News Blog Archives

October 25, 2006

Brushy Love

I had to order a couple things from Dick Blick last night (shut up. the last art supply house in town died an unhappy death two years ago. It's either that or brave the hell of Hobby Lobby and their sanctimonous uberChristian propaganda.) and so I did a quick scan through the site to see if there was anything else I needed -- and I found it.

The Brush.

The Brush that I instructed Paul to buy a dozen of if he found them in New York. The Brush I've used, and favored, faithfully for fifteen years. The Winsor Newton Sceptre Gold II Series 101 Short-Handled Pointed Round, Size Three.

See, all the crazymaking stemmed from the fact that for the last four years, the size three was completely unavailable. Every store I went into had sizes 0, 1, 2, 4, 6. Every catalog: 0, 1, 2, 4, 6. I scoured the internet -- and I'm good at that. No luck. I considered contacting WN directly. They apparrently still made them; they were featured in their catalogue. The size 2 is too small. The size 4 is too big. The size 3 is just right. Perfect, snappy, sharp, capable of holding enough paint to blanket a whole panel, and still small and pointy enough to turn right around and do tiny detail work. If you have a size 3, you don't need any other sizes -- it does everything. It's four-dollar brush that holds up amazingly well against the twin punishments of acrylic paint and a lazy artist -- I can usually get five to ten pages out of one before I have to relegate it to paint-mixing tasks, as opposed to fine detail work.

So I ordered five. If the quality's there, I'll order another dozen. I'm not kidding. I know what tools I like, and which ones perform, and when I can't get them, I get grumpy.

And no one likes a grumpy Janer.

October 20, 2006

I keep forgetting to post this!

Neil Kleid posted this really thoughtful, wonderful interview with me on Newsarama. You should totally go read it.

October 19, 2006

Hmm.

Got two of the four Troublesome Pages (there were two at last post; now there are four, though some or all may be cut during final editing...) pencilled and inked since Sunday night. This may prove a bit easier than I'd reckoned.

The other two are going to be an exercise in making talking heads interesting.

October 15, 2006

Page Rate

Eleven pages done between yesterday and August 16th. That's eleven pages in just under two months, or just under a page and a half per week. Could be better, could be worse.

I have one more page pencilled, and two more yet to do. These last two are going to be pulling teeth; difficult, pivotal for expression and nuance of dialogue. Whine.

Scanned twenty-five pages last night, because I couldn't get my head around either page. No matter; any progress is forward progress.

Okay, now it's officially time to stop pissing and moaning and actually do the work.

October 4, 2006

Work continues apace

Yes, yes, I'm sure you're all good and tired of hearing me say "New book soon. Soon, I promise."

Believe me, I'm sick of it too. I'm so sick of saying it that I'm going to bag going to Motor City entirely this year just so that I can stay home and work on the book. Man, am I ready for this project to be over.

It's chugging along, though these last few weeks have been insane. In the last month, I've squeezed out another Del Rey site, went to two weddings and a baby shower, work's gone insane, and I've got three library gigs in the next three weeks. The sked's a little tight, in other words.

I'm thrilled to find out that one upcoming gig has been cancelled (I was essentially doing a three-hour talk for almost no money, and the organization couldn't be arsed to advertise, so it was cancelled for low signups. Go figure. Not heartbroken.) and another date's been shifted so that it happens concurrently with an existing drive, so I don't have to make two four-hour round trips. Yay. Rest assured, dear readers, I'll be using that time wisely.

Though I've only got a few hours each week to work, I've got five pages left to tone in the batch of 12 that I started in August. If I can keep knocking out two a week, I'll be done before the end of the month. That gives me till my self-imposed Thanksgiving deadline to get them all scanned and up into PDF form for my beta readers.

Whew. Believe me when I say I'm not slacking. But also believe me when I say that cramming a comic into the tiny cracks in your life isn't easy. I'm tryin', I really am. Nobody wants this new book done sooner than I do.