It’s too bad- I really liked the pencils for this, but I pretty much lost control of it as soon as I started to apply the color. I had really gotten used to the way I was doing the inks, and watercolor is just not going to behave the same way.

Well, whatever. It was actually kind of freeing to just mess with it without worrying about ruining the painting after I had already ruined it.  This one, I think, didn’t really stand a chance of turning out well- I started working on it pretty late at night, for one thing. For another thing I don’t have the slightest idea how to paint iridescent feathers with watercolor.

However, I’ve noticed that I’m finding ways to avoid sitting down to start another after I finish one, especially if it turned out well. I had been wanting to do a bird all day (look at my Twitter for Sunday to see how early I intended to start working on this), so by 10:30 at night I sat down and said “Damnit, I’m going to do a bird, and I give myself permission to do it badly if I have to!”

And I did. But at least I sat down and did it! And now I’m clearer about a few of the issues I’ll have when I come to do colorful, iridescent birds again.

Tags: art, being blocked, birds, painting, rufous hummingbird, watercolor, works in progress

Started the year off with this fine specimen.It was 11:30 at night on January 1st and I was determined to start the year off on a good note by drawing something. I also found a mini-marathon of Star Trek: TNG, and got a little distracted. So I put the two together.

I did a bunch of animals, and played with ink washes and brushes:

A day or two later I got stuck. It happens to me a lot, because I get hung up on Working on My Career instead of just Drawing Pictures, which is sort of mission-critical for, y’know, working on my career. I had this funny little image of a cat in a flying sailboat that I kept putting off drawing because I didn’t know precisely what a sailboat looks like.

I let go of the precision I thought I wanted and got the idea down, just so I could move on to something else. Which is pretty much exactly what happened. I don’t know why it still surprises me that it works like that.

Plus,  I decided I liked the awkwardness of my little sailboat, and didn’t try to refine it when I went back and did a full painting based on my doodle a week or two later:

So that was last night. I’ve been wanting to work on my watercolor skills, so I went through the pages looking for something to paint (ohhhh, is that what sketchbooks are for? How novel!). I didn’t mean to finish it all in one go- I want to work on not rushing through projects and being able to finish things that I leave for more than one sitting, but I got carried away. It turned out pretty cute. There will probably be more flying sailboats this year.

But tonight I was going through my Drawer O’ Art Junk, and found an unused block of Master Carve. So I made a print block featuring my little buddy:

The speech bubble is empty on the block, so I can make the owl say anything by writing or typing into the speech bubble. I was thinking of using it as a personal bookplate.

So, stuff. The holidays were stressful at work and I spent a lot of my free time recovering. Then the new year got off to kind of a rough start- lots of sadness for a lot of my friends’ pets (in total, we lost two dogs, a cat, and a hamster within about two days of each other), then my dog got herself injured and needed stitches. Then we had a rather large earthquake here in Eureka. So it was just one thing after another that kept me away from the ol’ blog. But I kept drawing, so I had to share.

Tags: art, being blocked, cats, doodles, drawing, ink wash, linoleum, musk ox, owls, painting, pets, print, watercolor

I have been daydreaming and doodling a lot because it frees me up in a way that “sitting down to Draw” does not. I can sit and stare at a blank page for hours and get nowhere, or I can make my pen move and come up with a page full of stuff like this. The choice is obvious.

I can always extract stuff from these pages full of doodles and make them into something finished later. But right now the key to staying in the habit of drawing seems to be to keep the pressure off. So I haven’t been making comics, and I haven’t been adding designs to my Zazzle shop, but I have been filling up my sketchbook with pages and pages of stuff!

I made the drawing of myself, and then turned the book 90 degrees and did the rest. At first I wanted to present the page oriented the way most of the drawings were oriented, but it started to seem kind of self-portrait-like the more I looked at it with me oriented properly. Plus it fits my blog design (which I have decided I hate and will be changing again soon) better.

Tags: being blocked, comics, doodles, drawing

I really am getting in my own way of getting anything done. And the key do doing this comic stuff well is to do it a lot, so I have to commit to doing it all the time, and getting it out there, even when it’s not perfect. I didn’t do any touching-up on this to emphasize the point. No more using “it might suck” as an excuse not to do work!

Also, I’ve realized (and it seems pretty clear from this one) that making comics is a physical act, like running, that requires training and practice. I don’t have the stamina to finish a one-page comic without getting pretty sloppy towards the end! That’s going to make doing the 24-hour comic a ton of fun, I’m sure. But I need to do it- it’s time to stop putting it off!

I’m taking some time off starting Thursday, so sometime after Brad’s Wednesday radio show (I might take a power nap beforehand), I’ll be starting in on my 24-page comic, with no pre-planning, and I won’t stop until it’s finished or 24 hours have passed, whichever comes first. I’m really excited, and kind of nervous. I can’t wait to try.

Tags: 24-hour comic, art, being blocked, comics, drawing, journal comic

I haven’t forgotten about SnoogleZoo, I just needed to take a break. I don’t think doing a serial webcomic is for me- it’s not exactly the time commitment, like I thought it was, because doing all this constraint-free drawing is taking up the same kind of time that working on SnoogleZoo was. I think it’s more like feeling trapped within a certain framework. It felt like homework and I think it was stifiling the art. Not to mention all my other art that I wasn’t doing.

I’ve been kicking around a couple of ideas of what to do- I miss the characters more than I thought I would, so I’d rather not abandon them to the realm of silent, one-off illustrations. But I don’t want to get trapped slogging through an un-interesting story arc just to meet a deadline. I’m thinking I should just do stories on a whenever-I-feel-like-it basis, which I think will serve my desire to do something of quality, and also prevent me from growing a readership of any respectable size.

But you know what? I don’t really care about that right now. I really need to be making art before I can concern myself with things like making art on a schedule.

So don’t worry, Pan. We’ll be back soon enough, and you can pick on Efram and get extra whipped cream from the Kitties’ cafe and have all kinds of fun and silly adventures with the rest of the gang real soon. But sometimes I will have to give my attention to killer robots and pin-up girls, too. It’s better for everyone this way

Tags: being blocked, comic, drawing, snooglezoo, work, works in progress

I have a deadline on a paying project coming up, so my usual time for Panda Thursday was taken up by that, and I ate through my buffer. But my real problem appears to be that, once I’ve filled up the whole front page of my blog with pandas by posting every Thursday and no other time, I just get sick and tired of drawing pandas.

So what do I do?

Panda Thursday was meant to be an exercise in making sure I’m drawing and posting to my blog at least once a week. I think I can still do that, but be more flexible about it by adding more creatures to more days, and mandating an update of at least one. That’ll keep me from feeling so stagnant after a million pandas.

So, I need some help coming up with creatures. I want to do Monster Monday, Panda Thursday (natch), Fish Friday ( because we used to be Catholic). But what about Tuesday and Wednesday? If you have a suggestion, leave me a comment. The creature doesn’t have to be an alliteration of the day of the week, unless it’s too awesome to pass up.

Tags: being blocked

I haven’t been feeling terribly enthusiastic about anything lately. Trying to shake myself out of it, and force something to happen, kind of like all the flowering trees around here in spite of the cold wind and rain.

Tags: being blocked

Tags: being blocked

I need to get into a good “force and filter” rhythm, where I force something to come out whether I feel it or not, every day, maybe multiple times, and then choose the good stuff out of that.
This drawing is part of that, but it’s also that I seem to get ideas that might be brilliant in my pre-coffee state, but as I wake up they seem less so. I wonder what that means…

Tags: being blocked