- Have I been working away building up some headway before posting to prevent delays or interruptions? (I wish!)
- Have I been working on someone else's project that actually pays? (Please! But no.)
- Have I actually slipped into the Costumentality universe and are getting much of the low-down on what I need to right? (I wouldn't come back, sorry.)
Around the time I opened this blog up, I was working on making the process of idea-to-posting as simple and easy as to be negligible. I thought eliminating the impediments would get things going. I even joined an open-minded writer's MeetUp locally to help me smooth out my writing style in person.
While there, I spoke to one of the alphas of the pack. (They were very welcoming and friendly, without a doubt!) I was telling her some of the ins and outs of what I was going to do. (I was expecting to have people attack the genre of webcomiks as not being 'writing;' I was so wrong about these people.)
She said, "Okay, let's see it. Do some."
Sigh.
I had to admit that I was blocked. I had to face myself in the mirror and admit I hadn't drawn more than a picture and a half in the last fifteen years. (Yikes! Has it really been that long?!?) I was embarrassed and haven't shown my face there since then. (I'll go back when I have something to show, right?)
I spent some time searching my navel about this one. I even to took over the writer's block MeetUp group locally in a search for a solution. Without any luck. I even posted on the forum of one of the webcomikers I follow asking what he did when he was blocked; I explained that I couldn't even get myself to doodle.
Know what he said? Scribble. Scribble some more. Keep scribbling until the artist in me can't stand it and makes sense of some of the scribbles. (My words, his thoughts.)
Months pass, I waste countless hours on the hopeless task of catching up to my wife's leveling on World of Warcraft. (What was I thinking? She plays four to five times as much time as I have free for it!)
Finally, when she took a break and we canceled our accounts (temporarily), I started taking my sketchbook to work in place of my laptop. I forced myself to scribble on filled pages that had failed to yield a drawing. I worked along side what I had done so long ago. Right up until I got to some of the earlier drawings I had done for the webcomik.
Then magic happened.
I took the drawing my wife had made to design one of the characters, copied it up the size needed and traced it. (Incidentally, how I started drawing more than three decades ago.) Like my webcomiking friend said, it offended my artist's sensibilities enough that I HAD to mess with it. I had to 'fix' it.
And I'm drawing again.
Don't expect much. I'm a long way from drawing the webcomik, but I'm working successfully towards that. I've gotten back to being able to design faces. Right now I'm doodling around with the human figure. Dozens of hour-glass-bodied, stick figures dance, prance and web-sling around my sketch book now. (I'm still waiting for the badly proportioned figures to once again offend my delicate sensibilities so I can get back to figure work.)
Then look out!
See you in 13,
Fang
