As the Grass Grows – A Webcomic by Brad Samuelson

Hi, and welcome to AsTheGrassGrows.com!

This site will be the home of a weekly (hopefully more than that sooner than later) comic strip starring Gnorm and Jack. If you’re new to the world of Gnorm, he’s just your every day average yard gnome, trying to keep his home safe from the dangerous world of squirrels and bird poop.

You may have seen the previous version of this strip when it was called “Gnorm the Gnome” and it was appearing on Oddnik.com. So why the change? Well, I felt that the format of Oddnik was better suited for long form comics and I wanted to rededicate myself to these characters. I also wanted to change the style of the artwork a bit. So I relaunched the strip with a new title and a new home, but you can still get here from Oddnik. I’m still working on comics at Oddnik and am by no means forgetting about them. I just wanted to have a home here for Gnorm and Jack.

Another thing I will be doing here is selling the original artwork from the strips, so look for that soon.

So thanks for checking out the site and be sure to come back every monday for a new installment of As the Grass Grows.

-Brad

We’ll be at the Baltimore Comicon on the 27th and 28th of Sept. We’ll have a table in Artist’s Alley, so if you’re at the show, stop by and say hi.

I’ve heard good things about the show even though I’ve never been there before (which is lame considering I’ve been living or working in or around Baltimore for a while now). There are a lot of people that I’m looking forward to seeing and just being at a convention for the first time in a long while should be fun.

I don’t really have any Gnorm merchandise to sell as of yet, but I’ll be doing free sketches, so stop by our table if you’re interested.

Along with my Saddle Tramp Press/Oddnik partners, Dave and Jason, a couple of other friends of mine will be hanging out at the table. Sean O’Connor, a web designer and illustrator will be there with some new really cool stickers (and I’m sure he can be persuaded to do some sketches as well). Also, Ben Woods, another friend of mine, will be there with his novel The Developers.

Should be a lot of fun.

-Brad

Finally have some time after a crazy weekend to write about the Baltimore Comicon. Despite the monsoon, it was a really good time. Big thanks to everyone who stopped by and graciously accepted my flyer. I also did a bunch of sketches – the most interesting of which was the kid who asked for a “cheese horse”. I half expected that to be some obscure anime character or something, but he seemed pretty happy with my literal interpretation of a horse made of cheese.

I picked up a Sheldon book from Dave Kellet with a sweet sketch in it, so that was pretty cool.

Also, Sean made a really funny, and potentially very helpful little comic called How To Fight an Octopus. Because you never know when you might need to draw upon that knowledge. He’s talking about making a series of “How To” books, so I’ll keep you posted on that.

Next week’s strip will launch into the first storyline for Gnorm and Jack, so be sure to check it out.

-Brad

At As the Grass Grows, we try to cultivate as diverse a readership as we can. To that end, I give you Stella, the first non-human fan of the strip:

Thanks for sending that Ben.

Every now and then it’s good to take a step back from the grind and do something outside of your obligations. That’s an easy thing to forget and with all the stuff I have going on in my life, it was nice to take a little time and just draw. It started off as a doodle, which led to a completed sketch and then I thought it would be cool to finish it and offer it as a desktop in the Extras section of the site. I know it sounds weird since it’s not all that different from what I normally draw in the strip, but it’s different when you sketch the first thing that comes to your mind as opposed to coming up with a gag or storyline and then drawing it. It’s a nice way to recharge the battery. Hope you like it:

OK, so it’s not that big, but starting next week (that’s 2/16, not 2/9) I’ll be posting a whopping 2 strips a week as an experiment to see if I can keep up the schedule. So you’ll get the normal As The Grass Grows strip on Monday and then an additional bonus strip on Thursday. That’s right folks, you get 2 strips for the price of none. It’s insane, I know, but we’ll see how it goes.

Also, I’ve started to actually post on twitter, so you can follow my tweets here.

As always, thanks for reading.
-Brad

I don’t know why it seems more official now that the day is here, but it does. I guess doing more than one strip a week is a big step in the life of a web comic. Actually, now that I’ve gotten into the groove of it, it doesn’t seem as scary as it did when I first decided to do it. I think I’m just getting more comfortable with the characters and writing in general.

Anyway, thanks for checking in and if you like it, tell your friends. If you think it sucks, you could probably tell your friends that too. And the two of you could look at it together and laugh at how much you hate it. As long as you’re laughing, that’s cool with me.

-Brad

I’ve had this new site design in mind for a while but have just been putting it off. However, since Mindfaucet released the newest version of ComicPress, I figured that would be a good time to make some changes. If you notice anything that looks screwy (been watching too much Bugs Bunny with my son) I’d greatly appreciate it if you let me know.

Thanks,
Brad

So you don’t believe in gnomes, huh? Well, here’s proof!

Obviously that’s a real gnome… there’s no possibility that it could be just a little guy in a pointy hat. Everyone knows that little people don’t wear pointy hats unless they’re gnomes… come on.

A friend of mine just turned me on to that story and I couldn’t resist.

-Brad

I’m going to be hanging out at the CityLit Festival in Baltimore tomorrow (4/18) giving out free sketches. I’ll be there with a couple friends of mine, Ben Woods and Sean O’Connor. If you’re in Baltimore and are looking for something to do you should come check it out.