300
*UPDATE*
i had this idea a bit ago, so i thought i’d finally follow through, and do a short video with me doing a doodle. you can see my work process, cause i’m a vain artist, and i assume people want to see that kind of thing. enjoy!
so this newest post is my spartan anniversary. 300 pages. it’s a slow boil. but then again, since most of the posts were half pages, i’m still only up to nearly 150 full pages. that’s only a few issues of a regular comic. a regular comic you can find at comixolixogy! once a quarter, i get a statement from those guys, with a detailed account of exactly how my comic isn’t selling. haha, it’s not like i expect it to, why pay for something you can get for free. well, aside from being able to support my general endeavor. but that being said, i don’t make any real money doing it. since the comic has been up for just a little over 3 years now, i can say that my drawing has become quite a bit tighter. and i think that’s just keeping to a schedule, and forcing myself to sit down and draw, and not just when i get the urge to do so.
someone once came up with a concept that if you do something for 10000 hours, you’ll have mastered the skill. it’s pretty and clean as concepts go, but i’m pretty sure it’s a pile of BS. that being said, it does put the emphasis on practice to become perfect. there’s no real way around that. the masters weren’t great right out of the gate. people like to share sketches of leonardo and picasso, to prove that even in their youths, they were awesome. and maybe they were, but that’s what you’re seeing. not the hundreds of sketches that went straight in the bin, or canvases that were painted and repainted. and that’s my real point. the comic is great avenue for me to practice. writing, and art. you don’t see the bad sketches, but even the finished product is a means to an end.
the really nice boost to the ole work ethic, is that i don’t have to think, ‘what should i draw today?’cause i already know. i have a page to do a week, and it doesn’t matter if i don’t feel like drawing virgil for the 1000th time, if he’s on the page, he gets drawn. but sometimes i feel like drawing other things, and i like taking random suggestions from people, cause it kicks me out of my comfort zone. so, once again ‘What should i draw?’. you guys float some ideas at me, and i’ll do em up. could be fun, could be a disaster, let’s find out! if i don’t get any suggestions, i’ll boot up a new app i found for my phone that’s actually called ‘what should i draw’. if just randomly suggests things. it’s a niche sort of app, but i appreciate someone is thinking of how to help artists, and not just making another clash of clans clone. cause seriousness….. why?
anyone catch ‘American Vandal’ on netflix?
caught this little gem recently. loads of fun. i mean, there’s so much ‘real crime’ reenactment stuff on netflix, and that’s fun and all, but this one is different. it’s fake documentary series about a kid who everyone is sure spray painted dicks on all the cars in the teacher’s parking lot.
it sounds silly, and it is, but there’s a depth to the story that feels sort of detective noirish. there’s twists and turns and spray painted dicks. and since this is my 300th post, ‘are you not entertained?!’
and damn, that was gladiator. well, whatever.
There is some credence to the 10,000 hours. A 5 year apprenticeship to a master, before being granted journeyman status, is coincidentally 50 week/year * 40 hour/week = 10,000 hours.
it’s not that there’s not credence to it, but it presents itself as more of a hard and fast rule, and i think generally people spin their wheels and don’t focus when they should be mastering something. that or we’d have alot of masters of everything walking the earth. heh
Great video! It was awesome to have a voice to put to the artist! Your process is CRAZY! So fast! And I thought it was a great teddy bear! Unfortunately, I already know how not to draw, and since your finished product doesn’t look like a spastic blob, I think I could teach you a thing or two.
haha, no, i got spastic blobs covered, thanks. fast, messy, and crazy. pretty much sums up my style. haha
and i thought i’d try it. i don’t really have the following that would let something like that catch on, if i’m being honest, it got a pretty poor viewing, but, i always wanted to try it, and i think it turned out ok.
btw, don’t worry, i got a drawing coming at you soon from the last round of requests.
*Laughs* Take your time. I’ll be here.
you ask for 2 things, you get a mashup of my own design
My god, what hath though wrought?! That is a beautiful thing sir, and I thank you!
Congrats on 300 pages. Sorry I don’t contribute, but man I like what you draw.
no worries! glad you’re enjoying it. any money i get doin this is just gravy. i don’t pretend to think i’ll make a living at it, if i ever get to the point where it can be called ‘beer money’, i’ll be laughin.
