Hello again. It’s been another week, which means time for another weekly blog post. I suppose I’m on the downward swing this week, focused more on my lack of skill than what I want to accomplish with it. Every now and then I get that burning desire to improve, and I need to take advantage of it while it’s here. Can’t let anything distract me from what I want to achieve.

The first chapter of Wakeup Call got a little better reception than I thought, but I suppose that’s partly because the only people who reviewed it are people I already know. Definitely appreciate the feedback I got. It’s good to know how other people perceive a world I create, as it can be difficult for me to view it with the same limited understanding since I already know much more about the world I made. As with everything I do, I want to make it the best piece of fiction I’ve made to date, which is quite the task when I’m walking off a 6-year series that allowed me to develop even a modicum of artistic skill.

My focus right now is construction and anatomy. I’ve spent so much time working with animals, and I still don’t think I have a grip on animal anatomy. I want to get better at drawing characters on my tablet, as I still have no mechanical skill with the thing and don’t see it as a means of sketching. I always have to draw traditionally and scan it in to do vector work. When you compound that with my lack of technical skill, it’s easy to see where the frustration comes in. One has to remember that there are two facets to the drawing process: observation and creation. You have to be able to visualize the product you’re drawing in order to make it. When I’m simply trying to recreate something I see, I can do much better than when I’m going in blind, even on tablet. I still don’t know what a ‘form’ is, but art teachers sure do like them.

To those of you keeping up with it, I’m continuing to add more aliens to my Cosmic section. I added a counter to display how many aliens there are left to add. I didn’t even realize I was already over 10% done with the whole thing. I think it looks pretty good so far, but I’ll definitely need to change up the display once the number starts jumping up into the hundreds. I want to make it simple to find the alien you’re looking for without the page taking a million years to load. I was experimenting with tabs, but it seems to be text-only. Hopefully I can find a way to keep the aesthetic while improving the loading times.

Have a great Mother’s Day! Make the most!