Radical acceptance.

I've been doing a lot of reflecting lately on what exactly it is that I'm doing. What am I trying to achieve as an artist? And can I really do it?

Without this turning into a therapy session, I'll mention that when I was growing up, I came to the conclusion that I had to have a full-time career as an artist. Had to. I had to achieve something amazing, and if I didn't do that, well, no one would ever love or respect me, and my life would be a huge waste. I had to be the best of the best or I couldn't hold my head up. No pressure, right?

I've been bashing this same cranium against the wall for a lot of years, trying to find the magic formula that would enable me to make art a lucrative, respected, "successful" facet of my life. But this has been problematic. First of all, I'm bipolar, so I naturally go through periods where I love things and want to do them all day long - and then hate the entire world and can't summon the energy to feed myself. Throw those extremes around every few weeks and it's difficult to stick to anything. Secondly? I'm not as skilled as I would like. I have a natural talent with the arts that I take for granted, and so I've never established a drive to hone or polish skills - I'll always be sub-par technically because I'm just not interested in being technically "good". Last, growing mentally and emotionally - as a means to survive - has meant trying to accept that I have a right to exist no matter how "successful" I am, and that the pursuit of some external source of validation just creates more distance between me and what really matters in my life. American culture places a lot of value on people who destroy their health, their families, and their humanity for the sake of achieving some abstract goal - but that just doesn't sit well with most people. Most of us would rather be comfortable, healthy, and modest in our lives, and that kind of achievement isn't worth it to us. We idolize some heroes that were total assholes, but it's OK because they made some good films, or wrote a good book. There's a lot there to think about.

I've tried a lot of different times to pursue a lot of different art projects, but it would fizzle out after - at best - a couple months. I'd repeat this cycle over and over again without really taking in the lesson that's being bashed over my head. WHY ISN'T THIS WORKING? WHY CAN'T I BE A GOOD ARTIST? WHAT'S A GIRL GOTTA DO TO BE ADORED BY MILLIONS, HERE?

This year, I had a renewed spurt of energy as I decided that THIS time would be different, and THIS time I would really, really try. (Like I hadn't been trying the other 1,000 times I had a great idea for an art project.) It's like attempting to ride a bike by waving your arms; flail as you might, you're not using the right kind of energy to get anywhere. Recently, I fell off the metaphorical bicycle and had to accept that - whether I admitted it in a placeholder image or not - I was taking a break from my webcomic.

Everything I've read says that, if you want to be successful as a comic artist, you have to be doing it every day, and you have to keep at it for years before anyone gives a crap about your work, and you have to be able to slog through the monotony, page after page after page, and learn to enjoy it for what it is.

I just published my first book in an attempt to validate my place as a "real" artist and know that, if I take a break now, it means that I just don't have the long-term discipline and chutzpah to be up there with my comic-creating idols. This is the time to be creating, and promoting, and showing the world everything I've got; but... I'm taking a break. I have too many other interests, and while meds and therapy are helping them to get a little further apart, the mood swings are a hell of an obstacle to overcome. It's disappointing, to put it mildly, to look at facts and say "Maybe this goal I've dreamed up isn't really healthy or realistic, and pursuing it is just hurting me". It's also difficult to not throw it away, cursing the heavens with something like, "Why do any art at all? What's the point?!".

I know myself better than that, though. I've drawn comics since I was a little kid. I love reading 'em, thinking about 'em, scheming 'em up. Just because I'm not going to join the Mile High club of creators and sign merch at cons doesn't mean I'm not allowed to like a thing. I'm sure in another couple of months you won't be able to tear me away from my drawing table. I'll cycle in and out of it like I always do. And I will still have "fans" cheering me on and enjoying my stuff. It might not be in the millions, or even the dozens, but it's enough.

