phodyr

I just realized, having finished my first paying commission, that I don't have anything else lined up immediately for projects.  Weird.  I've been so absorbed in that work that I let other projects sit on the back burner so long, they've gone cool.  I wonder what I'll think to do next... HM.

My gallery is all higgledy-piggledy.  Whatever I happen to be working on is what ends up here.  My long-term projects get intermixed with quick sketches and ideas that strike me, and I jot them down before they get away.  One day it's Victorian Cthulhu, the next day it's a RPG art, or a doodle, or fan art...  It's like getting your peanut butter mixed in with chocolate, and butterscotch and celery, and...

This is where someone points out that I could put each thing in different galleries.  But which to feature and which to squirrel away?  Decisions, decisions.

Since I've been home with my parents for most of December (my dad was in the hospital for 2 weeks), I've been cranking out pen illustrations/sketches for the Brooklyn Museum Sketchbook Project (link here).  It's a brilliant idea and there are some wickedly cool things that people have done with the sketchbooks.  Definitely pushing the envelope.

Me, I'm being pretty traditional.  I have the theme of "[your name here]" which has led to interesting drawings.  You'd think, given that I had it since the end of October, I could do lots more with it.  That does not account for a lot of rumination and procrastination.  Once you factor those into it, it's amazing (to me if no one else) that I've gotten as far as I have.  I've got 27 pages done, with 13 pages to go before January 15.  I also want to scan all of the pages (a few hours of work), and time allowing, do some monochromatic color washes on each page, to be that much more artsy.  As soon as I scan them, colored or plain, I'll post them.

Happy Holidays!

It seems like I haven't done anything of note lately, but I'm busy busy busy.  I'm working on a guest comic strip for the webcomic Clockworks (don't want to post anything until it goes live), and I have the basking mermaid painting that I've been working on for ages that lies in a folder, waiting to be finished.  So close!

So if you're wondering, that's what's up.

My drawings never end up as they start out.  For the longest time, that used to drive me up the wall.  The picture I had in my head was so CLEAR, and this... this... THING I had just drawn looks only kinda sorta somewhat like it!  Why can't I draw what I imagine?!?

But then I figured it out:  what I end up with is the end product of a variety of things.  The idea is my head is the starting place, but it has to through my head, get filtered through my mood, be translated by my skills, and rendered within the bounds of the medium using whatever tool works best.  Too many forces between the idea and the end result.  Besides which, the idea has immeasurable emotional ties and multilayered connotations that I cannot capture, not without resorting to different symbols that are visually evocative of the emotions and ideas, but aren't the same as I've imagined them.

In short, what's in my head is a starting place.  The less I think about the end from the start, the fewer expectations I have about what it will be, the happier I am in the end.  It's better, for me, to start off with an idea and go from there.  Some of my best drawings have started with a blank mind and a doodle.  Fewer expectations leads to greater possibilities and far less frustration about how it comes out.

So yeah.  What you see is where the idea ended up.  For now.  Sometimes it could be the starting point for something else.  You'll have to check back and see.