Almost done!!!

I'm almost done coloring Strip #150!!! In celebration of this momentous event, I have a couple of preview images to tease and tantalize you:

I'm also going to repost all the strips that have led up to this strip, in case you want to review the story. I realize that 4 months is kind of a long time to try to keep a story in your memory. I'm planning on posting #150 on Monday. Until then, enjoy! Strips start below with #141 and move down the page in order.

Teaser #2...

Greeting dear readers of Search and Research. My heartfelt thanks to you for sticking with this strip through the ups and downs of my weird, yearly schedule. Hopefully the rewards are worth the long, dry spells. Here is another teaser image from the upcoming strip #150. Enjoy!

Search and...um...hmmm...

Wow! Three months. I feel like I should blow some virtual dust off of this thing or something. Three months is really too long to not post something, but I've been busy and this big color strip has been pretty complicated to draw and ink and stuff. I've been kind of snatching an hour or two here and there trying to work on it, but it's really slow going that way.

However, I have finished inking this strip! Finally! I still need to color this, and the paper I drew it on won't stand up to physical coloring so I'm going to color it digitally, like the last one. That will take a bit more time, so I'm not sure when it's going to be ready. In the meantime, here is a teaser from strip! Enjoy!

More teasers...

Ok, so maybe the updates weren't as frequent as I had previously envisioned. Sorry about that. Every time that I thought about posting something I got nervous, as if any of the inked images would give too much away about the strip or something. It seems sort of silly now. So, just to prove that I am actually making progress on this strip, I'm posting a panel that I've finished coloring. I've removed the text, but clearly this is one of the characters that appeared in my previous post, now appearing in his inked, and colored final form.

This strip is really too large to color with markers, as I have done in the past, so I'm venturing into the arena of computer coloring. I think that so far it's looking okay. I'm not sure when I'll have it ready to post. Ironically, I've got a couple more strips that are already inked and ready to go after I get done with this one. It seems that inking the regular strip is far less intimidating to me than a super large one. I say that because this color strip sat on my desk, penciled and un-inked, for about a month while holiday visitors and the busyness of my library work kept me from finding the initiative to ink it.

Thanks to those of you who have been following along. Regular viewers are probably aware that my library work gets so busy at the beginning of each semester that I'm not able to find the mental energy to draw this strip once I get home, and thus there is a lag in January and August. I'm going to do my best to not let this lag extend too far into February.

- Eli

Teasers...

Just to let you know that I haven't forgotten about this strip, and to whet you appetites a little bit, I'm posting a couple of teaser images related to the next color strip that I'm working on. Those of you who have been following for a while know that often these color strips take a bit more time than usual, and the fact that I've had art projects related to the Christmas holidays and got my hand bitten by a squirrel (yes, you're reading that right!) haven't helped at all. However, the question remains, what possible relationship could there be between this image: and this image?And, what could either of them have to do with a library? Keep mulling on that and I'll try to post more teasers as this color strip progresses!

eli