Finished this up this morning. I knew I wanted red in the background. Don't know why, just did. Added some details that were not in the ref to bring out the eyes a bit. I'm pretty happy with it. Unfortunately, when I showed it to the subject, his first reaction was to laugh. Don't know if it was because he was surprised to be a model, if he just thought it was funny or whatever. It wasn't the reaction I hoped for. Later, he said he was happy I chose him to be a subject. I'll follow through and show him the final version but I think this illustrates just how far apart my own impression is of my art and that of everyone else. I'll never understand it. It is what it is.

Five minutes later, I thought to play with turning some layers off and got this, which I think I like a lot better. Well, that's not the first time that's happened...

 Did a little more on this and I think the black and white version is done. Now to export, vectorize and colorize. Also have to show it to the kid at work, see if he likes it. That's always the worst part.

 I haven't really felt like drawing at all lately. But I have wanted to. I just sit there, looking at artists on the internet, wishing I could make things but just not feeling anything. This is a portrait I've been wanting to do for awhile. It's a coworker, a really nice kid who, for no good reason, lets me call him Boo-Boo. Long story. Anyway, I took a crack at a sketch last night and a little bit of a star on the iPad tonight. There's lots more to do, yet posting progress often makes me feel better. So, this is the so far.

 Decided to play about with some psychedelic rock poster style, which seems to fit Digby well enough. Not sure I'm sold, and the lettering take a long time, but it was worth experimenting with it just to see. I like parts of it, but there's something missing. Will poke more later.

 A little sketch dump. I'm still struggling with a lack of creative spark. I WANT to move onto the next track in the comic but I sit with my pad and I feel nothing. Saddest part is that it's the last track of the act. So I sat down today, threw on some clothes for Digby and took a crappy ref photo. First one, the bottom one, was ok. But I wanted to push, so I did the middle one. That still felt lifeless. So I did the top and it felt...better. When I look at some of the older pages of the comic, they seem so lively. Well, I tried.

I also did a quick sketch of me smirking. I don't know what I have to smirk about. All this stuff is freehand, no AI, no tracing, etc.

 Been needing or just wanting to do another portrait. As I haven't any references I want to paint, I did another self. I have done far too many of these but what the heck. When I need to play, they're fun and I'm always available. I liked the original drawing, done in about a half hour, but when ti came to painting, it felt too squat. So I elongated it in Procreate. Then I messed about with various approaches. I decided I wanted to do something I usually don't do with the eyes, add different layers of color. Still not doing pupils. In any case, I'm happy with this. It's the same but also a bit different.

       

      

       

       

       

Doing some visual tests for the next track on City Silent. As is always the case, I change styles. The original style for Digby was a lineless take, which is cool but it's not where my head's at right now. Digby's kind of high all the time, so I wanted to try and reflect that in a different way than I did the first time he showed up. That track is a psychedelic trip that I quite enjoyed. The mice were loud. I want Digby loud in a different way.

First thing I did was head off into cartoon land, thinking I might reference Vaughan Bodé a little, not least of which because he's been a major influence on graffiti culture. But that kind of thing is such a clash with the rest of the book. I got away with it with Zippa as his track was meant to be flyers, not an actual character walking about.

I saw some work by a Brazilian comic artist named Rafael Grampa and really liked his stylization, especially of Marvel characters. He uses a lot of lines, describing wrinkle after wrinkle. So I did the top drawing while his work was up in the background. Then, I redrew the character, making him flow more, making him more abstract and went back to my old favorite brush while still keeping the detail level high.

When it came to coloring, I wanted something 'outside the lines,' and grabbed one of the first things in my regular brushes, a marker and just whipped colors out. Turns out I like that approach a lot. I even like it with the lines turned off, though that won't work for a comic. At least I don't think it will.

Then I changed the background color to one more or less I've used before to suggest the city night sky and got something very autumn-like. Which makes sense as the season's changing. I'll likely go with this style. I still have to work out how the background's going to be but I can already tell this track is going to be more labor intensive. Ah, well. The mice were 'easy' and it too forever. Maybe this will work the opposite way?

