Welcome back to the House of Cheese newsletter! This is the last of the twice-monthly newsletters; after this one it's monthly, right around the beginning of the month. So, let's get to it!
Concerning Roadkill Puppy...
It's a doodle dump! I currently have a Moleskine and a Leuchtturm sketchbook filled with line art and blackspotting, and I'm going through the process of backfilling them with colored pencils. I like to do these in the morning before my workday starts. That way, my blood pressure is in a good place before Corporate America goes about ruining it. This is from Moleskine green-circle 10.
These Leuchtturm doodles up next had previously been colored using Procreate, but I decided to do them again with pen and pencils. I haven't been spending as much time with Procreate as I have in the past, but I have a few 'problem children' that could benefit from getting some Procreate attention. This is Leuchtturm plain-blue 1 and 2.
Concerning Bud the Fish...
I've been dabbling with creating ambient music lately, just because. A bit of a challenge to create music that wanders around aimlessly like a kid on the playground coming down from a sugar high. Many people consider ambient music a high-brow cousin to elevator music; if wind chimes had a radio station, that is what it would sound like. Fortunately, music is the ultimate PlayDoh of the universe. Don't like the way it looks? Moosh it up and start over! Sound isn't spicy enough? Grab your arpeggiator and go to town! That's what I'm doing here, with this track:
I can't really say it's true ambient music, but it's ambient enough for me. Turns out ambient music is actually fun to make, if you like things that make swooshy sounds and echoes and choirs of angels singing from the bottom of the Grand Canyon and nonsense like that. I have a number of interesting sound-generating apps that are well-suited to ambient music-making, so I'm covered there. In the future I want to get my guitar more involved. I think sampling it while it's making weirdo spaceship noises or whale sounds — and then looping the whole mess — might just be the thing to add a little pizzazz to those ambient jams. Hmmmm... more to come?
Bits and bobs...
As I mentioned last newsletter, I was giving serious consideration to posting doodles and comics in Substack's Notes. I've decided to give it a go, so starting next week I'll post something two or three times a week. Not sure, but I think you need to be a Substack subscriber to view it with the app. It's free, though, so if you're interested, look for my stuff next week (the Notes will post under my name, Dan Byers).
That's all for this month. See you in October, my friends...
Dan