1 project that I really wanted to make my signature piece.
One of the things I have been doing is a re-design of one of my spaceships, th...
2025-08-15 16:00:19 +0000 UTC View Post
An opportunity I take every so often to thank my wonderful supporters. You are modern day "Patrons of the Arts" and I appreciate you.
I'm going to try to introduce a few more new things over the course of the year (such that remains). I started doing the Star Wars Fanart stuff a few months ago and I enjoy it, so I am hoping to do more things like that, but not just with Star Wars. John Bandow...
2025-08-13 17:00:11 +0000 UTC View Post
Our brigade Sergeant-Major at Camp Bondsteel was grumpy and looked like a thumb. He loosened up over time and became okay, though.
Not everyone in our Brigade command was that chill, though.
Sometimes it set everyone on edge, and there was stress.
2025-08-11 16:00:05 +0000 UTC
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I am way, waaayyy ahead of schedule on BOHICA Blues (how often does that happen?) and I have already posted everything through the end of August. I could keep making comics but I would end up so far ahead of schedule here that the lag time before member sneak peeks and posted publication would be ridiculously ahead of schedule... or I could post something else entirely!
So I am sharing some more Star Wars fan art of the Jedi characters in my story over at 2025-08-06 16:00:09 +0000 UTC View Post
Before entering a secret discussion area called a "SCIF" (pronounced as "skif"), people had to go through an access control point and drop off their phones. Most people do not bother to silence their phones, so at any given moment the poor sap that got assigned to access control point security duty was living through a non stop concert of alarms, message pings, and other tones.
It made as much sense...
This one was slightly ambitious; I had to do it in two different phases. Above is the original pencil sketch I did for the foreground.
The ink-and-pencil overlay part...
..and the cleaned-up version. At this point, I had to start working on the background portion.
2025-07-30 16:00:09 +0000 UTC
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Our Sergeant-Major in Kosovo looked like a grumpy thumb. I wonder what his parents were like?
Oh, that explains a lot.
I can see this, too.
The family dog tried to remain aloof. Or is it... "Awoof"?
Until later...
2025-07-28 16:00:05 +0000 UTC View Post
An initial image of pencil sketch on a full sheet, normally used for a 4-panel comic. This time I just use the top half. If making a 2-panel comic I typically just use the top half of a 4-panel page.
The pencil-ink hybrid, that "intermediate" phase that frequently incorporates a lot of change. Not so much this time, though, although I did make a nice background mess for me to clean up.
2025-07-23 15:55:10 +0000 UTC
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No! Not the banjo drone! Bad things happen when the banjo plays!
Especially when you hear a banjo playing in the deep, dark woods. Who knows what could go awry?
Even the donkey is alarmed at that.
2025-07-21 16:00:19 +0000 UTC
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If you need to discuss secret stuff, you go to an area called a "SCIF" (pronounced "skif"). SCIF stands for Secret Compartmentalized Information Facility, and it is an area that is set aside specifically for this purpose.
The existence of SCIFs is not secret; I am not giving anything away here. They are discussed in spy movies and TV dramas, you can look them up on Wikipedia. The fact that SCIFs exist can be talked about, it's just that what you say in the SCIF, stays in the SCIF.
So, I have a one-panel comic, and I have to cut away part of it because it gives away too much information about the comic. But here we are! A bit late because I have been super busy, and also I have not yet returned to my regular day job yet and frankly I have lost track of what day it is.
So a lot of overlapping lines and artwork, giving me a lot to clean up this time. You can see how the pencils ...
Poor Bert. He should have that checked.
Even people in outer SPAAAAAAACCCEE are looking at you weird.
Of course, people in space know that when you stare at the lizard critter, the lizard critter stares back at you.
2025-07-14 16:00:01 +0000 UTC
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Since I still have some KFOR humor stocked up, I am going to continue coasting on that. In this one, I am developing a scene that took place at a Mexican restaurant in Prishtina called "Commandante Marcos", which became a favorite of many of us over there.
As usual, I enjoy doing comics set in very different, more dynamic settings since it gives me an opportunity to draw things a little different fro...
She's playing... for you.
It starts out by sounding like "fun"...
But it ends up.. awkward.
But what a cute little baby!
Today I can share whole-page WIPs because there's nothing visual that gives away the punchline. Here, Juni and Emma emerge from the gym at Camp Bondsteel gym. The gym really was pretty well fitted-out with a lot of stuff, and was always crowded.