This notion of my art career not being like OTHER people's art careers bothers the hell out of me only because I don't accept it. I realized recently that, the point of Don't Call Me Candy is that it's my stories, and reflective of my experiences. Taking a break because I'd rather be doing something like, say, training for roller derby, or creating pixel art, or baking cupcakes for my family, or playing video games, or hanging out with friends, is just that much more faithful to who I am and what I'm about. And when I look at all of the other stuff that I do, I realize I'm pretty cool, and those things are good, and worthwhile, in their own way.

I'm not great at being a world-famous, critically-acclaimed, top-tier comics creator. But I'm pretty darned good at being me. What else should I be doing if not the things that interest me and make me feel good?

Hopefully someday this act of "being me" will feel like "enough". Even now I've got tears welling up thinking about the things I could or should be, and how I'm a miserable failure.

So, right now, I'm not making comics. I will again sometime - I don't know when. And I want to try to just let that be OK.

Half the story: lettering.

I've been fretting about this lately: how will my lettering look?

I find myself mostly fretting between two styles - a very classic look, and something more natural (with lowercase included). I refuse to computer-generate something obviously modern, since I find that so obnoxious and distracting in other comics. I could potentially be convinced to grab a professional-looking font and entering it digitally, but... that disconnects me from the panels more than I'm comfortable with. Caps are plain and rather unobtrusive, unless you realize that that's a common way for people to "yell". In a sci-fi fantasy story, is that really appropriate? Does it break the tone? Moreover, is it MORE (see?) obtrusive to digest a totally different handwriting style?

I don't think an answer is going to arrive anytime soon.

Of tabs, paperclips, and dividers.

Had to organize some papers today. They've been accumulating on my desk for over a week.

Up to 10 pounds of story and reference materials!

Goodness gracious, great balls of fire!

I love organizing my drafting table. It's now in a nice, sunny corner. Potted plants on one side and an aquarium on the other. The hubbs cut up some corkboard for me and mounted it quite creatively to maximize space for actual posting. I also got a hand mirror to test out expressions without running to a door-mounted frame. Domo is there for motivational purposes.

Also been filling up my worldmaking binders and making a real push toward having enough background to arrange a real draft. (But WHICH CHARACTER. OH NO. I really cannot choose!) I think one of my main hangups has always been trying to start from the beginning. It's important to sketch out scenes that occur throughout the story so you can identify unifying themes and styles - and potentially find those plot holes! So I've been doing that. Anyway. Rings, tabs, stickies, highlighters, notes, xerox copies... takes me back to school reports. Except this is more fun and its application actually makes sense. Thanks, eighth grade!

This stack weighs over 7 pounds now. And there's oh so much left to do.

I recently discovered the ao yem and I love, love, love it. As much as I love huipils, saris, and turbans? Probably not. But it's wonderful coming across ethnic (I'm still allowed to say this as a homogenized white person, right?) fashions. The way cultures use fabrics to achieve universal goals, sometimes so different and sometimes very much the same... super intriguing.

Here's my Giftmas present. Are you shocked that I didn't own it before now? Me too. It's already littered with Post-it flags like an evangelical's bible. And that's basically what it is, really. DOES ANYONE WANT TO BORROW MY COPY. BECAUSE IT WILL ROCK YOUR WORLD. That said, I'm extremely happy to have it. I've already pinned one choice page on my board for reference.

More hypomania!

I've been rapid cycling this past week. At times I'm sobbing into a bowl of ice cream; at other times I am exclaiming "I AM AWESOME!!" and coming up with a dozen new ideas for artwork - faster than I can write them down.

It's exhilarating feeling the charge that I did when I was 16... notating a jazz piece, not even really knowing anything about jazz. Or 20... decorating my wall with Post-it notes detailing the plot structure of my latest epic. It's not all glorious, of course - for example, the alternate days spent in bed crying, refusing to eat, and thinking that I am totally worthless and just want to die. But when I'm sitting at my art desk and there is magic in my fingertips, I wonder what the hell I've been doing trying to level my moods in the first place. (Don't tell my psychiatrist I said that.) Could all the suffering be worth it just to have that occasional spark? Today, the answer seems to be "yes". If I can just learn to harness it and think through the proper stages of a project...

