Hey, friends! Here are some thoughts on using planes in your compositions.

It's been a wild couple of weeks, but let's get back to some ongoing projects. First, another installment of the Manga Reading Log, featuring Satoru Noda's "Golden Kamuy" and Hirohiko Araki's "Jojo's Bizarre Adventure." Dino Sanctuary will be next!

Tiny, colorful baby scallops — a total cuteness overload in one dish! You might think, “This person posts the same creature every year!” But honestly, seeing the same life return year after year is something truly wonderful𓂃🫧‪

Going to be pretty quiet the next couple of weeks, for mysterious reasons to be revealed later. In the meantime, here's last week's sketchboard.co drawing session at the Madrone Art Bar, with model Amina... (1/2)

Hey, thanks for buying my art. Telling a friend about it. Asking for it at a library. Requesting me to come speak about it. Reskeeting and boosting. I love what I do, and I get to keep doing it because of all of you who care. You’ve kept me rooted.

Posting this again to remind you you dont have to be an amazing artist to draw comics!

It finally happened! I had a comment (from @titanicmonarch.bsky.social ) which I could plausibly interpret as a request for a higher-resolution version of my Manga Reading Log notes. Come with me on a journey into the abyss of manga analysis! (1/6)

Manga reading log part five! A quick followup on Togashi's "Hunter x Hunter" and then it's on to a randomly selected volume of Masashi Kishimoto's "Naruto". Find out why "boof" panels are almost always square!

They've been on the backburner, but I haven't forgotten about my dinosaur studies. When there are no animatronics in town, I can always draw my toy collection...

I promised, and I delivered! It's been a heavy week, so this week's figure drawing tips are all about butts... (1/3)

Friday's rally at the Fruitvale BART station in Oakland. I expect there'll be more to document in the coming days.

Quick question: I've been sticking with obsolete Macs so I can keep running non-awful versions of Photoshop, but at some point I'll have to replace my computer with something less than a decade old. Comics and illustration peeps, any recommendations for a Photoshop replacement? Is Affinity good?

I was going to make my next round of drawing tips about faces, but I might swerve and do one on butts instead.

From Tuesday's "Walkout" rally at San Francisco's Civic Center. I didn't attempt to document the subsequent march up Market Street, because my sketching powers wane after sundown. Next up, maybe Friday in Oakland?

Meanwhile, still working my way through this huge stack of library manga. This time, the Manga Reading log scrutinizes Eiichiro Oda's "One Piece" and glances at Yoshihiro Togashi's "Hunter x Hunter". Next up, "Naruto"!

Inhabitants of the Paleozoic 🦐🐟🦎

Anyways, that's seven of these figure drawing tip sheets done now. (Here are the title pages from the first six.) I don't have a practical purpose for doing this, but it's nice to be doing tutorials again without worrying about whether there's an audience for it.

Also from Sunday: Checking out the SF Botanical Garden with the "Karl the Fog" nature journaling group. I think I have panel composition on the brain after doing all that manga study!

From Sunday, here's the tail end of the "Claude Forever" memorial celebrating @calacademy.bsky.social 's beloved white alligator. The costume contest was very sweet.

Resuming the occasional series of figure drawing tips, here's my secret technique for quick-sketching full figures... (1/3)

For some reason there's a lot of chitchat among the people I'm following today about weird conspiracy theories. I'll confess that I've been converted to the school of "Purple isn't a real color," which is a hard one to explain to innocent bystanders.

An amazing life story! I learned about Claudette Colvin when I was illustrating a comic about her, and I ended up reading a fair bit about her for research. A brave soul indeed.

Here's a second round of protest sketching from this past weekend, with a small but spirited march from SF's Ferry Building to Civic Center.

A warmup round of protest sketching from the regular Saturday "Tesla Takedown" on Van Ness Ave. in San Francisco. There's another thing scheduled on Sunday at the Ferry Building, so my sketchbook and I will see you there!

Manga Reading Log part 3! This time we dive deep into visual storytelling, with a color-coded analysis of action scene layouts in "My Hero Academia." Plus how the hero gradually evolved into a human Muppet.