Here it is showed with the underlying pencil work still intact. I kind alike these WIP phases; I feel like they show how different the initial sketch was fr...
I have a little 45-pound dog, but by the amount of poops in the backyard, I think I actually have an Alaskan sled dog team stowed away on my property somewhere.
Yeah, you know, sled dogs!
It might be worth it to live in Alaska just so I can have a sled dog team.
Yeah, be, like... a peg pir...
A quick wrap-up to the week (a bit late I admit) but another Star Wars fanart entry for a Jedi in the collaborative story I am part of. This Jedi is a Nelvaanian, a race of blue-furred canine-type aliens introduced over halfway through the animated "Clone Wars" arc.
In this image, the Jedi is named "Avar", and he was in his late teens when he was taken by slavers on Orvax. Nelvaan was being in...
2025-06-27 18:05:36 +0000 UTC View Post
Okay, just thought I'd throw out something different... a meme! I sometimes make memes. Not altogether good ones, perhaps, but there they are. I recently made a joke to one of my buddies as we were stuck at Ft. Hood for redeployment and demobilization that "clean socks are just an infantry man's harem", so I decided to put it to (digital) paper.
Until next time!
2025-06-25 12:00:05 +0000 UTC View Post
Get back to business. Guess what class we had when this doodle was done!?
Probably some Sergeant Major came up with the edict.
This is Beetle Bailey as a crusty 20-year+ Sergeant Major, my version of a comic done by Fort Familyroom over at Miltoons.
"Two MUTA-6's can eliminate a MUTA-4"
&nb...
2025-06-23 16:00:04 +0000 UTC View Post
Another in the "phone picture/scanned originals" series! This time, I have to cut it down to one single panel, because all the other panels would give away too much.
This was also the darkest part of the photographed original pencil sketch, so it has some of the most dramatic change in its visual representation. The setting is obviously in the chow serving line, since chow is an important daily touc...
Um, gosh, I'm flattered, but...
Next thing you know it's a shotgun marriage!
No one escapes their fate!
At least they have cute little alien doggies!
I did not have access to a scanner; I had to find another means to get a drawn image into my computer. So what did I do? I took a picture with my phone and then uploaded it to my computer! And frankly, it looked awful, but I made do because I had no other choice.
It worked, well enough at least. I started applying the digital ink as soon as possible while I still l had the idea visualized in m...
2025-06-11 23:03:24 +0000 UTC View Post
I just don't know where some of this crap comes from. I really don't.
Even the squirrel thinks that's, like, way out there, man. You could even say it's...nuts!
Probably proves I'll do anything to mine "Likes"
2025-06-09 16:00:05 +0000 UTC
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So the "Vian and Jerec" picture is finally done. Above: the final version of Vian with shading and highlights.
And the final version of Jerec.
I put them together on a simple foreground "stand" so I could put a background behind them. The background I used was a generic wallpaper made some someone else; I ...
In the Star Wars collaborative story I am participating in over at Spacebattles, I have a character named Jerec Syfardos, who is the son of a Jedi Ace Pilot named Irena Syfardos. Jerec has a girlfriend named Vian Pathwalker, which is actually another writer's character. I usually don't like to draw other peoples' characters because I feel self-conscious about getting them to "look right", but in this case the writer has already hired another artist to create a character reference sheet, which...
2025-06-04 16:00:07 +0000 UTC View Post
If America has Burger King, does Russia have Burger Czar?
There's at least one volunteer willing to do a taste test of Burger Czar.
Die for your Czar!
And when in Russia, watch out for bears.
U...
2025-06-02 16:00:07 +0000 UTC View Post
Something going on here... let's see what's up!
Here is the the mix of underlying pencils and overlying inks, before things get cleaned up. I already had to massively reposition Juni's nose because I drew it too high up on her face.
Now things are much cleaner and I have the opportunity to star closing left...
Umm, Kermit, is there something you ought to be telling us...?
I have a feeling there's going to be a story behind this.
Bork, bork, indeed. Bork ribs?
I think the story behind it is a little... frigh...
In the story that I am participating in over at Spacebattles.com, it is some 40+ years after the Battle of Yavin, which means that it is maybe 60 or so years after the initial Blockade of Naboo that kicked off the adventures. The government I write is based in Naboo, where the elected constitutional monarch is the sovereign of a large Republic faction spanning several sectors. They have their own fighter, the iconic Naboo N-seri...
2025-05-23 16:00:15 +0000 UTC View Post