Not sure where this came from. Just kind of started throwing down some shapes. I do need to sketch more action scenes; most of what I draw is passive/static.

In other news I will be at the Origins Game Fair this year. If you’re an avid reader of my blog you know last year wasn’t very good at Origins, and I wasn’t planning on attending it this year after, but after attending Gem City Comic Con I really had the urge to get back to Origins. Origins was my first convention table ever, so there’s a bit of nostalgia and I feel like it just wouldn’t be the same if I skipped it. It’s also in town so there’s not hotel/travel expenses and I happened to have the money in my art account to cover the table a month or so ago, so I said what the hell. I also have a few new prints I think will sell well and a few different sizes I’m experimenting with. But really I’m going because I love seeing the other artists I’ve come to consider friends and I can’t pass up the only chance I’ll have this year to hang with them.

OK, back to work.

Well, I wanted to get some sketching done this morning but ran into problems. I was going to practice drawing some stills from Dexter season five, but OS X Lion does not like grabbing screenshots of DVDs. So I finally found a solution, but now I’m out of sketching time and must finish a freelance piece.

So I thought I’d post pictures of my angled little stand I made for my Wacom tablet. I posted about it before but I didn’t show the guts of it. Just a couple hasps screwed to my desk, with the other part attached to the back of some masonite. I use a brush to keep the hasps connected and the stand from moving when in use. Two doorstops are also attached to the back of the masonite to give me a good angle for my tablet when drawing. When I’m not drawing I take the brush out, sit my tablet in it’s sacred spot, sit the masonite on the floor and have a typical desk layout. There are two thumbscrews that support the tablet and keep it from falling off the masonite. It’s worked out well for me over the last so many months (time’s been flying so I have no idea how long it’s been since I put this together).

This week I’ve been working on a piece that is way out of my comfort zone. This is a good thing, but also very scary and at times frustrating. I do like to think I can draw anything, but I’m certainly more of a character artist than anything else. I’ve taken to look at a few other artists’ work who I admire very much, who are at the top of the illustration field, while painting to compare and regularly ask how to get my work to be at their level and how to get the looks or effects that I enjoy the most in their art. This can be highly depressing and frustrating for me. I can easily get to the point where I wonder if it’s all worth it, or if I’m wasting my time because I’ll never be (or feel I’ll never be) as good as the artists who are making a living from drawing and painting. I had an episode of that, we’ll call it the poo poo head syndrome, this week. Things were not coming out how I wanted, how I had it pictured in my head, and I just wondered if I’m pursuing the wrong course in my life and not accepting that this may be the wrong path for me. It’s easy to say that obviously there must be something lacking in my work (I always keep this in mind because I always want to get better and I know there’s vast room for improvement in my work), but to meet constant resistance while you’re improving and always pushing your work to get better can be frustrating to the extreme. And that’s when the poo poo head syndrome can latch it’s dirty tentacles into my brain.

Anyway, I took a break, went to the park for a jog and some time with nature (I’ve been doing this a lot this spring and highly recommend time with nature), and I felt better and more accepting of the fact that I’m doing the best I can. And while I may not have large companies knocking down my door to hire me, contract or full time, I’m doing the best I can, and I can definitely see improvement over time. That may sound a bit Stuart Smalley, but it’s the truth and if I can’t be happy with the truth I’ll never be happy.

There’s my group of words for the week. Hopefully it was not a complete waste of your time. Thank you, please come again:)

I kind of forced some time to sketch around a bit this week. I just haven’t gotten much time to doodle for fun lately, and that’s a necessity from time to time. I have a looming deadline that was far enough off that I was very slowly working on the pieces for it, and the other day I realized it’s coming up quicker than I thought. And there are some serious challenges involved, things I haven’t drawn or painted very often, so I’ll be attached to my computer for the next week or so.

I finally finished getting through Cowboy Bebop for the first time in about a decade. I was kind of dragging my feet as I got close to the end of the series because I didn’t want it to end. It’s just such a damn good story and world. I can’t think of a single thing about it that’s lacking, besides the fact that it was too damn short! I’m not sure what I’ll watch as I paint next. I kind of want to check out Samurai Champloo, but it’s not on Netflix and I’m too poor to buy it at the moment. I probably wouldn’t buy it without getting a taste of it first anyway; no matter how much praise I’ve heard about it.

Alright, back to work. See you Space Cowboy.

I was having issues with my version of Photoshop recently. It’s been around 6 years since I last upgraded, and with some rumors about how many versions back Adobe will allow upgrades from when they release the newest version of their software in the next month or so, I decided I should spend money I don’t have and upgrade my software. It’s definitely a step up and runs much smoother, and also has some new layer styles and brush options. This is a sketch I did a few days ago just messing around with layers to see what kinds of effects I could get out of them.

I’ve also been thinking a lot about texture lately. I always loved the different textures given by various surfaces when painting traditionally. Getting these effects digitally is something you have to think of consciously, where traditionally it would simply be a byproduct of whatever you painted on. Jake Murray posted, and promises to talk more about, this subject; and it’s worth thinking about if doing much digital work. I’ve been playing with incorporating a watercolor paper texture into my comic book work. I like what it adds on screen, but the real test of it’s validity is when printed.

Push it out, way out. I posted this on the Facebook page the other day. It’s a comparison of the first try at page 1 of my comic book project, and the second try. I’m much more pleased with the second try. It will take longer but technique wise I’m keeping fairly similar to my regular painting technique overall, just not necessarily to the level of polish I would with a complete illustration. I’m also allowing myself to experiment and trying to keep a mindset of “I don’t know how to do this, but here’s an idea”. So we’ll see how consistent I’m able to keep this as I try to catch up with my beginning of the year goals for this project.

Otherwise I am staying pretty busy with freelance work and continuing to read “The Stand”. I bought it a couple years ago, but have put off reading it after reading “The Dark Tower”. Stephen King can just go on and on about things that don’t matter. It’s a good story and I’m almost half through the thousand plus pages, but so far it feels like fifty or so of those pages were unnecessary. I’m to the point where I’m skimming some paragraphs instead of thoroughly reading them. Not a good sign. I’m not sure if I really am continuing to read it because it’s good enough that it’s keeping my attention regardless of having a lot of fluff, or if I just feel too invested at this point to quit.

Anyway, here’s to hoping I get another page of my comic done this week.