Here's a ~5 minute montage of all my Inktober doodles. Generally I tried put a 20-minute time limit on them to counter my tendency to overwork the absolute shit out of everyting, but sometimes that went out the window.

Music: "Sinking Feeling" by Jesse Spillane

Not posting all my inktober stuff because tl;dr: most of it is gonna be crap but I'm super happy with today's so here, have some kinda-Ajin-kinda-SOMA-fanart-kinda stuff.

Day job busy season is over, so I've started doing actualfax work on that Tales of Beefgnawpolis comic I've been making vague noises about for a couple of months.

When it gets underway, I'm going to park it on Tapastic, Pixiv, and here.

1. If you do not uninstall every tablet driver lurking on your machine before you try to install the Ugee drivers, it will not work. Setup will throw its juice box on the floor and cry. 
2. Don't use the CD that comes with the tablet. Go to ugee.net and get the latest drivers there.
3. It has both a VGA and a DVI port. You only need to use one or the other. But it only comes with a VGA cable, so be advised.
4. While you're out getting a DVI cable or an adapter because who the fuck even has a VGA port on their video card these days, pick up a longer USB cable.
5. Works great in MediBang Paint Pro, Clip Studio Paint, and Photoshop. Some brushes behave weirdly in SAI but I don't really use SAI much these days anyway so that's acceptable. Haven't tried it in Krita, Illustrator, or some other stuff yet.
6. Some folks have reported it working fine in SAI? Maybe there's something I need to tweak?
7. Probably 99% of the problems I've had with marks not appearing where I expected them to is just from me looking at the thing at a weird angle. note to self: stop doing that.
8. "Beefgnaw, why didn't you get a Cintiq" because I am not made out of fucking money

• Decide at the beginning of day job busy season that I am going to spend my bonus on a fancy display tablet this year (not a Cintiq because I don't get that much bonus, but an Ugee was totally in range)
• Get the bonus. Order the thing.
• Thing arrives yesterday, which happened to be my birthday. Hells yes.
• ...except I couldn't do shit with it at work and would have to wait until I got it home.
• ffffff
• okay, fine. Get thing home. Unbox thing. Thing includes a screen protector that comes in a big envelope with lots of primo Engrish on it. Laugh.
• Great, let's hook the thing up and... shit, the pens are rechargeable. Which means they have to charge before I can use them.
• ffffffffffffffffffff
• Put a pen on the charger. go to bed.
• Wake up at butt o'clock in the morning ready to hook thing up and start drawing some shit on it.
• Thing has both DVI and VGA ports on it, which is great. 
• ...except it only comes with a VGA cable and my video card only has HDMI and DVI ports.
• And I have no adapters.
• FUCK
• Briefly consider running to Wal-Mart at butt-thirty in the morning for cable or adapter.
• Decide nothing is worth running to a smallish-town-Texas Wal-Mart at butt-thirty in the morning for, not even the precious cable to make my tablet go. Besides, by the time I get back and get it hooked up, I'd have to start getting ready for work.
• Fart around on intarwebs until time to go to work
• Go to bank
• Go to Office Max
• Get cable
• Go to work
• Hope to God I can get out of here at a reasonable hour tonight so I can FINALLY ENJOY MY DAMN PRESENT

Decided to finally quit lurking the Character Design Challenge and participate this month. This month's theme: Heavy Metal. 

Here, then, is an old-school headbanger complete with '80s Metal Hair. 

http://www.newgrounds.com/art/view/alexbeefgnaw/metal-dude

Dr. Ph. Martin's Bombay inks and Synchromatic watercolors, Canson XL watercolor paper, final tweaking in Clip Studio Paint. 

Band names on patches: Sküll, [undecipherable tangle that might look like words if you squint], Gratüitöüs Ümlaüt, Fungal Misery, Band, and Death. All of which I am reasonably sure there is some band somewhere actually named.

Good idea: doing rough sketch in actual pencil on actual paper, scanning, doing final sketch in Clip Studio Paint or MediBang, printing, throwing on light table, and tracing that shit so I can finish it off traditional. Goodbye forever, Fear of Fucking Up My Lineart! Don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.

Bad idea: tracing this particular piece with Copics. Seemed like a good idea at the time. It wasn't. Might work with another piece in the future. Not this one.

Oh well. All I have to do is stretch another piece of watercolor paper and trace it again. 

I was just sick and then busy. Here's a new one, in which I work on one of my weakest points: fabric.

Frenden's brushes, what I use about 99% of the time in Clip

My mats studies worksheets, which you may find helpful

Music: "Sinking Feeling" by Jesse Spillane

ACT I

Body: hey bro sorry about the chest cold followed immediately by terrible allergy shit

Me: So we're done being sick for a while, then. Right?

Body: um

Me: what the entire damn hell do you mean "um"

Body: we sorta brought your stepdad's stomach bug home

Me: GODDAMMIT

Body: It's just a little one! You'll feel mostly OK. Other than the barfing, anyway. There wasn't anything you particularly wanted to eat tonight, was there?

Me: Fuck you.

ACT II

Stomach: gonna hurl

Me: Again? Ugh, fine. *gets up* *sits on bathroom floor* *waits*

[half an hour later, nothing has happened]

Me: FFS, if you're going to do the thing, DO THE THING.

Stomach: lol I was just fuckin w/you bro

ACT III

Stomach: gonna hurl

Me: Are you serious this time?

Stomach: yep

Me: Fine. *gets up* *sits on bathroom floor* *waits*

[half an hour later, nothing has happened]

Me: COME ON

Stomach: ahahahahaha I can't believe you fell for it again ok no I'm cool now, really

Pros: 

• learn a thing
• takes maybe 20 minutes a day
• footage squashes down into about a 5 minute video I can throw on the youtubes because I am a lazy bastard who hasn't put up an art video since like September

Cons:

• ???

Anyway, here's the first two. And here are some worksheets I made for this, if y'all would find such a thing helpful.