As of Friday, August 7, 2020 – I have created 234 images in the Family Style series. My original intention was to take a break on creating these after I finished the latest Sideshow Banner art series.
234 is a funky number… and anyone who knows me knows that I’m not fond of funky numbers.
So, I’m going to continue with the series until I hit 250… which will take me to August 31, 2020.
The first image of the series… Us in the style of the show “Family Guy” was posted on August 22, 2019. I took a few days off (not including weekends) here and there over the course of the series…intentional and unintentional… but for the most part, there was a new image in the gallery every weekday. I”m pretty proud of that.
So, the series will go until August 31. After that? Not sure. Maybe I’ll only take a week off and go right back into it… maybe not. There’s a lot of life between now and the 31st.
Thanks for coming along for the ride with me. Hope you enjoyed it.
Today I begin the Sideshow banner/carnival art style of my ongoing family styles series.
I’ve been posting images to this series since last August. I had no idea what started then would become what it is now.
I’ve done a lot. I’ve learned a lot. But in that process, I’ve let things slide… as we all do. We’re human after all.
Maybe my time (at least two plus hours a day every weekday ) would be better spent on other aspects of my work: revamp the website, re-examine the strip, figure out life in the strip… etc.
Make no mistake, I LOVE doing these pieces… maybe I love them too much? (is that possible?)
This series may end up being the last I do for a while. I don’t know yet. I’ll see how I feel creatively, physically and mentally once this series is complete.
In the meantime, keep checking them out…
Stay safe.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for continuing to support me, my family and my work.
It was one of those days where color was meaningless. They all looked the same to me. Nothing worked well, even the tones that by definition work. I couldn’t see it. Shapes had no form. Value had no value. It sucked.
My way of getting stuff out rarely deviates from: Idea – Sketch – Finish. More often than not, and when faced with a time crunch, I skip the second step and start finishing as soon as the idea hits me. It’s a luxury and a skill I’ve cultivated after years of… years. I didn’t consciously try to develop it… it just happened from sheer repetition.
Anyway, back to this morning.
You know what the worst part was? I was getting frustrated. I was getting REALLY frustrated. When I get frustrated I can either become great (also known as lucky) or a jerk who never wants to create again. I don’t know what was making it more difficult for me: that I wasn’t satisfied with what I was churning out or that I wouldn’t have anything to post today. That the schedule I’ve adhered to for nearly a year would be disturbed. Maybe they were all bothering me equally.
I’d invested a good chunk of my morning on the portrait of me in the style of Alphonse Mucha… testing the design limits of Procreate’s UNDO feature and just piling on layer after test layer.
“If I can’t figure this out and finish in 20 minutes, I’m moving on.”
To a civilian, that doesn’t appear to be the abject HORROR that it is to someone like me. And even when you DO finish something you never REALLY think it’s finished.
My day is ruined already at 3:27 a.m. and no one but me is awake to know it.
But then I realized that in my “process” with today’s piece, I’d completed two of the three steps. I took another look at the messy sketch I was working off of and suddenly it became beautiful. I could see the engineering… the scaffolding beneath the surface that I couldn’t provide. All the stuff that I did to get me to where I needed to go was there…I just couldn’t get there.
Every now and then we all need a refresher on how we got to now. If you change direction along the way… it’s okay. You tried.
No pause…
