Failing at Failing Art - REBIRTH

This blog is being pressed back into service, effective immediately.

It's been a long couple of mon- wait, it's 2011 now? Jesus. Anyway, I'm working on getting things online in a more timely manner.

The main catalysis is I have begun finishing up pages of my new comic, Upstate Hero. It's just like Upstate, with 78% less wall of text and bad photoshop. I'll be posting previews on my tumblr, which is http://upstatehero.tumblr.com. I plan on deconstructing each page of Upstate to point out each and every fuck-up, which assuredly be many.

the other? I'm going to be in a drinking game that apparently is going to be linked on Something Awful. It's about a comic done by some guy who now has some kind of web-program these days. And speaking as someone who has had a shitty comic online, I plan on being fair - but firm.

You can check it out at http://www.ustream.tv/channel/pinstripe-catling-power-hour

Taking Jimmy to the Fair! - a side blog about old school Superman

I'm doing a little project on the side i have been planning to do for some months now. I've taken a real interest in old time radio with the idea towards producing some of my own radio plays some time. As research, I've taken a real shine to the old Adventures of Superman transcription shows. I call it Taking Jimmy to the Fair! It'll be updating to coincide with the 70th anniversary of the show. Check it out at http://takingjimmytothefair.blogspot.com/

Next update, some art, finally got my scanner re-re-REset up after migrating it around my room for one reason or another. Starting to see some organization, as the surface of my desk gains less random clutter and more doodle clutter. :3

G.I., G.O.

I really got to stop pretending I am updating this blog full time again! But it is not like anyone else reads it. If you are, I do hope you are enjoying my despondency, at the very least!

Yesterday was hourly journal comics day or some such nonsense, as I only found out about it about 1pm. I made a feeble attempt before being distracted per the usual, which is a pity because I made pizza dough from scratch that night and I bet it would have been 'fun' and 'quirky' as I understand these make reading this sort of thing enjoyable. Made a damn good pizza anyway so victory. More later, MAYBE.

In keeping up new habits...

A week into the new year - been doing alright. I've been trying to draw for fifteen minutes a day. Start small, I guess.

Spent the last few days being sickly. It takes a LOT to put me down for the count, though - and I got my scanner working! Tomorrow's priority is get me some much needed smaller frames for my glasses, and THEN scanning in some drawings that are not bears.

After twelve years

... I have resumed wearing the article of clothing I shall only hereafter refer to as 'THE SHIRT'. I have generally not worn this 'until the time was right' but it is a bright new year ahead, and I suppose today will be the day I simply start drawing and never stop.

My resolutions:

... I don't have any! I don't think I've ever managed to keep a resolution I made this entire decade, although "I swear to uphold and defend the Constitution etc, etc" might count!

Nah, I kid. I'd like to resolve to be more productive. This is the last three months of my twenty-somethings, and I really have not much to show for it. At least creative-wise, in my mind.

Not going to say bad things or good things didn't happen. Just that I realize I am not getting younger.

Short Day, End of Eras

Today is the shortest day of 2009. It's also the day news broke that the Crosbys killed Keen. Good. They had been killing it for years.

I've been on-again off-again cartoonist wannabe for 9 years, and a voracious reader, and the one thing I learned is, like everything else, cartooning has politics. Shit storms go all the back to the Yellow Kid and they got more press when things hopped online, simply because the buck no longer stopped behind syndicate memos and cartoonist associations. They became very public, and often personal.

Keenspace, and later Keenspot was instrumental in the same way all hosting sites are - they are the gold pans that hold flakes of precious metal. They are the Sunday comics section of internet, where good and the bad are presented along ads for what have you, and god bless capitalism. It was the portal where brave new pioneers of webcomics could cut their teeth, and then get the freaking hell out.

Why out? Because Keen, from what I gather from survivor accounts, is a little like being on a runaway truck that's about to collide with a series of tubes. It's not a business run, it's flung like crap to a wall, seeing what sticks. And now, it's cutting and running on the people who made it great in the first place - its cartoonists. That is, what cartoonists they haven't alienated to the point of breaking off and starting up on their own.

I don't claim to be an 'insider'. I love webcomics, just like I loved the comic strips I read as a grew up. I don't claim to be a cartoonist, either, because there are people who are, and have worked long and hard to get there. Some of those people used Keenspot for hosting, and they are being cut loose, so the people who ran things into the ground can work on their personal projects.

Professionalism in any industry needs to be kept at some kind of level, particularly when so many others depend on you for so much. Instead, it's being used as a personal playground, and when the game started getting too rough, you're taking your ball and your best friends, and going home. Or in this case, kicking everyone ELSE off the playground. And then acting surprised at the resulting fallout. I won't even get into the name-calling aspect, or how you treated some really nice people rather poorly for poorer reasons.

This is a shitty thing you're doing, Keen. Not for shooting the shaggy dog, but for leaving its corpse for other people to clean up.

Long Cold Winter

Wow... so... I kind of fell off the drawing wagon for the last two months. Not a huge surprise, seeing how it's not the 'How I made good with Art' blog.

