Page 22. Trying to decide if I want a 'meanwhile' page between this one and the last one. Probably do.

Page 21. The comic's already longer than I thought it would be. And it's gone in a direction I hadn't foreseen. And that's ok. I'm going to miss Rooster. He was fun to draw. I've noticed some odd tension visually as I look at the pages. Because I chose to have most of the action moving from right to left, it leaves an odd feeling, at least to me it does. I have no idea why I chose to do it this way. I'm not sure it works. When the story's over, I can flip things back the traditional way to see. I'll likely leave things as they are as this comic, like most of mine, is an experiment and experiments are allowed to fail. I don't think this comic fails. Dunno. I like it.

Page 20. There's going to be one more page of Rooster. That's all I'm going to say.

Page 19. Was productive today. Seems I needed to get away, in this case to Canada to see an old friend or two. Great weekend, and it seems, it recharged my batteries as well. I've been drawing and thinking about Ghiroy. Rooster's gone off on his own. For a reason. Gonna miss him.

Page 18. Good to get back to a little action.

Page 17. Turning point. By the end of my 'career,' such as it is, I think I will have fleshed out every single background character I've ever done. Rooster was nothing more than a symbol, a commission someone had me do for an event. He was a lot older in that version and a lot bigger. "Rooster," because of his hair. He was a trailer-trash kind of guy, angry for the sake of being angry though there wasn't even that much thought into him. He was just a drawing. The commissioner liked it and that was that. Well, now he gets his turn just as Smatt and Terry got theirs.

Page 16. Now if I can only figure out how to end this little journey to nowhere...

Haven't really drawn anything at all in a long while, and nothing on this comic in months. So here's another page. Glad I got it done, anything done. When I showed the comic to Scott McCloud in February, he noted the areas of 'negative space' and found them interesting. I think I see what he means. I think he meant that there's a certain tension in the pages because of that space. Well, good for me even if it wasn't planned. :"D Don't think there are many pages left of this one, and it's another story about nothing but that's ok. The style of this one was half the point.

Haven't done a new t-shirt in a long while. A LONG while. Decided I wanted one of the skater mice, so chose one of the more recent images I liked, fixed it up and sent it off. We'll see how it looks and if I like it, it'll go live. I've never received any money from RedBubble, which means that I haven't made enough for them to send me a check. I order all my own shirts because I like them, so there's that. Also, I've let Smatt's Odyssey sit unfinished for too long, so I was doing a page of mice yesterday to try and get in the mindset of drawing them. This isn't a comic with much of a story to it, just another illustration of the apathy of the day. It's 14 pages so far, which is the longest thing since C+C's comic a couple years ago. And it's a different aesthetic. So it's work worth doing.

Had lunch with an old friend in Canada last week. He's since had a look at one of my older short stories, "Sound and Fury," and while he was somewhat complimentary, he thought it was too short, that there was at least a little more to Joe than I'd done. He's not a fan of the animal people and in this case, I agree with him. Joe doesn't really benefit by being an otter, and I don't think the average person would get that anyway. Is there more to him? Don't know. Tom thought I needed to commit more to him and flesh out the story or rather he wondered why I hadn't. I meant it as a snapshot, something quick, a glimpse of a lost young man. Maybe there is more there. Have to redesign him if there is, or something. Still, it's nice to have someone IN the biz give me a different perspective. I get so few (thanks, Vince!).

Took that last drawing a little further. The problem with using ref sometimes is being too slavish to it, or not being able to easily pull away from it. So some details are put in just because they're there, and one's own style can get lost. This Marcel came out looking a little like an old man, but that's ok. I just really wanted to draw SOMEthing and this made me feel good. So it served its purpose.

Did another one of these today. Felt good to draw. It usually does.

I've done very little in the last month. There's been some work on Ghiroy, mostly in the plotting department which is fine, but the project just keeps getting bigger and bigger. Perhaps it's starting to frighten me? Probably not that. Probably it's that looming fear that, like everything else, I'm making something that will have almost zero appeal. Easy enough to say, "Make things for yourself." I bet not a single successful person who said that ever really thought that the project they were in the middle of was likely to bomb. Great advice in hindsight. Anyway. Whenever I've had time, I just have had no spark to draw. Nothing. I sit at the computer wanting to draw and having absolutely nothing come to mind, nothing drives me. There are many days I feel that I'm done, that I've made what it is I'm likely to make in this life and that's it. It's not depression exactly, just BLANK. The worst part is that I love to draw. I love ink on paper. There is just no passion, no ideas. In the last few days, I've done a few throwaway drawings, which I'm posting here because it's been a month since I've posted anything here at all and that bothers me. Will this change soon? I have no idea. I can't recall feeling like this ever. But my support network is essentially gone. I have my one reader here (thank you, Vince) and really, that's it. No one asks me what I'm drawing, asks anything beyond the vaguest of 'what's up' questions and, when I don't really elaborate is satisfied with "not much." All the artist friends (except Vince) are gone. Those I still speak with, again, don't show interest in what I'm doing, not doing, want to do or whatever. So I have these three inked drawings to show, which amount to nearly nothing and that's that. I suppose they're something, just not much. Not inspired, not interesting, not anything. But not nothing. I'm actually amazed that I'm typing this. Be more amazed if I post it. Sometimes now, when I look at my work, I'm a little surprised to remember that I do indeed draw. That I made that. What's with this? I don't understand.