Woke up this morning and saw I'd recorded a dozen tracks of drunken banjo on my 'puter. Here's 3 that I kinda liked. It was a nice night last night; enjoyed another campfire, watchin' the stars, and roasting anything that could be shoved onto a stick.
Wow, at the rate I'm taking to finish the next The Mystic page, I'll take two weeks per page! I don't know what it is about this one - I just feel compelled to get it right. No jinxies, though; I'm not drawing it a third time!
I think I got a bit carried away for a "warm-up" sketch. I drew this with photo reference, but changed the direction of the lighting as an experiment, or something.
I found this nifty book at Half Priced Book Store full of 20s and 30s fashion. This one's a bit of an amalgam of different designs I liked. Funny, these are the fashions that "gramma" wore, that we used to think of as "old-lady clothes," but thrown back into the context of the 20s, they were pretty bold.
I started making decent progress on that failed page again. I think these warm-ups are critical for bringing me down to a creative plane. I feel much better about the composition of this page. I'm going to tease the pencils a bit more to see if I can't come up with some decent shading.
I spent an unhealthy amount of time watching the youtubes tryin' to learn some of the technique of a lot of the pros who post their frailing godliness. I saw a lot of them played a very precise melody over their frailing. It's a bitch to do, because you've gotta hammer just hard enough on each string to make it ring out with the back of your middle finger nail. So it's hammer the melody, strum the rhythm, and pop the drone string. I played for several hours on Sunday, and this is what I ended up with.
I'm about half-way through reading Jeff Smith's Bone. What an awesome, massive endeavor. I've really been paying close attention to the inking and balance of black/white. I've also been devouring Jamie Hernadez' Love and Rockets. I've really got to wrap my head around this shading business. It's not just a matter of being accurate, but that's where you really get creative with composition. I need to play around more with the design of the panel more.
Friday night, the family and I went to a drive-in theater and watched Ratatouille. Jeremy liked it more the second time he watched it. I thought it was pretty good. Them Pixar folks are really gettin' slick with their stylings. I love how each of the movies have their own character designs - they're not so much templates like the Disney movies used to be. The story was pretty cool too.
This was the first time I've been to a drive-in since I lived in California. It was pretty cool. Granted, they nested the theater between a freeway and train track - but you don't really go to those places for the sound quality. It evoked a lot of great childhood memories.
This morning, we went to an apple farm. Took a hay-ride, picked a few bag-fulls of apples, and scared the kids in a hay-bale maze. Yeah, perhaps I'm a bit large to go scrambling into those little mazes - but you just try an' stop me!
I cross posted this over at thebabygrind , a community of artists who's goal is to post something, anything creative, five days a week. I was pouring through Jamie Hernadez' Locas and the obtuse feathering appeals to me - I want to try more of that.
I tried out that you-tube recording dealy; the video sucks, but the sound quality's not bad. I tried something new this morning with the frailing - I tuned the drone string up to "A" and played in an "A minor" scale. I think it has an interesting sound.
Oh, and had to show off my hat - I picked that up from a street vendor in Malacca when I was in Malaysia last Spring.
We picked the Spongebob Monopoly game this weekend and played it a couple time; or as Jeremy calls it Nomopoly. Jeremy won because Meili and I were over-zealous and over extended ourselves; borrowed against our properties to get pineapples (apartments). By the time we had to pay his exorbitant rent, well, we were screwed - game over.
Hey, thanks to you folks who responded to my last emo-fueled blog. Just so we're straight, I'm NOT quitting comics or anything - I just had to vent. In a way, I'm just impatient that I can't kick this block and get back to making comics again. It's a new week, though.
I posted this page from my sketchbook, as evidence of what I hate to admit, to label, "drawing block." It's been a really, really, long time since I've felt this unmotivated to draw. I had the luxury of inertia to keep me from think about the "why" when I was working on "Ad Hoc." But then again, I feel like "Ad Hoc" was a 2 year journey of delirium. Shit, I had to fly to Portland just to prove to myself that I was actually collaborating on it with Adam White, and that he wasn't just another hallucinatory night-terror. He wasn't; he just shared my delusion, is all. (I'm smiling, here.) "Ad Hoc" certainly reads like a strange dream.
But now I'm awake. I've had a lot of time to reflect on the "why" of comics, and aside from hobby or distraction, I haven't felt really motivated. It's not that I don't have anything on my plate to draw - Jon sent along the next set of scripts; they're great. They just sit there, next to a stack of library books with tons of art reference.
I'm sure everyone won't agree with me on this, but I've really been left with a sense of failure in comics. Sure, there's been a lot of gracious folks who got attached to the idea or quirkiness of it, but "Ad Hoc" just ain't right. They just sit, unread, in the few shops that were awesome enough to put them on their shelves to promote local talent. There's a stack of books I purchased for the Chicago con - I thought I'd really do better than I did. See? Even with print-on-demand, I'm left with inventory. How stupid am I? I've sent out a dozen books to folks who promised to review it in their blogs, or whatever; but not a single review has been written. And I don't blame them - it's better not to write anything if you only have negative stuff to say.
