I just got back from seeing “Lincoln,” a movie about the wacky hijinks that ensue when a skinny, big-eared guy from Illinois is elected to his second term as President. Great movie, even though I had to sit in the front row and weave my craned neck in the air in order to soak in all the historical goodness.

Tonight in class I started in on my penciling for the final product. And I think I’ve decided that I’d rather do most of my penciling on the computer; it’s much easier to revise, and less carpal tunnel-y. However, I still want to ink by hand. So once I’ve “penciled” on the computer, I can print it out and then use my handy LightPad to ink.

To that end, I’ve ordered and fallen in love with yet another pen. This one is a disposable brush pen that is very forgiving of my shaky paw. Here’s an example:

Hey look, it’s my impulse purchase of the week! Looking ahead to my finished comic book, I decided I wanted to do pencil art which I then trace with ink. That’s where this very evenly lit LED panel, the Artograph LightPad, comes in. As you can see here, my pencil drawing shows up very well through a thick piece of bristol paper.

Back in the stone ages, people might use a warm, bulky box with a fluorescent bulb for this purpose, but this thing stays cool to the touch and is about as thick as a modern laptop. It even comes with a suede carrying case.

Clearly I’m swamped with work while awaiting election results!

One of our anchors is recording “Google Hangouts” (video chats) with a voter from every state in the Union. Since my only job was to make sure they were recorded OK, I spent most of my time trying to caricature each person. If you see yourself here, I truly apologize!