More impossible times lately, but trying to use the few OK minutes to work on the card. I missed pages. I only did two in all of 2023 (the previous card). Here’s to more than two in the new year, and I hope you’re all having a nice quiet time until then —
Done during one of my more uphill times, but I was happy to be able to do a cover for Ben Stenbeck’s creator-owned book. And since it’s for another artist, I allowed myself to do it almost how I’d do it for myself.
When I did the other Christopher Chaos cover, this was the only alternative idea I had, and the editors approved both (hooray!) so this one was done for a later issue, out in December.
When I did the Inktober book back in 2017, I did some sketched-in copies, and then I colored a lot of those sketches for my own fun. There were enough of them for another book, but I don’t make sketchbooks. Yet I did do a mockup a couple of years ago [for redacted reasons], and I ran into that tonight while clearing out some shelves, and enjoyed seeing it again.
The point (…) isn’t to imagine a parallel universe in which things were easy, but to raise the possibility that they might in fact be easy, here and now.
(…) the irony of what’s going on here is that this prospect – that something meaningful might prove easier than you imagined – can itself be a source of discomfort. Many of us were apparently raised to believe not just that important things can feel difficult (they can!) but that they must feel difficult; that the measure of accomplishment is how much effort it took. And, moreover, that effort is a measure of self-worth — that if an achievement comes easily to you, you must somehow be cheating, or that you just got lucky.
It feels somehow illicit to consider the alternative: that you might already have all it takes (…)
Today I did start the day with a “personal 30”, thirty minutes carved out of any viable work time, because I needed to draw something – anything – just for myself. What I draw for myself: