I’ve been trying out a beautiful Japanese brush for some inkwork these last few days. The resulting linework is not in the comic yet, as I want to tame it a little better than I have thus far (…brushwork can be tricky to control with ink).

Anyway, as I’m drawing with the brush today, my nose starts itching. Absent-mindedly, I go up to scratch it…without even thinking of the brush still in that drawing hand.

Three-inch swipe of India Ink across my forehead.

…A proud moment.

Gramp’s litte outburst today got some great e-mail responses — thank you for those. It’s one of those phrases that fits into the “non-sequitorial bon mot” category. Or, to put it better: “Weird outbursts that are funny just for sheer randomness.”

Thus far, I think Arthur has my favorite weird outburst in this lemony exclamation.

Heads up, original art collectors: The auction for the cover art is almost done. Just a day or so more to get in your bid!

This is the original art for the cover of the fourth Sheldon book, “A Blizzard of Lizards.” It’s drawn in lightfast, archival inks on heavy, acid-free, Bristol vellum stock. The cardstock itself measures 11″ x 14″, while the drawn image is roughly 10″ x 10″.

The auction also includes a bonus concept sketch of the cover…created with pencil on a separate piece of non-archival artist’s paper.

Head on over: Time is almost up!

Whoa! I just noticed there are only five copies left of the “Pure Ducky Goodness” Artist Edition over at the the Sheldon Store!

Included in these last five copies is the much-desired #250, which features the patented super-mega-awesome-sketch-9000. Every Artist Edition sketch is awesome, but #250 always is super-mega-awesome-9000.

If you’re just starting your Sheldon collection, a particularly good option is to go for the Four Pack, including an Artist Edition.

Your sample year-end reviews at a corporation always fall along the lines of “Great job landing the Johnson account,” “Increased after-tax earnings by 12%.”

I’d love to see that Societe Generale end-of-year review: “Sorta maybe kinda lost 7 billion dollars. But is *totally* gonna make up for it next year. Totally promises to work weekends and stuff.”

I had a great night of gameplay tonight, trying out the German boardgame “Settlers of Catan” for the first time. Jorge, Amy, and Kazu took my wife and I through the gameplay, and it lasted long, long into the night. What a great game: I highly recommend it, and will be picking up my own copy, post haste.

The only reason I mention it is that Sunday’s strip hadn’t been put up on the server before venturing over to Jorge’s house — whoops — so it’s going live a little later than normal. My apologies for the late-night update. 🙂

Also, I have to give a doff of the cap for today’s strip to my friend Joey Aucoin. The concept for today’s strip is an ol’ chestnut that I’ve laughed at for years with Joey. He’s honed it into a much finer bit than I could ever express… but I wanted to draw it up for him as a late birthday gift.

Today must be my day to recommend good cartooning. I had some spare time this morning to catch up on some reading, and it’s put me in the mood to share great work you may not have seen.

So here’s a recommendation that Philadelphians (and a whole host of non-Philadelphians!) are sure to love: “Phables.”

Created weekly by my very good friend Brad Guigar, each installment of “Phables” is a wonderfullly drawn and intimately told tale of Philadelphia, with expansive, beautiful linework and heartwarming tales that earned it a nomination for cartooning’s Eisner Award. I’ve never lived in Philly, myself, and I love it. I know you will, too.

Here’s one of many great ones: Look at that linework!

At last year’s San Diego Comic-Con, I had the pleasure of meeting the immensely kind Kaja Foglio, who is part of the husband-and-wife team behind Girl Genius. After hitting it off and chatting for a bit, Kaja and I did a little swap: She getting the “Sheldon” books, and I getting the “Girl Genius” books. And I can tell you right now, I got the better part of the bargain: “Girl Genius” is a thoroughly wonderful story.

The Foglios describe it as “…gaslamp fantasy with adventure, romance and mad science.” It’s set in a (alternate-history) steam-powered, Industrial-Age Europe, where unique individuals have super-human abilities with technology and invention. These “sparks”, as they’re called, variously employ their abilities for good and evil… resulting in grand tales of conflict and heroism.

It’s a great series of books, with particularly beautiful establishing shots and backgrounds. (The kind you look at for ten minutes, soaking up all the detail.) If you haven’t read it before, dive on in online.

Aside from the occasional Arthur-created rhyme (which is one of my favorite strips of all time)… it’s worth mentioning that Sheldon and Gramp once dipped into a little rhyming themselves:

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7.

So far, so good! The new forum seems to be humming along pretty well, and we’re slowlly revising or fixing hiccups as they occur:

1.) The color scheme has happily been revised to black type on a blue-gray background, and the font size has been bumped up — so the whole thing is much easier on the eyes.

2.) The forum’s been enabled so that any registered Sheldonista can start a new topic of discussion. (Ha! My bad: I had that feature turned off!)

3.) Testing out the first poll seemed to go well. We have around 1,500 people chiming in so far.

4.) New users may notice that when you go to sign up for the forum, the signup process takes you through the “Sheldon-by-Email” signup. Not to worry: That’s a hiccup that’s soon to be fixed. In the meantime, go ahead and sign up via that route, then e-mail me *or* follow these three steps to avoid geting that daily e-mail:

— Sign up here.

— Click the confirmation e-mail sent to your inbox.

— Once you’re confirmed and signed in, go here to remove the Sheldon-by-Email deliveries.

My apologies for that wrinkle in the meantime. And my thanks to Mr. K at Dumbrella Hosting, who’s been hard at work answering reader requests as they pop up… and who’s been getting the whole forum system to run so smoothly!