The last couple of months have been a combination of me finding odd jobs here and there and dealing with stress - the usual bullshit excuses I tell myself when I realize there's a layer of dust of my sketchbooks again.

Eh, no matter. I am past the point of hating myself for being me. Just gotta get back into the groove.

In other news, I am going to kind of expand this blog to other stuff other than just my art. I've been toying with some other projects lately, and this is as good a place as any to log them.

Resolved to get this blog frequently updated again. I have been hesitant to really get into any personal shit, but recent events have got me pissed and punchy.

Hour 3: Rebooting from the Road

I did some sloppy inking last night. I was pretty stressed over the 12 hours prior to it, it looked terrible, and to top it off I lost it in the shuffle of trying to find my wallet last minute before going out for pizza and a movie. So we'll skip it and start the hour fresh.

I stayed overnight with my friends (I don't ride my motorcycle after dark), and ended up taking the long way back home this morning. I took a mountain pass and hit up a small town diner for breakfast, and I took my sketchbook and a pen inside and made my hour worth of drawing memorable.

Actually, it was funny, as the woman at the counter seat next to me noticed and complimented me on my art, which in more halcyonic days would have made my head swell. Instead, I explained what I was practicing and showed her how I did it, and it led to all those heads. I am pleased that I did them completely from scratch!

Tonight I will continue drawing.

BLARG I AM D-

It's cool, it's cool. I have a couple more pages done, need to scan them. The dinner I worked at tonight caused me incredible amounts of stress that I shan't get into. I will resume my vigil in the morning.

Hour 2: AND THEN I WENT TO BED

Ha, fie on you, 24HCD! I am going to get a few hours of sleep. BUT! Here's hour two of my vigil, such as it is:

Oh, Q... - Page three is me getting into some... I dunno, SOMETHING. Angry Sax is turning into my unofficial avatar, slowly. Almost makes me wish I was the one who created it.

Page Four - Eh, some faces of Lyster that kinda... meh. I teetered into the realm of Loomis figure drawing.

Loomis Day: Hour the FIRST!

In interest of saving your poor browser the trouble, click these here links!

Page one: 'warm up' - In which I doodle some random faces, and come up with Charles Manson, an old elf, the nice lady receptionist at the VA hospital in Albany, and the asshole poacher from "Rescuers Down Under", I guess.

Page two: '"blook" practice' - Loomis calls the basic circle with lines a 'blook' to which noses, ears, cheeks, and chin can and will be added - which Loomis recommends is done roughly in that order (hence my odd "head down" comment there)

So far so good - I am actually on my fourth page now, I forgot I had to post these!

24 HOURS (worth) OF LOOMIS

Yeah, the third of October is 24 Hour Comics Day. Like always, I nearly missed a webcartoonist 'holiday' mostly on the account that I am not really a webcartoonist, just a big kid playing as one. BUT, rather than let THIS year's slip away like the last... well, how many years they have been doing it? Okay.

FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER, I AM GONNA DO 24 HOURS OF COMICS HAHA (sorta).

Yeah, I have other plans in the next 24 hours. There is a dinner being thrown by my American Legion post that I can't miss, because those pots don't scrub themselves, kids. BUT, rather than make it all or nothing, I am just going to do 24 hours WORTH of comics (in other words, non-consecutive) within the next couple of days, which will allow me to fulfill my Kitchen Patrol duties AND have me sleep deprived enough to make my date on Sunday nervous. Oh joy! It'll be practice for next year's, I guess.

So, what I am going to do is study out of my Loomis books, and draw for an hour (or hours) and post the results of each hour here. I want to see if I can squeeze 24 posts out within three days, starting... shit, I better get started. :V

Tools of Yestermorrow

Since I began college and my mind started lusting for drawing a webcomic without doing any actual effort, I also began acquiring an embarrassment of things that I would use once, then sporadically, or neglect them altogether. I have a German technical pen set that I bought in an Kurdish shopping mall during my tour there. I have a pristine, never used ink pen and a set of nibs. I have some vellum still in its unopened box, hailing from my days as a drafting student, 9 years whence.

To be fair, I have moved from place to place many times over the last decade, and for one year, out of the damn country. Shit gets churned under after a while.

Gotta inventory them all and get usin' what still works. Tools don't make the carpenter, however.

Importance of the Spotless Mind

I have a sick habit of completely wasting my 'downtime'; I'd rather cram any creative output in between doing other things, particularly the income generating kind. I am awesome at multitasking, a trait that has only grown exponentially as I add more and more potentially time wasting online pastimes, such as IRC, forums, tweeting, Google Reader,and a whiny blog about how much I fail as a human being (perhaps you heard of it). Earlier in 2009 I fell off the MMORPG wagon and revived my WoW subscription, which I managed to let lapse a month ago. I can't begin to tell you how much of a good move that was.

Mind you, this is online. Offline I am involved in two other organizations (of one I was elected commander), am trying to get more involved in yet a third. I slowly increased my physical activity this year and as a result have lost nearly 30 pounds. Hobby wise I have taken up interest in beers and wine (and the home production thereof), in hiking and photography (tried to start a blog about that, too), and of course, cartooning.

