Working Work Work
Five hours sleep last night. Feel a little bleary. Coffee, do your stuff!
Finding motivation to draw yesterday was a herculean effort. I say this because I actually used the imagery of myself as Hercules lifting a terrible weight to actually get started. It worked. Through gritted teeth and muscles straining, I was able to pick up a piece of paper. A thick piece of paper. As reluctant as I was to start, what I did produce was incredible. In two and a half hours of mentally grinding through my laziness, I finished the pencils on a piece. A piece I was expecting to take eight more hours of refinement before ready for washes. No erasing, no trial and error, no tweaking, every line was just right the first time down, somehow. I look at it right now and the art feels great. It all works well and it leaves me impressed and confused. Oh well, why argue with results?
Past those hours of gold production, you’d find me reviewing sketches in my books to see what needs development. There’s a lot of little things that’ll work, but there’s a lot of work needed. To make them work . . . Work . . . Pardon, I got distracted with my generous use of the word, I digress. Uhm, I have a ton of sketches, a modest portion of which are suitable. I was taken aback how basic they all are. Somehow I deluded myself into thinking a handful of those were further along then they are. I welcome the reality check, though. I’ll allocate some effort into getting those done. They are vastly easier then the paintings. Won’t take a ton of time. They are also the salt of the book. Basic and flavor enhancing.
One more paragraph, Why? Cause it feels right.
I was gonna write a little segment on poetry, but at this time, my heart sinks thinking about it. That means Poetry is the topic that breaks the scales and makes me feel overwhelmed. It won’t be hard, I can and will do it. Just later. In the mean time, I’d like a few small things to fill in the gaps. You know, tiny things that make little differences. An extra half hour of drawing exercises a day to sharpen some basic skills. Tighten up a few things on the website for aesthetic appeal. Write an extra tweet or two for publicity. You know, things that don’t take a lot of mental muscle to do, things that count towards the overall picture.