Found myself creating an alternate version of yesterday's piece today.

My RSS fetcher (Newsflow) was overflowing with too many unread posts (600+), so I spent a bit of the morning skimming through 100+ posts until I decided it's okay to obliterate all the rest and start fresh. Every once in a while I get into the habit of developing The Fear [of missing out], but then remind myself that it's okay to not keep up with all the things and just limit to the input my lifestyle's bandwidth can handle. Just as we gotta be realistic about our output, it's not a bad idea to be realistic about our input (and hey, maybe that'll give us more time for more output 😁). Removed a few feeds and unsubscribed from a few newsletters to bring it down to a manageable input flow.

Today is farmshare day where we pick up a box of fresh veg before venturing to the supermarket for kitchen staples. Papertowels and handsoap were still nowhere to be found last week.

There should be enough time to fiddle with a TSG page which I estimate will be finished by tomorrow.

It is a steamy 29C/85F today and very oppressively humid. Inbox down to 2, iced coffee keeping my brain in operation. No coconut oil in this one (it would solidify). Instead, a spoonful of coconut sugar, which I'm told is even healthier than the raw turbinado stuff.

#Journal #Work

Just realized I never shared this one here.

As I type this, it is 4:40 am. I've been up since 2:30 am after having only gotten a couple hours sleep. Mind ablaze but leading nowhere.

Goodbye, Monday.

#Journal #sketchbook

Wife walked in and saw this on my desk and her face was overtaken by horror. IT'S FOR MY COMIX, I shouted, I'M NOT CRAZY!

In the end, I'm opting to go with the smaller, typed out text.

Started painting future child's room yesterday, and tidied up a bit around the office, but also made the time to read a little bit. It was good to step away from the drawing table. But with that comes a different perspective and thoughts on “the bigger picture.”

Friends in New York are either foraging for edible greens in what little shrubbery the city exhibits or—for those who could afford it—have fled out to the countryside.

Things aren't nearly as bad in Houston, but the situation is still dire as it is globally, and as I paint future child's room I find myself thinking about the future in ways I never have before.

#journal

Coffee is shaken, not stirred. That's what creates the foamy top, together with a tablespoon of coconut oil and a dash of goat's milk (I used to take my coffee extra sweet for years, but I've been off sugar for two months now and the coconut oil—although nowhere nearly as sweet as sugar—cuts through the bitterness some).

It's time to ink today. For which I'll be using a series 795 Round Loew-Cornell #2 brush for the first time (I usually use Trekell's Kolinsky Sable Round 7000 series in a size #3 for brush work, Zebra's G nib for, uh, nib work, and Staedtler pigment liners—mostly 0.3 and 0.1—for straightforward “cleanline” styles).

(Which should not be confused with the European “Ligne Claire” approach, which still offers a degree of line-weight variation. That's what the Loew-Cornell is for, it's what Chris Ware uses. The Kolinsky #3 is what Eisner used, and offers thicker strokes. G Nibs are used by Naoki Urasawa (I think?), and pigment liners are used by Mignola.)

Excited to see what the Loew-Cornell will do.

#Work #Journal #TheSolarGrid #MakingComix

My good friends at the Boulder Weekly have decided to publish my demented vision of the future and use my art on their cover this week.

Still working on that cursed “isometric” page in THE SOLAR GRID. It's coming along rather well (albeit a little slower than a “standard” comix pages).

Elsewhere in the back of my mind, I'm thinking of the weird surrealist art that used to adorn many science fiction paperbacks of the 60's and 70's, and that maybe, just maaaaaybe... I might like to do something along those lines for THE SOLAR GRID once complete and collected.

#journal #work #TheSolarGrid #makingcomix

Not a good day for migraines, not when I'm drawing something that requires a high degree of precision.

This kind of isometric perspective that is typical in the work of Chris Ware doesn't come naturally to me, mainly because... well, I hate rulers. Not as much as, say, Paul Pope (who draws buildings and stairwells and cars with the same organic brush-strokey energy seen in his figures), but still; this kind of approach is all rulers.

To be fair, a facet of all my work is probably the tension between “accuracy” and its complete opposite.

Good things can come out of migraines btw. There's this page in Chapter 1 that I distinctly recall being hit with a migraine attack the day I was working on it.