I'll feel differently tomorrow, of course, like I always do. It's just been a few enchanting days of glimmering hopes, changes of heart, and grandiose plans. I'd like to at least allow myself to feel some joy. I'm getting somewhat closer to making sense of how to ride those waves without being pulled into a rip tide. At least, I'd like to think so. I would so love to figure out how to channel my energy into actually getting something done. There are so many stories I want to tell!

Here's a dancing silver woman that appeared on my paper.

Hold that thought.

Coming up with story elements on a walk is a delightful, heartening experience. Sometimes, your mind is rich with ideas. Maybe this bout occurred because I didn't eat breakfast?

Gotta come home and script them out ASAP!

#24HCD.

I survived 24 Hour Comics Day - my first ever. And I am really not completely sure how I handled it so well mentally. I was never really tired for the whole 24 hours (tried to sleep, but couldn't), had only 1/6 cup of coffee (I do not drink coffee), and finished my 24 pages in 22 hours, well before the deadline. Saint Yaktopher must have been smiling upon me. The more I read about other artists' struggles, the more weirded out I am. Uhhhhh. How did I do this?

But. There are some things that I think helped fuel my success.

1) A cooler full of food. Nutritious food. I brought yogurt, trail mix, snow peas, goldfish crackers, cranberry juice, a Bolthouse Farms protein shake, green tea, string cheese, apples, and bananas. A few fellow artists said that their main downfall, besides inherited sleepiness, was the Taco Bell they brought. That must have been unpleasant. I basically kept shoving snacks into my face the whole time and so I never got hungry.

2) Arrange your sleep schedule beforehand, if you can. The day before, I took an extra afternoon nap and went to bed as late as I could so I could wake up at noon or later to feel charged by the 6 p.m. start time. Of course, this is easier to do if you're an unemployed slob like me. I also "fasted" and didn't draw for the 3 days beforehand, just to build up my mojo.

3) A page an hour. That's what you need to do. 24hourcomicsday.com suggests sketching for 15 minutes and drawing for 30 minutes out of every hour, leaving the other 15 minutes for breaks, meals, proofing, stretching, and attempting to shake off those RMIs. Seriously do not fuss about details or making it look completely realistic and amazing. You are not Jack Kirby... and even if Jack Kirby was participating in 24HCD, his work might not look like Jack Kirby. It's not wussing out to use a single broad Micron pen and do it in just black and white on 8.5x11" copy paper. Having a clock in sight is a really helpful reminder, too; try to keep just ahead of that hour mark. If you can squeeze a page into 30 minutes, that's even better. See #6.

4) A support person. My husband helped me set up and came to visit me around 2 a.m., and again at 11 a.m. to see me through to the end. He was able to come back with stuff I needed or had forgotten, and kept up my morale.

5) Headphones and enough MP3s to easily last the whole time and then some. It's even better if this is on a smartphone. (I don't have a smartphone, so I borrowed one.) I had easy access to Google images, which saved my bacon on at least a dozen occasions. You wouldn't know it because apparently I cannot draw lions to save my life, despite references. But like I said... details. No fussy-fussy.

6) Know when to employ artistic tricks that will save you time. A full page spread can break up the story and create an illusion of elapsed time - a breath of fresh air. Also, busting out of frames periodically will save you from doing backgrounds. Silhouettes are another big help. This all, too, displays your prowess with the comic form.

Hugh the elephant wants to be a pirate.

Breaking the 4th wall let me be creative and tongue-in-cheek in telling the story.

It was a lot of fun.

So that's about it for now. I hope to post the whole thing on my site as soon as I can withstand scanning, cropping, and color-correcting 24 pages... and submit it to the 24 Hour Comics collection at Ohio State University! What an awesome event.

Letting go.

I'm at a really important stage of my artistic growth, I think. It's not that crow-quill pen I bought, or going to a life drawing session, or anything like that. It's learning to let go of my absolute control over every aspect of my work.

