Ink: verb
1. To make penciled lines permanent for purposes of artwork.
2. To make amazing lapses in perception crystal clear in ways that pencil cannot convey.

Still working on Furlough two here, and it’s still going pretty well. However, on Friday, I discovered a magical bit of perspective-based fuckery that I simply must share with you.

I use reference pictures and occasionally get a mirror to try out postures and do other little checks and balances to make sure that my little drawn peoples never look too mutated. However, sometimes, well, it takes STARK BLACK LINES to make something perceptible. Observe:

For a moment, I was happy – oh, those fingers turned out pretty well. Then… well. It made me think of this:

We’ll, um, fix that in post. Yes.

In happier art news, here’s today’s warm-up sketch:

Based on a couple of couples I saw last night. I hope their dog has wire-rimmed glasses too.

P.S. We are currently at 424 for the spam count. I cheated a little and closed comments on my most frequently spammed post. 76 more and I’m going to get to start illustrating Abraham Lincoln quotes posted in Russian.

Seriously, you guys, look:

I finished penciling page 35 yesterday, but I wanted to do a wee bit of inking before I went to bed. So that’s where we are.

Last issue, I was basically sprinting toward the Emerald City ComiCon*; this time, I’m trying to be more leisurely, to experiment and perhaps lean on the perfect side of “Done is better than perfect” a little more.

I did notice differences in the way I work, while penciling. I’m having that feeling of, “Wow, walking up this hill is easier since I’ve been running on the treadmill so much!” Things that freaked me right out on issue one – backgrounds, some furniture, other non-human things that needed to be drawn – were easier, occasionally to the point that I didn’t give them any special thought at all beyond, “Wow, this used to be hard as hell.” It is extremely satisfying to see things getting better and easier, and to be able to shift my attention to other things I need to work on.

*Almost every time I write this, I start to write “Emerald Coast ComiCon,” and I have to correct myself. I’ve lived in two different places that label themselves the Emerald Something, which creates some weird confusion on my part. I do it when speaking too sometimes, earning me some very weird looks from people.

First off, a note about my goings on: I’m going to be at the Stumptown Comics Festival in Portland, Oregon this coming weekend, April 24-25. I honestly do not know if I’ll have a table, but I’ll definitely be wandering around there at least one day. I’ll update when/if I know more about my having a flat surface on which to hawk my wares.

Now then: I’m working on Furlough issue two – and reworking. I wrote the full four-issue script before I started thumbnailing issue one, but I knew there would be changes as I went along. You can’t look at a story for so long without having some new ideas.

Well, for this one, I opened my existing issue two script (which I hadn’t looked at since December) and went, “Oh, shit – nothing actually, um, happens.” It was all in-between scenes as it brought the story closer to its climax and conclusion. Necessary, but as a separate bound volume, it would not exactly have been scintillating stuff. So I’m working around that, moving some issue three things to issue two, and adding some new stuff too.

I love editing, although it’s a little harder with this because it’s my own. Behold:

Historically, I’ve had a little bit of cart-before-horse syndrome. I’ve made myself completely hold off on thumbnailing this issue until I get the script right. But back when I was writing the first draft of all four issues, there were panels and scenes whose layout and look were established even then. And now that I’m going over it again, pen in hand, I can’t resist putting a few things on paper.

So: progress. This script ran a little long (nine pages (!), compared to issue one’s five), but I think it’s what the story wants. As all artists are merely slaves to what the muse gives us, who am I to balk?

I officially started penciling Furlough tonight. I meant to do it forever ago, but I got completely bogged down in the editing process.

“Why,” I asked myself, “is this proving to be so damned hard? I’ve been writing stories since I was 12, I’ve written a metric fuckton in the last decade, so I shouldn’t be so stuck on a 20-page comic script for a four-issue comic.” (That’s my current estimate, incidentally.)

Well, I figured it out. Yes, I have written a metric fuckton. What I haven’t done oodles of is, um, finishing things. Finishing them and taking them through the editing process and watching it necessarily mutate as you show it to other people and hammer out dents and make it into something real that can survive daylight. Workshopping? My degree might as well be in that. But finishing something and making it right? No.

I’m there now. I thumbnailed the entire first issue, and I penciled the first three pages tonight. That’s the vicious, thrilling schedule: three pages penciled or inked each day through March 7. Why March 7? Because the Emerald City Comicon is March 13th, and I will have a completed issue of Furlough for it, if I have to draw til my fingers bleed and stay at my desk until my eyes dry out. So: three pages per day. OR BUST. Lookit:

From page two.

Amy Martin told me that a convention would make me get things done. She should’ve cackled maniacally afterward, like a movie gypsy delivering a prophecy.

I also posted more zines on my Etsy store. I had to refresh my inventory of the Creativity Zine and the Surreal Moments zine (exciting!), so I added a couple other smaller ones I made for swaps, but with an eye to other people as well. One’s just text, which is funny to me; it feels so weird to make a zine entirely on the computer. Like I faked it or something. The other is, um, the opposite of that. Wholly handwritten, done in one draft, and possibly done while being influenced by a fair and welcome amount of tequila. It’s a screed, make no mistake, but it’s a screed that looked just fine to me the next morning.

It’s not usually a term I use, as it suggests that my cat is a child substitute. (He is not, as I want a cat, but very much do not want children. There are other distinctions, but that’s the only relevant one.)

However, Christmas has made the occasional cat/baby similarity hard to ignore. A friend’s blog about having a baby has had shown some eerie parallels to my life lately. Christina and I both spent the morning playing with our little friends in seas of wrapping paper. We both enjoy pestering our little friends until they make funny noises or faces, and then sometimes we take pictures of them. There’s that sense of seeing the world in a new way because of the way some other, smaller, less developed creature reacts to things.

This morning (aka 1-4 pm), boyfriend and I did Christmas at home with le chat; this evening was spent at a friend’s house, watching his pissed off, territorial cat interact with an invading Boston terrier in a red hoodie. Both of these things made me want to try drawing them. (White cat is mine; black cat is the friend’s.) I usually (um, obsessively) draw people; I should draw animals more often, because it’s fun. Secondary benefit: if I make the cat’s nose or ears too big, I’m not going to hear about it.

I’m working on a cat zine, and the preoccupation is clearly rearing its furry head.

*Edited December 26th to add a link to Christina’s blog, once I got her ok about referring people to a site about her kidlet.

After a relatively active few days (seeing John Oliver at Snoqualmie, going to Brian Despain’s show opening), I had a thoroughly vegging Sunday.  See if you can guess why that might be, based on a sample of tonight’s sketchbook work.

My imagery is deeply opaque.  That is all.