I’m finally over a cold that was with me for about two weeks. From around the 20th of March to about the first of April I got no art made in those two weeks. I didn’t have the energy. Now I’ve got to get back to doing stuff and that’s not as easy as just feeling better. I have to build up momentum again.
Being self motivated to get art done is no easy task. In this world where we have no choice but to have a job and work for our money making art with no profit in it is not seen as a worthwhile way to spend your time. In order to be self motivated and overcome that takes a lot of effort and a bit of ego.
What this piece of writing is about is figuring out what I have to do to get back on track. I’ve already gotten a couple of things done, I inked a “Dreams of Things” cover and marker colored another one, but I still don’t feel back on track. I’m still a little bit lost in the tall grass.
I think that’s also because the cold hit just as I was a few days away from finishing painting a coat. I painted a new long winter coat back in November but then I decided to paint a new short coat for the Spring. A denim blazer. Painting coats takes a lot of work and is not a thing that I do normally so they interrupt the stuff I usually get done. I spent a solid week working on the coat right before the cold hit so it has really been about three weeks since I got any of my usual art done. That’s a long time.
So what is the stuff I want to get done? First off I have to finish that coat. I’ve worked on it another two days since my cold ended and I have at least one more day on it. All the hard stuff is done but I still have a few more decorative elements I want to put on it.
I think the biggest thing I want to get done is to finish my “Great Gatsby” illustrated book. I’ve been working on that for over two years and I think I’m close to finishing it. Right now I’m not 100% sure what I still need to get done on it. I have to look the whole thing over and see what details need to be taken care of. I know there is one illustration that I want to tweak part of and get it to my likings but the other illustrations are finished.
I also gave myself more work to do with the book since after I printed out the small first proof of it I decided that there should be a small black and white paperback version of it too. That means the whole thing has to be set up at the smaller size and the illustrations have to be changed to black and white. I think I’m going to have to dig up the inked versions of everything before they were all colored. I’m not exactly sure how I want the black and white version to look so that all has to be figured out. I think I can get that finished over the summer.
I had just started and gotten done a couple of prints in a new series that I started. “Last Night I Dreamt I Had a True Love” is the name of the series and I had it under way. I made two finished prints, a third under way, plus that was the one I was messing around making AI prints with too. I was just figuring out the direction I wanted it to go in but now I haven’t thought about it in weeks.
Of course I have to get my “Dreams of Things” drawings going again but I may be burning out on them anyway. I’ve gotten over 225 of them done in the series and I wonder how much longer I can work on it. That’s kind of why I started the “Last Night” series of prints but they really are a different thing. With “Dreams” I can do physical coloring with markers rather than computer coloring and I like that.
As I mentioned earlier I already got some “Dreams” pieces done but I wasn’t feeling them as I was working on them. Of course that could have been the cold lingering and I’ll feel better about doing them next week but I’ll have to see.
I started making some new “Message Tee” drawings for next year. Originally the idea for my Saturday comic was to make fifty two drawings of people in t-shirts and recycle them year after year with new messages on the shirts but over the years I’ve made a bunch of 52 sets of people. I haven’t drawn any new sets in a few years so this year I got it in my head to make some new drawings.
It started when I bought a new 9×11 inch sketchbook. I buy more sketchbooks than I can possible use and I like to try out different brands and sizes. After I got this one I thought that it would be a good one to draw Message Tee figures in. The last time I drew such figures they were in a smaller sketchbook so I thought it would be fun to use this bigger one. I got about twelve pencil drawings done in it before the cold hit so I have a lot more to go.
Of course the last thing I have to get going again is doing some writing. Though I have these blog pieces done weeks ahead of time and didn’t miss any weeks of posting I haven’t gotten any new ones written for the last two weeks. There was nothing I wanted to write about when I had that cold. So here I am getting started again. It feels pretty good.