I suppose it's a combination of depression and exhaustion. It's really quite stupid. For the last couple of months, I've had this weird blemish on my lip. Kinda looks like a cold sore, but it's not. And let me tell you, don't bother to go to WebMD, it'll do nothing but depress you. I tried everything I could think of to get rid of it, but it just stayed there. It's stupid how one tiny bump on your face can really bring you down. I mean, it's bad enough watching your hair recede. But this made me overly self-conscious. Well, yesterday, I finally went to the doctor. He took one look, wrote a script for some topical cream, and in ONE DAY the fucking spot on my lip went away. It woulda stayed there forever, probably, but this cream - it killed it - dead. I guess it was a sort of fungus. Yeah, sexy. Kiss me.
But you know, shit like that can really bring you down.
Then there's the day job. I try to NEVER write or complain about it here; some folks there read this shit, and I really don't want to bore you to death with what I do. I feel a bit strained, overworked. It's not the hours - I haven't been working much overtime, but the density of "thinking" work is taking a toll. I used to do some pretty heavy-labor when I was younger; moving furniture, working in factories; but this constant state of problem solving and code writing wears me out. It's been more difficult lately, because everyone I work with seems to realize it's a hot market for developers, and people keep leaving, resigning. There is that pressure that I could be making more somewhere else, but there are a lot of things, reasons, keeping me where I'm at, for now. Usually, I file away concerns about salary, but it's been on the front of my mind all summer - Meili was laid off last April and her severance and unemployment money is about dried up. And, of course, she's in a tough business right now. She did underwriting work for sub-prime lenders. HAH!
Well, good news on that front - yesterday, she got a job offer from a great company that's been around since the 1800s with a lot of promise for advancement. One less thing to stress about.
Still, God holds a grudge for some of those nasty things I wrote about him before, so to fuck with me, He had a traffic cop pull me over yesterday. It's not that I don't deserve a speeding ticket. I drive 75 mph every day to work, I'm four years over-due for a ticket. But it wasn't the ticket, it was the cop's attitude that put me in a rage yesterday. To pull me over, he LITERALLY stood in the middle of the fast lane - I coulda run that stupid fucker over. Then he egged me on with a "golf-clap" when I succeeded in NOT killing him. Further, he ALSO gave me a ticket for not signaling to pull over. I'm sorry, I was a little distracted NOT running you over, ASSHOLE. In the end, it was how I felt degraded that ruined my day.
It was that one asshole that distracted me from the fact that yesterday turned out to be a brilliantly awesome day.
It's a good thing that I suck at making music. If not, I'd really start to worry about ever drawing comics again. Some really kind friends keep encouraging me, but facts is facts - I really suck, despite that it's fun, distracting, relaxing. Last night, Jeremy told me about how they are going to bring some drums into school on music day next week. So we practiced some rhythm. I gave him two chords to play on the piano, and we practiced - one, two, three, four. I strummed my guitar on the side, and he really lit up when he heard it all come together. For a kid his age, rhythm's a really tough thing to rap your head around. He wants to speed it up - thinks it's a contest. But when he finally got it, it was awesome.
I just picked my guitar up from a local luthier who tuned up and repaired my guitar for the first time since I was 17! And it was cheap! Only 30 bucks and it's like new.
So, I decided to break it in with a cover of Neal's song, "Orion on the Wrong Side." He (nvonflue) posted this song and the lyrics a short while back (http://nvonflue.livejournal.com/258497.html). The lyrics are intense, and don't rely on rhyming at all - I had fun, at least, attempting this one.
Meili and I started watching Weeds. It's a neat little escape fantasy for suburban drones like ourselves. Anyway, they started a bit of a musical meme with their opening song, Little Boxes, sung by Malvina Reynolds with her cute yet aged voice. Starting in the second season they started airing different covers in the intro. Anyway, here's mine:
Jon hit me up with some great reference photos, so I'm still tryin to get a feel for newsboy look - for a character who likes to go by the name, Kid Houdini.
I'm brushing the cobwebs away, and starting some sketching again. Had a great weekend. Went to a Cloud Cult concert and met up with fellow webcomicker Tim Godek. Great music, great company, couldn't ask for better. Had some bar-b-ques, did yardwork, burned logs and fed bugs with flesh. Went swimming with Jeremy. And watched way too much television. But now It's time to focus.
well, i'm the right man for this job it really dun't matter who we rob you can take all his money you can take his wife i'd rather cut his face with my crooked knife
today's a good day to kill a man
i'll drag my victim's body to a shed gonna cut 'im into pieces until he's all dead chop off his arms, saw off his legs i'll grind 'im to the bone and feed 'im to the pigs
today's a good day to kill a man
and when the cops finally find this place i'll cut my throat open with a smile on my face when they finally get me i won't give damn cuz today's a good day to kill a man
updates: click here for rss feed 
![[info]](http://stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif){kind=small}