Kinda wild to think that I bailed on Twitter way back when the new owner changed the site's icon to a picture of a dog, and it gave me a creepy "Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch" vibe. "Does this remind me of a Philip K. Dick novel?" turned out to a good early-warning system.

The Manga Reading Log continues. This time I'm thinking about figure poses and composition in Kohta Hirano's "Hellsing" (1997) and Kohei Horikoshi's "My Hero Academia" (circa 2014-2015).

As previously foreshadowed, I'm spending the weekend reading a big stack of manga and taking notes. To start with, here are a bunch of notes on figure drawing, posing, and panel composition from Akira Toriyama's "Dragon Ball."

Went to a museum and they got these really pretty sculpture of the dinosaurs found in Thailand, so I drew them ;w; #berensart2026 #paleoart

While I'm laid up, I'm catching up on reading and note-taking. Here's what I jotted down from chapters 2-4 of @markwitton.bsky.social's "King Tyrant" before I had to take it back to the library.

Been laid up with the snuffles since New Year's. But I need to hurry up and get better, just in case I have any protest rallies to document...

I have one more day with markwitton.bsky.social's "King Tyrant" before it's due back at the library. (Can't renew it because there's a waiting list.) So today's going to be devoted to tyrannosaur immersion and note-taking! Y'all take care of the rest of the world for me.

One last round of life-sized dinosaur drawing for 2025! I journeyed over to Pleasanton to check out "Jurassic Quest"... (1/4)

We finally saw the "Art of Manga" exhibit at the De Young museum. I have some thoughts, and I gave myself homework for the new year.

There may be one final burst of life-sized dinosaur sketching tomorrow to complete the 2025 spree. Fingers crossed!

A final batch of figure drawing tips for 2025. Following up on hands, we investigate what happens when we stick 'em in our pockets... (1/3)

Merry Christmas and happy holidays! I tidied up this little thumbnail (of approximately 100 × 60 mm). It's all I could manage for now. 🥲

"Isn't it a reverse Christmas movie? Three wise men follow a star that comes from the pit, and spread the bad news that humanity can't be saved from original sin." "So 'Quatermass' was a good programming choice! What about 'Hot Fuzz,' though?" "I think that's more of an Easter story."

CASUAL REMINDER AS MORE JAPANESE FANARTISTS APPEAR HERE— Do not quote repost! Just repost art you like and then make a separate post squeeing about whatever art you like. Quotes are considered rude and can get you blocked or just put someone off a platform.

Happy holidays, and best wishes for the new year from me and Julie!

Finished updating all the images on my "Gundam ZZ" production history page, for prettier display on phones and high-resolution screens. Plus a few extra additions... www.gundamunofficial.com/production/g...

Coming up on Boxing Day: @zeonicscans.bsky.social and I join the @giantrobotfm.bsky.social crew to jawbone about Char's Counterattack novelizations. Merry Gabool Bergson Type-2, everybody!

A quick account of our silly weekend dealing with a two-day power outage here in San Francisco.

Save the date for a day of memories, music, and mementos honoring the life and legacy of Claude, San Francisco’s beloved albino alligator. Join us for a free community celebration on Jan. 18 11am-1pm in Golden Gate Park, or worldwide via livestream. bit.ly/ClaudeForever

Figure drawing tips, round five. This one's all about hands, and why they're impossible to quick-sketch in detail... (1/3)

Working on another people-drawing tutorial. This one's about quick-sketching hands; the first 50% is about why that's actually not possible, and the second 50% is about what I do instead.

This is a pretty minor issue in cosmic terms, but as a freelance artist, you're sometimes dealing with clients who are incapable of articulating what they want or engaging in back-and-forth discussion. Having them spam you with slop and expect you to slavishly replicate it is a workaround, I guess.

Whew, finished this year's holiday card! It's a bit crowded, so I had to leave out the Yule Cat and the Ukrainian tinsel spider. Those of you on our physical and digital mailing lists should be receiving these over the next couple of weeks... :-)

Thanks to @ozkai.bsky.social, we now have scans of the second "Gundam ZZ" laser disc memorial box, so I've translated a couple of the staff interviews from the booklet... www.gundamunofficial.com/production/g...

Another round of figure drawing tips! This time, we're gonna talk about shoes. But first, another way of thinking about proportions of clothed human people... (1/3)