I think I've finally hit a creative brick wall. I can't make anything work this week.

It's obvious to me that the problem is a combination of burnout, stress, and just generally being weary of where I am. I miss my life in Vancouver.

Sooooooooooo here are two comics that suck.

Sorry.

( Terrible rejects under the cut )

I'm going on Vacation next week. A vacation I very clearly need. Trevor and I are going to drive around down roads chosen at random and ride our bikes down dangerous things. Hopefully by the time I get back I'll have a semi-functional brain again.

My guest strip at Wondermark went up today :) Malki! is such a cool guy, it was an honour getting to do a guest strip for him, and a fun challenge.

I drew all the pictures, because that was somehow easier than building a library of Victorian Plates? Here are the components I used:



( the rest )

I'm pretty pleased with how it came out :) But I wonder about the statistics of victorian-era plate artists going prematurely blind D:

Whew! Over the last 3 days I've done a lot of colouring and I'm glad I'll be bringing at least 9 new mini prints to AnimEvo. A few more I want to do still, but I feel muuuuch better having these done than not-done.

This is one of the prints:



Which Trevor really liked (for obvious reasons). And then he saw this one of Yoko:
( cut for provocativeness )

Which, honestly, I really only drew on a whim.

Trevor wants me to do an Uhura in the same style as Yuko there (but, obviously, less boobilicious-ly). Buuuuuut... I dono.

I really like drawing pretty ladies, no lie, but frankly, they don't sell. Therefore I'd rather draw my original-character boob-ladies.

Still, Uhura. Prrr.

A thing, on your shirt?

I like how in my euphoria of finishing something I immediately forget that it ever happened.

But yesterday I mailed off the last of the many watercolour portrait commissions I took on to fund the trip to NEWW! It was so worth it, not only were the donations generous and swift and funded a ridiculously productive and amazing adventure, but the portraits themselves were really fun to do!

Here are a few of the ones that I did, these are the ones that I'm *reasonably* sure weren't meant to be surprises, or if they were they've arrived by now.



YEAH!

I don't really know what to do with this anymore.

( Pittur )

Not having this page "officially finished" was hurting my soul. Looking at it hurts my soul, but I'd rather have this as "officially done" than close out the fourth month with no progress on this project.

Artists - if you have feedback I'd love to hear it, my goals for this project are to improve my colouring and my writing.

The Digital Strips folks did a review of Wasted Talent!

And I forgot my headphones! D: I can't listen to it until I get home!!

I hope it's not too harsh ;__;

[Update]: It was good! :D

- Does a good job of making it so "you don't have to be there" (I do try hard to avoid that), but some of the jokes are inside to engineering, which is fair.
- Other characters are more 2-D, which is ok, I didn't want you to need to know the people to get the joke
- A lot of the earlier strips were "it's funny because it's true", and were "dead on" to life in school
- Last year in a half was "way way better" in terms of the art, which is of course true hahaha
- Like the colouring

Nothing they "horribly dislike", was "just another journal comic" before the colours
- A bit too many "lovey dovey" strips before but that's gotten better too, that's good to hear

Overall good news :D Thanks DS!

Ok. So I figured out what was bothering me about this blog. I'm not really using it the way others are these days. For me this blog has been very personal, a way for me to work out what's bothering me by putting it into words and paragraphs. Basically, I've been using it to plan, and to mope. Others use it to post rough art, and interesting musings about the "industry", or interesting musings related to their niche/passion.

I feel like I still need a place to plan and mope, but it doesn't need to be a public blog. My life is becoming a bit... too public if you know what I mean.

I've been thinking a lot (ok I always think a lot) about what I want to DO with my words. I'm pretty set with what I want to do with my comics, but I've struggled with the whole blogging thing. I slowly came to the realization that the thing that *I* have that can add value to the world is the fact that I'm seriously pursuing becoming successful at a creative passion WHILE ALSO becoming successful in a technical career. There aren't many who do this, but there are many who want to. Dream to.

The problem is that I don't, uh... I don't know how to do it yet. I'm not a success. But I'm learning. Someday I'd like to write a serious blog about how to balance passion and carreer and life, but I'm not an authority yet. I'm just an amateur. So I'm starting an amateur blog on this topic. (That's LJ ;) )

So this is how it will be from now on:

I'm feeling kind of ... "bweh" about this blog.

*drums fingers some more*

I want to rebrand and repurpose it. I'm not sure yet what that purpose should be. I still need an emospace.

*drum drum drum*

I should not be thinking about this right now. I get in moods where I'm super-ambitious and I forget that I actually have no time and I have a thousand things to do.

I'm curious, who's still in the game for Commissions? I still get requests every once in awhile and it would be nice to know who is interested if I ever have a buck to pass.