Frank's Sketchbook Entry of the Day

I joined friends last night and played bar trivia or pub trivia or more accurately Bob Trivia (as Bob was the host). It was at a local bar and draws a lot of people. I went there early so I could stake out a bigger table (we had 7 people on our team). I got there early enough to get a table (about half were already taken, but it was before any of the table hyenas started circling, around ooking to prey upon weak or lone table defenders) and had time.

I didn't take any significant amount of paper with me. So I grabbed some napkins from a dispenser. (To avoid confusing UK-English readers, napkin in US-English is just a serviette, only less French-y.) They were pretty thin and I had to grab a few just to get one that didn't rip when pulling it from the dispenser. I had to be careful while drawing because the pen easily tore through the paper. The next challenge was what should I draw.

They were playing '90s-era music on the speakers and "Pocket Full of Kryptonite" from The Spin Doctors came on. It put me in the mind of the innumerable times in comic books and animated shows when Superman would find himself face-to-face with a chunk of kryptonite, weakened and almost helpless. But he would summon the strength to move a little across the floor or reach for something or most importantly…narrate!

So that's what I drew, trying not to tear the paper too much. I added the Evil Super-Villain in the corner, laughing triumphantly while shaking his fist. I was thinking it would be Lex Luthor, but decided to have most of him "off-screen," partially for dramatic effect, partially because I didn't have the space, and largely because I didn't want to draw that much. I was adding the text and got to "SENT" and paused as I tried to remember is sentence spelled "sentence" or "sentance". At that moment, two of my teammates showed up and could save me from overthinking myself. I thought about leaving it unfinished, but no...Superman would have the fortitude to finish a word like that.

We had a middle of the road performance at trivia (4th or 5th place, at least 2 questions down from 3rd place) but it was fun. I scanned in the napkin today and then realized that the chunk of kryptonite is kind of hard to identify. It would look better if it glowed. I've done that sort of thing before in Photoshop, but I needed a refresher. My version of Photoshop is old, so I had to look through a bunch of web pages and videos to find something compatible and then eventually realized I didn't need anything fancy, just a layer with an outer glow effect on it. I had one for the kryptonite itself and another layer for the less intense reflected glow. I like how it looks as a very simple, quick drawing on a textured, super-thin bit of paper that tears too easily, with little thought. This it is appropriate as a quick(-ish) drawing for the so-called Sketchbook Entry of the Day.

The full size version of the napkin picture is here.