I haven’t gone back and looked, but it’s been two or three months since I dropped off the face of the planet and holed up in my studio. While my methods may not always be pretty, it allowed me to break free of Facebook and cut back on the others (Twitter, Instagram). Now I’ve got to see if I can delve back into the platform again…or if I even want to.

The good news is that I feel like I want to say things again and this place will do just as fine as any to host any of those thoughts. Not as many viewers as on Facebook, but it’s never been about an audience for me…it’s more about the recording of history and telling of a story.

Sorry, nothing Inktober related to post yet, but I did work on the outline of my project; this needed to be done before beginning the actual drawings. Yes, I’m behind, but that’s ok. Hopefully nobody expects Vermeer or Rembrandt because my talent level is more Picasso channeled through a 12 year old.

I’m starting to miss my friends, which is a good sign that I’m pulling through whatever the last three or so months was all about. Hopefully I haven’t been disowned by all of them at this point. Life doesn’t get any easier as you get older, kids. In my case at least it’s gotten infinitely more complicated and weird.

Gotta go. Those socks aren’t going to order themselves from Amazon.

I was so excited for Inktober (the same kind of excited that I usually get, cool exterior, but beneath the surface, feet paddling like a duck). Anyway, imagine my surprise when it clicked in my brain that October had already started….and not just today or yesterday but two days ago. When I was designing the Inktober page, I should’ve already been focusing on art, but for some reason my brain was stuck two weeks ago and hadn’t seemed to have moved a minute.

I guess I’m a bit unmoored not having a schedule that is required when one has even a part-time job, let alone a full-time position. I suppose I should do the right thing and begin scheduling my days with the things I want to eventually get done, otherwise I’ll just fritter and waste my hours in an offhand way just like Mr. Floyd and before you know it I’ll be getting a job.

Anyway, my Inktober has now officially begun and I hope to quickly catch up. I have an idea for a theme that will incorporate the word-a-day suggestions for the event, but will have to see if that’s what I proceed with. I will include any further details on the Inktober page.

I ask you how much more weird could this year get? None more weird. I am not sure how ‘the Donald getting covid’ will play out, but I am sort of regretting abandoning Facebook right about now.

Almost, anyway.

I’m sure the memes are fire and the local Prescott Valley page looks like downtown Portland, but alas the revolution will have to go on without me.

Avoiding the dark side is tough. The things one does for their mental health.

Mind Management creator Matt Kindt (my favorite creator in modern comics) has a small but very nice selection of videos on his YouTube channel. This is a good one on inking and even though it is digital art (not my favorite by any stretch), it’s amazing how the blacks pull everything together at the end.

Also, I made an Inktober page. We’ll have to see if I use it.

I know it’s not fashionable to post song lyrics. Nobody likes reading them. Nobody cares. On the other hand, this is my page and bite me. I’ve heard this song (Time by Pink Floyd on their Dark Side of the Moon album) a bazillion times but never really paid attention to what the lyrics were saying, never mind that I’ve known them by heart for years. I have a new appreciation for this song, not only because of the way this year has played out so far (anyone else fritter and waste any hours this year?), but also how it points out how you tend to see time as you get older and that it can have a tendency to slip away from you if you’re not careful (or even if you are).

The last three lines don’t apply to me because I’m not English and I probably have a word or two more to say before I’m done, but the rest of it is a really great description of how I feel some days in 2020. I’m sure much of it is just the times we’re in…who knows what normal feels like anymore?

TIME (Pink Floyd)

Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day
Fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way.
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town
Waiting for someone or something to show you the way.

Tired of lying in the sunshine staying home to watch the rain.
You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today.
And then one day you find ten years have got behind you.
No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun.

So you run and you run to catch up with the sun but it’s sinking
Racing around to come up behind you again.
The sun is the same in a relative way but you’re older,
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death.

Every year is getting shorter never seem to find the time.
Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way
The time is gone, the song is over,
Thought I’d something more to say.

Well, it’s been a long time coming, but my headspace is pointing towards writing again as my brain begins to thaw from the big freeze of the last three months. I haven’t necessarily been focused on writing par se, but as I’ve been getting out of the house more, I’m beginning to think more about my book, the upcoming Inktober and NaNoWriMo events taking place in October and November and with full knowledge that I am taking the rest of the year off in order to focus on creative endeavors. I have lost enough damn time to various crises that 2020 has seen fit to pitch at me and I’m ready to go….finally ready like I was feeling and executing back in January and February.

Other projects await: a fanzine of some shape/form/fashion for my LCS (local comic shop for you non-nerds), work on adapting one of my short stories to graphic novel form, and maybe the most fun of all: working on art projects to support the other various endeavors. While (to me) writing is the most fulfilling thing I do, art is what I have the most fun doing (aside from my comic hobby, which I’ve had for 40+ years now, it’s not going anywhere). I also really need to get a mailing out for my APA. It’s been almost a year since I’ve cobbled an issue of Nemesis together. Issue 6 is nearly complete, I just need to get moving and do it.

Many more posts to come in the future as I decide how to handle Facebook (or lack thereof). I imagine I’ll end up using the website->FB functionality.

Shown here is the ‘pre-final’ version of the mythical Nemesis 6. It is literally taped together like a gradeschool project. This is just to be sure to eliminate production errors like misplaced and misaligned pages, spelling and punctuation problems, missing/incorrect/wrong sized art, etc. Once the errors have been identified and corrected in inDesign, I print out one copy, put it all together, and do a final proofing before printing and ‘binding’.

Also: No, there was not actually any chloroform in that bottle yesterday.

Today I took the Domestika course on architectural sketching with ink (more on that in another post) and took up a new hobby (pictured here). I’ll probably retake the course several more times.

Honestly not sure if I have enough chloroform to get the job done though. May have to reassess.

I’ve always wondered what animals thought of television and if they correlate their human becoming a vegetable with the fact that they are sitting in front of the TV. One thing is for sure….my cats know that when they hear the boop of the TV turning off that it’s dinner time. Animals are a lot more intuitive than many people think. I know correlating a sound with dinner is more pavlovian than actual ‘thinking’, but humans can be conditioned in the same way.

Went to bed late and got up late and am wrangling with a headache at the moment, but still plan to do the art classes and maybe prepare some materials for Inktober today. I imagine there will be comics too. Upper 80’s today, so am not sure it’s hiking weather yet or not. Stay tuned.

While we are all still pandemic-ing, I will still leave the house for new comics and groceries, and as every proper nerd knows, new comic day falls on Wednesday unless you are DC, in which case you are an asshole and have your day on Tuesday or whenever it is now. So new comics from Peregrine and back home to take a couple of art classes, the first one centered around architectural sketching with watercolor and ink. Once I’m finished with that one, I’ll delve into the Sumi-E (Chinese inking) class (both of which I purchased months ago, but life happened and I’m taking them now).

Comic of the week:

I’ve decided to participate in Inktober this year in addition to doing the National Novel Writing Month challenge again. Last year I was able to complete a 45,000 word weird fiction novella in the thirty days, this year I am going to use the opportunity to get moving on the second third of the Mycelium Network. I’ve never done Inktober, but am going to use the month of October trying to adapt one of my short stories into a 32 page comic book. The actual Inktober challenge is different from what I’m doing, and that is just to draw a new illustration every day based upon a word prompt (see below).