C'est Parfait!

 
Well, at least Artsy thinks so...

For reasons I still can't comprehend, the face didn't turn out well. It doesn't quite look like the same artsy as she was in the last picture. Of course, that panel turned out astonishingly well that it's not a surprise that I wouldn't match it on my next effort.

I was actually considered deleting the entire sketch and starting over again several nights ago. Not only was the face bothering me, the long sleeves of the kimono bore a distinct resemblance to cardboard. Often I would spend only a few minutes a night actually drawing, the rest in staring at the thing in fatigue. This has been the unfortunate standard in my evenings for the last three months.

Thankfully, I have a little help. When I've been fortunate enough to have it handy, I pull out my copy of Rebuild an Omnipresence in [the] Wired. It's an updated reprint of the Yoshitoshi aBe art book for Serial Experiments Lain. Being a tremendous fan of his work, I've tried to incorporate elements of his style in my own. I've drawn a great deal of inspiration from the book when I thought I had stalled completely.

That too, has also happened more than I'd like in the last few months. Back in January, I had hoped that I would be able to draw five pages in two weeks. Now it's nearing mid-May and I'm still working on those five. If this were any indication of the rate I could produce Novella comics, this will take a very, very long time.

Of course, it's not like the last three months are typical. Not unless you consider 8 flight to and from Indiana (via O'hare) for a consulting assignment, fly across the ocean for a 2 week holiday in the UK, or attempt to manage a massive (to me at least!) systems integration project on the west coast. Typical? Nahhhh... All of that as well as some resent events in my personal life have left me a bit shaken. Yesterday evening was the first night in months I actually felt like myself. Those issues aside, there are other practical challenges I'm facing.

While I've been drawing exclusively using digital methods, I still haven't quite got the hang of it. It is not the same as drawing with a stylus on plastic as it is with pencil on paper. There are things one can do in one medium that you cannot do easily in the other. Overall, I'm finding digital methods less frustrating and easier to manipulate. At the same time, it's all the more ways to hang yourself.