I know the starving-artist feeling. I’m convinced that all of the non-artist good people are broke. We got our very first non-family purchase a few days ago. I wish I could say it felt good, but for all the work we put into it that dollar (minus PayPal fees) just adds to the bitterness. I’m a writer and nobody reads. He’s a musician, and nobody pays for music. *Le sigh* Just know I love your work and if you ever put out a physical copy of your work ill pester someone into buying it for me for Christmas.
New drawing challenge…hmm…I’ll give you two, since I don’t know if you can/will want to do the first one:
1. Based on the few conversations we have had, draw what you think I look like.
-or-
2. Draw an octopus “one man band.” (I’m assuming you know what that is. If not I’ll elaborate.)
And as always, of course we are entertained. I love your posts. If you had a tumblr where you ranted about everyday life and did little doodles to emphasize your points I would follow it!
actually, i do have a tumbler, HERE. i must admit though, i don’t keep up with the new programs. some new app will come out and suddenly it’s the place to see and be seen, and i never get involved. but, if you have some hints and tips, i’d be happy to hear them, and if it brings heat to the comic, i’d be more than happy to look into it!
Hints and tips? Not so much. Just tag everything and let me know if I miss a post you want reblogged!
Draw the interface of a clash of clans clone that was created with the intention and a mechanic to help artists.
alright, for kicks, this is my concept. you run a studio and you have guys work for you, chained to their desks. you make them produce by hitting the draw button and making them art for you. happiness is not a modifier, and you can hire little guys with whips. I call it ‘slaves! the game’. it will be a huge flop.
I’d like to see you draw your take on Crawford Tillinghast and his machine from Lovecraft’s 1920 story “From Beyond.” I feel like you could get that crazed inventor look and it’d be fun to see what sort of mechanical gizmo you’d come up with to blend dimensions
i never read that story, so i popped it on at work, on youtube and gave it a listen. i like lovecraft, but i can sum up all of his stories with this one vague synopsis. i went to a place, i got creeped out for a while…. still creeped out…. omg something happened i cant describe! and now i’m either insane or dead.
but i thought that would be a fun little challenge, and this is what i came up with. as an extra bonus, it’s a bit of a taste of where tthe new style for the comic is going. enjoy!
check out the full sized image at my patreon site!
Haha, that’s fantastic! I love how you drew the machine. I always envisioned it as a glorified side table lamp. It looks like it could do what it was designed for now! And what is it about toothy smiles, right? You could make a series of prints out of this kind of thing. People eat anything with Lovecraft’s name on it like it’s candy.
Valid criticisms of the author too. I think there is a good reason he was primarily a pulp fiction author in his day. The irony to m is that for a “horror” writer I never found any of his stuff that spooky? I feel like all of his characters were seriously overreacting to things. Fooling around with powerful forces? Poking our noses into the mysteries of nature? Sounds pretty par for the course when it comes to humanity. Any sufficiently analyzed magic is indistinguishable from science. And if something exists in our reality then I do suppose it must belong there in its own way and should be firmly labeled “natural” with no prefixes attached.
The characters, as paranoid and neurotic as they were, just served as a perspective to me. It was the neat ideas that appealed. Necromancers who don’t just make zombies but raise VIPs from around the world to chat philosophy and find lost treasure? A race that can’t physically travel through time but can displace their consciousness with any sentient being at any other point in space time and build a library in primordial Australia? That stuff excited my intellect instead of stirring my fears. I’m not sure if I’d play the part of a dead researcher in most of his tales. Too curious for my own good.
cool! glad you liked it. yeah, it turned out alright, i think. fun little doodle.
and i’m not really criticizing lovecraft, i like his stuff, it’s just a formula he tended to work with. he also never wrote female characters. not sure why, maybe he didn’t find it relateable, who knows? but i tend to agree with you, and the characters were just bland vehicles to get to the things he actually liked. insanity and describing creatures. and that kind of thing was spooky to him, i suppose. at a time when the craziest things conceived were things like mummies and vampires, he was doing old sleeping gods from far away planets. he pushed the envelope quite a bit. just not with character development. haha