Smudge Marks & Engel Werks

This week is full of art management stuff.

This weekend Baron opened (then promptly closed) for commission work, leaving me to organize it. Weee! We have got to set up a form or something for commissions - Barons spending way too much time juggling communications between all the different clients. Like ever waking moment this weekend. So that's something I'll be putting together soon. I also need to get the new docked put together on the site so folks who do have commissions and have logged in can see where they stand.

Filling out tax forms is fun... NOT. I especially like it when they give lengthy instructions for something that obvious, but no instructions for something that's super convoluted. *head desk* But it will get done.

‘To Kill a Dragon’ continues to update like clockwork - pg. 11 went live yesterday. Only hiccup is that the front page plugin that shows the current viewable page is barfing into the Prose section. Will be fixing that ASAP. Sorry for the inconvenience, guys. Just a reminder - I do have a bookmarker set up on the site, so you can always click on that to get to the page you last tagged. Thou thinking about it, I should probably move that to the top of the comic instead of the bottom. Less scrolling to get where you want to be. *makes note to add/move plugin*.

Baron and I are also looking at putting a Patreon together - one for him and one for I. More details when we know what the frack we're doing. Our main goal is to get Baron outta his day-job and working back in artwork full time again by the end of the year. And if his commission docket remains similar and steady to what he just took in this weekend, it's totally doable. But art is a highly volatile and fluctuating market so we need to make sure all our ducks are in a row to make it happen.

Art-wise, for myself, I've been poking at a couple of sketches to help learn the painting tools inside of Manga Studio. This is taking a lot longer than I originally thought. I was painting up a character design in a paper doll format so I can play with costumes designs. Just to do the body, took me 4+ hours which is way too long for the amount done. And my hand hurt. Lots. I then worked on his clothes and figured out a way to work the colors faster, but it still beat on my hand. So much so I could only work on it in one-hour blocks, once a day. Any more than that and I'd be in real trouble. To be honest, I WAS getting better results than in Photoshop, but Photoshop, very slightly, beats on my hand less. At this point, I realized that I had made a lot of bad proportional mistakes in the figure. Enough that just cutting out and re-scaling wasn't going to help. So I'm starting over, from the top, this time inked (which Manga Studio is a GOD, and doesn't beat on my hand) and approach it more as coloring instead of painting. We'll see how it goes.

I spent a lot of time last week scanning in some sketches for another project I'm organizing, 'Magical Home Owners Association'. I hope to have more up about it later this week. I've got a lot of stories/projects that need a little organization. I have been... artistically constipated for some time (years) and I'm trying to get some of it out so it's not backing me up mentally. MagicHOA is just one of them.

In other household projects, I almost have my sewing machine accessible again. First thing up on my sewing list is a draw-bag for the emergency meds for my allergies. I'm suppose to carry around Predizone, some Claritin RediTabs and an EpiPenfor if I have an attack but haven't because they won't fit in my pockets without taking damage. I don't want to damage my EpiPen. They are not cheap. I have other sewing projects as well, but the bag comes first and I will not entertain any others until it's done. Just waiting on the fabric to come in for it. ^.^

Also - because spring is starting to show itself, it's time to restart the herb garden. Anyone wanna take out a poll on how fast I kill it this year? lol!

I'm happy to report that my bicycle has finally gone to the shop to get fixed up. I started fixing up the bike last year but stalled out because, well, dealing with a non-working front derail-er was simply out of my league. Turns out is was bent. But since we're probably going to be selling my van in the near future, I need something to at least get me to the market and around town for basic errands. And I miss biking. Only other thing to really make this work is some masks to keep the airborne allergens at bay. But that's what my sewing machine is for.

The other project I'm working on is finding drinks. Due to a combination of health and allergies, the possible thinks I can drink are getting slimmer and slimmer, so I've been scouring the specialty sodas and drinks for alternatives. Right now, I'm looking for stuff that is low to caffeine free (my caffeine tolerance is pretty slim nowadays), not citrus based (I'm allergic to all forms of citrus), and has cane sugar (I cannot stand artificial sugars but want to avoid high fructose corn syrup as much as humanly possible). This particular combination is actually really nasty to find for drinkables. So I have been turning to ginger ales and beers. I'm thinking about doing blog entries on each of the ones I find because... oh Lordy, every brand is so wildly different in character. @.@

I think that's everything for this week. Schedule: lots of website and back-end tweaks, 'To Kill a Dragon' going up MONDAY - WEDNESDAY - FRIDAY, character art to ink/color, MagicHOA synopsis and some character info on (probably) Thursday, 1 herb garden to start killing, bicycle to pick up at the shop Friday, and more drinks to be drunk. Busy week I say!