1) I don’t have any new GN’s coming out until late next year. Pros who go to Comic-Con when they don’t have anything new to show mean they’re looking for hook-ups and jobs. I’m not looking for either.
2) I’ve been running weeks behind schedule since March. Deeply un-amusing family problem that should be on an episode of Dateline. It’s almost amusing in the rear view mirror, except for the dead people. (No, really, now with more dead people – very sad as well as bizarre, and if I ever do make it public, it’ll go into a GN, ’cause DAYum.)
3) I was supposed to go to the NASFIC and canceled on that, too. What do people want from me, my chatty person, or my books? Books, my guess. No one complains when I’m not there, but they complain a lot when I have no books.
4) So little time, so many pages. I’ve already made up one page this week. That’s reason enough to stay home instead of going out and falling another two weeks behind.
5) Used the time to work on digital skills. Making huge progress with same. Gone to Amerikay is so highly rendered I don’t know if I could draw it digitally. I’ve never seen digital work like it. But the computer is coming in handy on other projects.
6) Turned in 4 pages Gone to Amerikay inks. Everyone who sees the work Derek and I are doing makes great ooh-ing and aah-ing noises. I suppose that is not an indication of pain.
7) Watered garden twice. Fed plants. Squashes need calcium. Getting blossom rot. The tomatoes have anthracnose. Very vexed. Many deer roam the orchard. Two young bucks. Very pretty. I admire them, and rail at them simultaneously, because I know any day now they are going to head for the watermelon plants for feast.
8 ) Made huge file of my nature photos for new screen saver. So happy with images may release as dvd for donation incentive for the blog.
9) Watched film Goya’s Ghosts. More plot contrivances per square inch of reel than any film I’ve seen in years. Dickens handles unlikely coincidences with more aplomb, but alas, this film wasn’t Nicholas Nickleby. Great cast and costumes.
10) Spent four hours sorting papers and cleaning office. Office is highly organized and yummy cute.
11) I made with the do-over on some bland layouts. Big improvement on book with Barry Lyga.
12) Half through reformatting the Word File with all the prelims in it. This year I completely changed the way I handle reference and script management. Before, I carefully printed every item and filed it. On Gone to Amerikay, with more than 1,000 reference pages, this was not fun.
On the new GN with Barry Lyga, I transfer all my reference files to the laptop. I take script, and drop prelim art and reference directly into the document. I keep my laptop next to my drawing board. I rarely print anything out. All the paper shuffling that made Gone to Amerikay difficult is not a problem on the Barry Lyga book. Wish I’d thought of this ages ago. Big time saver.
13) Shipped several limited editions and commissions. Very happy customers, some of whom waited years. They were kinder to me than I deserved.
14) Watched 1968 Russian version of War and Peace. Six hours include the best battle scenes ever filmed. So dazzling; almost impossible to believe there is no CGI. There will never be another film like this.
Directed by Sergei Bondarchuk, it features 120,000 Russian soldiers, and goes down in history as the most expensive film ever made at a current dollar-adjusted cost of $1 billion. Every penny is on screen.
Restored dvd version is in every way superior to the treacly US mess with a vapid Audrey Hepburn, and Henry Fonda who is as not-Russian as it is possible to be. The best thing about that film is Sherlock Holmes actor Jeremy Brett as a young Hussar. Mother Russia…!
Be very sure to get the special edition of the Bondarchuk film in widescreen.
Supreme accuracy in costumes, sets, uniforms. Note the use of picture on supply wagons instead of words. Fantastic attention to detail. Should be in every illustrator’s library.
15) Had another birthday. Turned 29 again.
My bro the cop spent last week chasing two runaway chimpanzees, and oh, the hilarity. (No, really, cops on chimp hunt. No kidding.)
When beloveds showed up for my party, we all wore monkey masks. Bro traded amusement for amusement by playing “The Unknown Chippendale’s Dancer”, with gyrations and bag over head.
What is seen cannot be unseen.
Many squicky jokes about vibrating cell phone. Had something to do with smiley face on bag over head.
Disturbing.
I may have had more fun than people who went to Comic-Con.
If nothing else, I sure got a hellofalot of work completed.