I'm not rattling off this list to complain how little time I ever have in a day - if you wonder how I manage to do any of this effectively the blunt truth is that I don't. Yet, much of my sudden burst in productivity through self-management, I realize, stems from finally getting treatment for depression and the ilk. And it also has to do in part of slowly regaining my focus in life.

The other week I finally got around to cleaning out my roll top desk and it struck me how much crap I own. As a life long pack rat, I picked up a lot of physical baggage over the years, the emotional meaning behind each object has faded, if not disappeared entirely. But, as I will post a little later, I am also finding a treasure trove of tools I squirreled away.

Loomis meets Lyster's cheekbones...

Now applying some of what I learned here to Lyster (LIE-stir), the erstwile hero of my main comic. Upstate has undergone scores of changes since a lot of people last saw it, especially with some of the character designs. Lyse's hair, for example, acts a lot more like real hair, and his jawline has slowly gotten squarer.

At heart, of course, he's the same. In fact, he's getting closer and closer to the bipolar kung-fu hippie I picture in my mind everyday. I'm trying for a good balance of 'goofy' and 'serious' Lyster - boils down to 'ridiculous' and 'not-so-ridiculous' looking, really. It's not perfect, but like his hair, Lyster has more realistic cheekbones than before. It's significant, to me at least, that I'm learning how cheekbones actually work to shape a face, as opposed to imitating them.

... so comes the Autumn of Loomis

I ended up taking some advice from some other artists and downloaded the works of an artist named Andrew Loomis, who was an illustrator from the early 20th century, or the 'pre-photoshop-filter' era if you will.

His books are long out of print, and his family won't publish them in the foreseeable future. Despite this, the books remain an excellent source for beginning artists, or in my case, horrible ones trying to start over.

I'm taking it slow, starting with 'Fun with a Pencil' and work my way forward. Already, it's helped make some more expressive, if a little creepier, faces.

Three years ago today I debuted the previous version of "Upstate" which only lasted a year before I gave up on it. Writing was half the problem I had with it, so much so I ran myself into a literary corner; so many sins I've improved upon since then. But the real monkey on my back has been the art.

Hopefully this is the way to pry that damn simian off once and for all.

So Ends the Summer...

Almost three months since my last post, and there's too much to tell what went on during them. Let's leave it at there being some major changes in my life and in the lives around me, but not to the point anyone died or got a criminal record.

Oh, and I bought a motorcycle. More on this later.

At any rate, life is settling back into something that resembles stability for me, and things are starting to get accomplish again. I have a clean desk, a distraction free-work area (sometimes the previous two are even the same thing at once) and as of yesterday, an expanded set of shelves for my books. I'm dangerously out of excuses why I never draw things.

Speaking of, while not an entirely dry period of arts, I have come to a bit of an epiphany about my skills as an artist - I have more to 'unlearn' than I suspected, to purge myself of all the damn shortcuts I've built up over the years. It's time to start taking this seriously, or stop trying at all.

Of Fever Dreams and Getting Down with the Sickness...

For the last three weeks, I've been suffering from one kind of illness of another; on top of that, allergies. Other than having the bulk of my energy sapped, I'm in good spirits. I am actually getting organized.

Going to be out of town for a couple of nights, but I'm taking my sketchbook. See you in a few.

How to Fail Art: Procrastinate!

So, I skipped updating for nearly two months as research for this post.

Okay, no I didn't. I'm a procrastinator.

It really struck me home recently, just a few weeks ago visiting a friend who had a table at MoCCA. I told her proudly that I was working on my comic again. She looked at me and said, "no, you aren't." Damn her, but she was right. I'm a procrastinator.

One of the biggest inner demons I possess is my ability to stonewall ANYTHING to death. Seriously, if only it were just me procrastinating at drawing. My life has been a series of events that never quite fully took off, and there's a point where the cause of it all just can't be chalked up to mere laziness. I have an adult case of ADD with a mild case of depression, and recently I've been getting both treated via my veteran's benefits. For the first time in a decade, I'm on medication; I'm happy to report that it has indeed begun to help me in a big way. On medication, it's akin to being able to swim without a huge weight tied around your neck, but even off medication, I still managed to 'swim'. So no excuses here, now: even on meds, I'm still procrastinating!

You can take away all your problems, remove all distractions, obstacles, and still, still, Fail Art. All you have to do is just never get started again. It's a problem that's not unique to me -life happens, and many choose to go out and have an actual life. I'll update the comic later, no problem! And that blog about failing at art? All in good time!

Many, many webcomics die because they just lose steam and never get updated again. Or if they do, it's very half-hearted, or a short lived burst. Such a cartoonist may be lazy, or they might have good reasons for skipping out on updates, but either way without a good structure in place to allow comics to be made and published at a constant rate, it boils down to a hard question: do you want to be a cartoonist, or are you just going to keep playing as one?

It's a question I'm asking myself tonight, on the seventh anniversary of my first attempt to put a webcomic online. And I'm going to reply 'I'll give it another shot. I'm done procrastinating!'