In fact, that particular page wasn't even planned at all. I only included it because of the attack. And it's probably the only bit in the entire chapter infused with a degree of humor. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

I was living in LA at the time, which, shit already feels like a lifetime ago.

#Journal #work #MakingComix #TheSolarGrid

Lunch today is tuna salad after which I may need my third cup of coffee (which is a lot for me).

I did not get around to inking yesterday, and today I felt like I'd rather get some more pencils in, so set myself up for two not entirely easy pages. For this segment of the book I'm channeling a combination of Chris Ware, J.H.Williams III, James Harvey, and Steve Ditko.

It may sound like an odd combination, but trust me, there's an area of comix storytelling in which they all overlap. The switch in art styles always requires some serious recalibration from me but I enjoy getting to experiment.

Several things to do today though that are likely to slow me down; Gotta Skype in (or Zoom in rather) to an art history class [I was asked to “speak at”] in like half an hour. After that I'd like to get in a quick exercise because I've been putting it off for a several days already.

Started Asimov's FOUNDATION trilogy last night (which I've blasphemously never read), and skimmed a few of Image Comics' first issues, of which I thoroughly enjoyed Daniel Warren Johnson's MURDER FALCON and THE NEW WORLD by Ales Kot and Tradd Moore. Fantastic stuff!

Inbox is at 15 today , which may prompt me to unsubscribe from a number of newsletters.

#journal

Yes, I finally introduce the aliens.

Not sure anyone reading THE SOLAR GRID was expecting aliens.

It is 9:43 am in Houston and I've been up for at least 6 hours. Two-three of which I spent trying and failing to fall back asleep. My mind is awake, but my bodily functions are very much dead. Today will be a sluggish day at the drawing table.

Still, I am foolishly determined to finish a full page of comix today, inking and all.

The air is pleasantly cool and the blue jays populating the palm trees outside do not sound as pretty as they look.

The spread above is from my sketchbook where I've revisited the design of the alien(s) I'm about to introduce in the actual comix pages. If you look very closely at the page on the right hand side, you can probably make out some of the alphabet I devised for their language.

Don't really have the headspace to figure out how to develop it into a font, so will have to hand letter that shit.

Lovely.

#journal #work #MakingComix #TheSolarGrid

Quick housekeeping update:

Newsletter went out late last night, and my inbox is down to 34. I should manage to bring it down to zero by tomorrow. Ganzeer.com has been updated with the handful of things I unleashed in 2020.

I also removed all the widgets I had on the front page for Twitter, Instagram, and this here blog because the way they were embedding wasn't ideal and I wasted too many hours trying to make it better. Figured I can settle for just links without agonizing too much about it.

Cleaned around the garage a bit too. The coming week should be good.

#journal #work

Dusted off my GPD Pocket PC which I haven't used since Denver (some... 8 months ago maybe?). It had become my preferred writing tool, not because it does it better than anything else, but simply because it's not particularly ideal to do other things. Sure it's got a touch screen, and can run Photoshop, but the screen is too small to do any of the other things with a degree of comfort, so I had relegated it to a writing tool. On its own it even isn't particularly good at that either, because the keyboard is way too small to type with any degree of effeciency, but the collapsible bluetooth keyboard I got is there to remedy the problem. Keyboard stopped working though, so I'm back to using my Surfacebook for writing—which isn't a bad thing at all. Just need to get used to turning off notifications and avoid opening any other tabs (the tiny size of the other one just makes you not at all interested in multitasking).

Inbox is at an unruly 57, and temperature is at a sizzling 31C (87F) just the way I like it. Menu for the week is set according to available provisions.

Enjoyed an afternoon drink with a friend over Skype the other day, and virtual coffee with another friend this morning. Which is something I could've used in my 14+ years of independent artistry (which has always entailed working from home for extended periods of time), but only now is it becoming part of the culture at large. I win, I guess.

My strategy right now is to continue producing even though I have absolutely no income streams to look forward to for the foreseeable future. We'll see how long I can persevere.

It's a good time to get absorbed in a book right now, but I've been having trouble finding the right read. Just before the pandemic, I read Cormac McCarthy's THE ROAD which I disliked very much. I attempted Kurt Vonnegut's CAT'S CRADLE a couple nights ago (my second attempt in a year) and decided that it just ain't for me (a shame, because I loved his SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE), and so in the give-away box it was tossed.

Hope I find something soon.

#journal