A Distant Soil by Colleen Doran

It is now so tidy, I no longer have any excuses not to work.

Computer work station. That’s a Mac Pro Tower, Mac widescreen monitor and Cintiq. All courtesy of J Michael Straczynski, whose kindness and generosity I will never forget. And neither will my editors: they were tired of me complaining about my crappy computer equipment. Now I can miss deadlines with 2 terabytes backing me up.

A vampire Lestat doll guards the corner, along with a pillow in the image of my dear departed kitty.

A Tonner Aquaman doll. Love the sequined top, there!

Above my desk, a cover painting by Donato Giancola. It’s the only really extravagant thing I bought with my first movie deal money.

Drawing board. And stuff.

The workroom and the studio are separated by louvered doors. My treadmill sits in front of them, and there is a bookcase, topped by Lord of the Rings statues. The workroom is where I store my reference, as well as art. I also do all the packing and shipping here.

Originally, this was a nice little library, but it became apparent that I had no proper place to store and sort art, which was all out in the wellhouse getting moldy, along with stacks of books and papers five feet high. I simply couldn’t find anything when I needed it, and packing and shipping orders was a real pain.

I gave myself some tough love and moved all that stuff into my workshop to face the peril, and force myself to sort the records, books and papers. The result was this monster mess.

After I displayed this pic, I got some rather tart letters about how I had a hoarding problem and needed to buy some Ikea furniture. I didn’t really get into the fact that this was, essentially, me moving crap out of the garage and into my office to force myself to sort it all. I not only had all my own stuff, but years of self publishing detritus, as well as materials inherited from two elderly creators. I have art supplies at least 100 years old in here.

I had a huge clearance sale to move out things I no longer wanted.

After some weeks, I could see the floor.

One of my goals was to clear the bookshelves of books and store art there instead. Sacrilege to some, but either the art goes out in a damp wellhouse, or in my workshop. The books were either sold, or sorted by category and sealed in plastic boxes for storage. I can easily find any reference I need.

Now the workshop looks like this.

Those stacks of what look like old card catalogues are reference photo files. Picked them up at antique shops for a song, because no one uses them anymore. The big lateral file is all reference. There’s also a yoga mat, and a small stair stepper in here.

The art still has not been completely sorted, nor have my files. To the middle of this shot, you’ll see a large wicker storage chest: all old unsorted paper. Gah.

Thanks for visiting. Check out my bookshop! Full of comic art treats!