Phew, what a week; it’s almost over, but if anything I’ll probably be even busier for the next few…
The Home Alone saga is coming to an end; I’ll be happy to have my fiance home to help wrangle the cats and just be a general presence in the home again. Whatever benefits I might glean from being by myself are outweighed by the disadvantages; my existence is overall better for being around people, even if it’s just one person in particular and not too many others at once. This will mean I won’t be able to keep watching Young Justice as part of my morning routine, but I’ve only got like 10 episodes left, so if I binge a few more tonight, that won’t be an issue anyway.
As far as being productive goes, my strategy for doing batches of inking on my comic pages has not worked out the way I planned. I fully intended to ink three pages at a time and then colour them as needed, but as I finish inking a page, I immediately want to colour it. I’m still keeping ahead of schedule, but if I want to finish the current Showcase story before we go up for ComicCon Africa, I should probably strive to be even more efficient. I am really enjoying the work so far; I’ve missed writing/drawing Kinetica, and I’m taking advantage of her powerset and inner monologue to experiment with more ambitious visuals and situations, at least compared to what I’ve done before. At the same time, I don’t want to overdo anything and end up burning out before I get the story done; it’s a balancing act for how far I want to push the visuals, while also keeping them simple enough to get everything done. It’s all a matter of how much time I can spare to devote to the pages, and the day job still gets in the way of that.
That being said, there is something I have been able to fill time with, when I cannot work on comic pages. With the month rolling over tomorrow, it comes with the #Swordtember art challenge; 30 days, 30 prompts, all relating to bladed weaponry throughout the month of September. I attempted the challenge last year, but only got about halfway through before abandoning it. This year, the prompts are more character based, very much in my wheelhouse, and I have my larger graphics tablet to work with compared to last year; a recipe for productivity, methinks. I’ve already been getting a headstart on some of the prompts in order to have a buffer to upload during the week I’ll be away at ComicCon, and I’ve been using a lot of free photo references from the fine couple that run The Pose Archives on Twitter and Instagram. Suffice to say, I’m having a lot of fun with the challenge, and even if I still don’t finish the whole prompt list like last year, I’m proud of the stuff I’ve done so far. Doing the challenge is also a great way to have stuff to post on social media every day for a month, which I need to get into the habit of doing anyway.
So, long story short, I’m keeping busy, and as long as I’m busy with stuff that I consider engaging, it keeps me happy too. Though it’s punctuated by stressful projects at the day job, chasing down stubborn cats at sunset, and financial woes (which will hopefully be resolved at ComicCon; how many times can I mention ComicCon in one blog post?), it’s been a decent week. My “sketch, don’t snack” strategy has been very effective in keeping me focused on artwork, and my superhero cartoon binges have kept me in the mindset of the kind of stories I want to tell; a winning combo, I’d say.
Let’s hope I can keep it going, and maintain this productivity for as long as possible.
Ciao for now.