 

 This is all 31 pages of track 12 laid out. Although it took too damned long, it does have that big, loud, 'Vegas Show' kind of feeling that I wanted. So it's successful in that way. Just wish it hadn't taken me so damned long. I hope that I can get back to my love of drawing with the next track.

 And with that, track 12 is done. Dear gods. Now I can start on 13, which is hopefully going to be another trippy entry from Digby. I just hope it goes more quickly...a lot more quickly.

 Totally forgot to post about this. Kelly at the Million Year Picnic, my old alma mater, said she really wished she had hard copies of Tamino to sell for customers who were looking for 'something different.' So I finally did something about it, revamped the files and re-uploaded them to Lulu, a service I haven't used for years. Damned books were expensive but I printed two copies and sent them free to the Picnic to sell. I just want people to read them. She said the covers were a bit flimsy but the colors were great.

 Just because I hadn't posted any photos of Orc Season yet this year. So far, we're having a great year at the Faire. People have been great, so many more in costume. People know the orcs, we meet grown up kids that we took photos with 8 or 9 years ago, people look for us and know us. It's really nice. There should be some more photos before the season is done. I'm the one on the left.

 Just managed to finish this. There will be one more page but it's a very simple one to do and that will FINALLY close out the track. I have been working for this far too long.

 I knew the next page was going to be big, have a lot of movement and finally reveal what the mice have been doing. Luckily, there's a lot of cut and paste in the background though there's also a lot of adjustments to be done. Text last and then the 'end track whatever' page. And I can call this finally done.

 I haven't felt a spark for creating much lately. Work is just so damned busy, especially this week with the launch of new product. I just want to come home and veg. That doesn't mean I'm not making SOMEtthing but art has just eluded me. I still do two podcasts a week, am in two D&D games and do VO auditions when something interesting comes in. I did just score a second gig in a video game I've done before. It's not a big part but it's the voice of Death you hear when your character has died and you want to start over. So maybe I'll be heard a lot.

Needed to create SOMEthing a few days ago so went back to the self portrait. Not my favorite but I think it has more emotion than a lot of them. I'm tired and I think that comes through.

We were supposed to go orcing at the Ren Faire today but we got rained out. So I found my spark and whipped out a page of City Silent. I am ALMOST to the end of the track. I like the work, it does what I wanted it to do but it's been a slog for reasons I don't understand. I hope the next track, a more trippy, Digby track will be more fun to make.

 "The City Silent" page 283. Rooster crowing. Three in one week, AND I have mental sketches for how the damned track ends. This is a good thing. Also, those designs I did for Ricci but never used, I might bring him in for the next track as well. 

 Page 282. Admittedly, this one and the last one were pretty simple layouts and easy to do. But I need to progress and as long as the pages communicate that the mice are loud, they're doing their job.

 "The City Silent" Page 281. Almost done with this never ending track.

 Page 280, the most Vegas of the track. And easy enough one to get done, which is why it comes so quickly after the last one.

 I've been watching a lot of documentaries about comics makers the last week or so. When I left the Picnic in 1998, I kind of wandered out of the comics world. I had been in it at a great time, a singular time and I've always been really happy that I was. But it seems I not only missed a lot, I missed a lot of comics that I will almost certainly like. Watching all these videos, feeling the passion of their maker for the art form, I got some of my own spark back and made a page on an off day. I hope he keeps making videos so I can keep getting fuel.

 City Silent page 278. The mice are loud. I have to get through this track. There's not a ton more but they have been DRAGGING. Still feeling little creative spark after work so progress is damned slow. Also, I looked at some of the early pages of the comic and...wow. Some of them are terrible. Will I redraw them before I 'publish' it? Probably. I  did redraw some of them years ago. But there's no way the style was ever going to be the same all the way through. Is that a weakness? Probably. It's also evidence of me changing along the way.