Crystals
This is partially colored by hand and digitally. One of my early digital coloring experiments. I found the hand colored version of this while cleaning out my files!
I have been swamped with work most of the year, but finished a major project a few weeks ago, and am finishing up another in late September. Even so, I decided I needed to make time to get my art files in order. It was one of my major New Year’s Resolutions.
My art has never really been in order. The situation was made even worse when someone I consigned to scan the archives ran off with the art. It took two years to get it back. I don’t think he intended to steal it. I think the magnitude of the task just hit him one day, and he froze. He never archived anything, and when I got it all back in dribs and drabs, crammed into boxes, it was in even worse shape than before. It was so demoralizing that I kinda left it all sitting there, closed the door, and walked away.
I started pulling it all out about 2 years ago, and was amazed at how much stuff I had! So much fun going through the files. Good memories and bad.
I thought I was going to have to buy new flat files to contain it all, but after I committed to going through the over 10,000 pieces of art, I realize that there was a lot of stuff taking up place in the files that didn’t need to be in there: packing materials, production art, copies of copies of copies of art, all from the days when you couldn’t make scans of things.
I’ve spent the better part of the last week pulling it all out, and putting it all back, buying storage boxes to properly archive manuscripts, and the copies of copies of copies of art. The pile of new storage boxes, full of goodies, is now over six feet tall.
I found all of the missing art I’ve been looking for: commissions that I simply could not track down, half finished, or nearly so. It was the missing commissions that inspired me to get off my butt and get this filing done, actually. I have a few weeks to get commissions completed before I move on to a new project.
The bad news is while the most critical works were safely located, a few were finally found crushed beyond repair where they’d become crammed into a flat file, slipped behind the drawers, and slammed into origami. Total loss. At least I’ll be able to copy them and redo the commissions, but OW.
If that isn’t a good reason to clean up all these files and get some of the stuff out of here, I don’t know what is.
6 Comments
Jeremy_A
I’m glad things are coming together for you. If you need to free up some space, I’m sure there are plenty here that will give the works a good home and *ahem* organize them at their respective residences. 😛
Colleen Doran
I’m really astonished by how much space is taken up by archive copies of the art. Multiple photocopies of pages in various stages. There’s just no need to keep it all, I have to sort it out at some point. I’ve roughly sorted most of it, but don’t have time now to get through it all, and since it’s not critical, and technically isn’t original art, I’m just going to file it in boxes and get to it later.
The important thing is the art and original manuscripts. I actually found a manuscript with the character’s original names on it. Liana was Jenny.
Jeremy_A
That’s cool. The photocopies of pages in various stages would be interesting in an art book showing the process of creating said page.
I’m trying to sift through stuff that I don’t know why I keep stored. Papers I wrote in high school and college are just clogging up space and enough paper is very, very heavy! Would not want to move a lot of this stuff when the time comes I move again.
Stewart Vernon
First… today’s page is beautiful! Seriously… awesome.
On organizing… in my family I was always the organized one. I wasn’t always neat, but I did keep things sorted. My father… wow, he would put stuff wherever it suited him in that moment then be surprised he couldn’t find stuff five minutes later! 🙂 I always picked on him because he only had a couple of folders on his computer… everything (and I mean everything) was on the desktop… so anyway, I’ve been watching you talk about your sorting because I have several boxes of my father’s artwork to go through some day. I hope I found it all after he passed away, because there was a lot of it and much of it I hadn’t seen since I was a kid! My ultimate plan is to organize everything like you’ve talked about and also make high-resolution scans of everything. In cleaning out his house after his passing, I too found several completely ruined pieces that you couldn’t even tell what they were… that made me sad since they were irreplaceable. Fortunately I have a bunch of stuff, though. I’m both looking forward to the organization and dreading some of the memories they will bring up.
Colleen Doran
It’s hard to be organized as an analog artist because of all the materials and papers you have to shift around. When I was self publishing and living in a small condo, it was miserable. I never had enough space, even though I was renting outside storage and office space.
When I moved out to the country, even though I have lots more space now, I’ve concentrated on cutting way back on my stuff, and have gotten rid of sooooo much.
I’d make multiple copies of the comics pages for advance review, and then I’d always have 5 or 10 extra sets. That sure adds up over 40 or 50 books! I have some of these sets going back to the 1980’s.
On the plus side, I saved many copies of projects in various stages of completion. Am quite surprised to see so much of that in here. Back in the day, the only way you could get a book to a publisher in progress was to make a photocopy and send a fax. It looks like I saved all of that stuff.
In the couple of cases where people have falsely claimed to have created my work, boy would they be surprised what I have on record. I never throw anything away. Of course, none of these claims ever went anywhere, but I’d just kill them with my archives, seriously.
I also saved all of the bluelines from A DISTANT SOIL. While I sold a bunch some years back, there’s a big pile in here. Man, do they stink!
Very sorry to hear about your father, Stewart! That must be rough.
Stewart Vernon
Thank you, Colleen… it’s been a little over a year and a half since he passed. My mother had passed about 6 years earlier. I was closer to my father than my mother, but also I think the realization that pretty much my whole family (except my sister) was gone hit me harder than I thought. I was 18 when my sister was born, so I kind of had an entire life before her… so I still think like an only-child in some ways. The day-to-day is better now, as it gets better with time… but some things hit me and remind me, especially thinking about sorting through all his artwork. My prized possession, though, and he did some great things… was from when I was about 6-7 years old when he was away for work. He wrote me letters every day, or rather he drew me comics every day. Even as a young kid I knew to save and take care of those, and I keep them close by. Whenever I get started on things, I plan on posting some of his art on Facebook for friends and family who probably haven’t seen a lot of it, and the stuff they would have seen it would have been many years ago. Hearing you talk about the memories it stirs sorting through your own work kind of gives me the heads up to be ready for that when I get around to it.