I have always had a bit of that diva streak in me. I identify with people like post-Jedi George Lucas, who want what they want and they're going to get it (we also have in common a long-running, um, penchant for dialogue). Really, I've spent a lot of time isolating myself and my fragile ego because other people just "got in my way". Asking for critique on anything sent me into, honest to God, anxiety attacks. I always told people that if I did a comic book, I'd write, pencil, ink, color, and publish it all myself; if it were a movie, I'd write, direct, score, costume design, and potentially star in, it. I'm at an age now where I realize that's how you turn into Tommy Wiseau... and, in short, make bad art.

Looking at the process of a video game - especially when I have spent so many years trying - and failing at - many different ventures all on my own... I'm realizing that things have to change. I have handed off some music duties to a friend and asked a local guy to hook me up with programmers who might be interested in coding such a project. This is ENORMOUS for me. Collaborating?! With PEOPLE!?!? Even more, I'm letting my composer go wild and will see what she comes up with. If I find a programmer to work with, I will look to them for a battle system and further input as to gameplay. True collaboration. People bringing their own talents and ideas to the table. Creating something that isn't an inbred, wretching reflection of someone's sick isolation.

I am also learning, slowly, to let go of the idea that everything I do has to be 100% unique, influentially untraceable, and blessed by some kind of godly intellectualism. It was like this when I was writing music, too. I swore I'd never use this or that chord progression because they were "too easy" and I had to find some other, much smarter-looking way to accomplish what I wanted musically. "Hey! I'll be atonal! That'll be nifty!" But do you know what? There is a reason that throbbing Hans Zimmer riff comes back to movies again and again: because it works. And when you are an artist trying to express something, for God's sake, you have to use what works. All that high-minded, narcissistic overachieving does nothing but constipate the creative process. You get clogged up with boundaries and self-loathing - if you have a soul - and end up sitting in front of a blank canvas, too petrified by your own instincts to truly accomplish anything.

Yes, that is lemon balm; lavender; ginger; aloe; mint; echinacea; chili; and nutmeg. I don't have to invent 100% of the botany of a fantasy planet to produce an interesting and emotive story. I want the player to procure an item that prevents illness, so, hey, echinacea. Is it really worth the whole Tolkien approach and inventing something called, I don't know, "Thoriandalalaladell Root" to get the same effect? Am I trying to bring people into my world or expel them with confusion? This is another blessing that comes from a 128-color, 3x pixel size interactive medium... forcing limitations. I. Need. Limitations. I need to let the hell go and just tell the story that needs to be told. I have 40 pixels to express a character, and that's it. Once I do all I can do with that, I can move on.

Moving on!

Children's book progress.

I have had serious motivational problems with this project. It was offered to me around Christmastime, when I was already busy with other commissions, but I said that I would get started regardless. My first draft came with such smoothness, ease, and aplomb that I haven't been able to reproduce those results in a cleaned-up final format. Furthermore, the deadline of "whenever" and total creative control - from illustration style to number of pages to grammatical editing - have been oddly damning. It's sad when a project that starts out so fun and breezy turns into an object of dread and pressure. I literally wake up and think, "oh, God, I need to work on that" and throw the covers over my head. That's the sort of guilt I tend to experience: one that's so deep that it paralyzes and thereby prevents any progress from actually occurring!

The more time passes, the more I realize my bipolar disorder - diagnosed only a few years ago -has been the constant life-and-death cycle of my creative life. The euphoria of a new idea - hurling myself headlong into developing anything from a comic book to an operatic suite - quickly followed by the deep, sinking depression of perceived "failure" - wherein I can barely summon the motivation to play video games or feed myself - makes for one difficult process. I have been struggling a great deal in the past few weeks, trying to grasp what it will take to find the middle ground between these two stages. But the fact is, I've never found one for longer than a day or two. I can't consider myself a "professional" artist, nor expect "professional" results, until I can firmly take my mental wellness in hand. It's been a long process, and will continue to be so... as frustrating as that is to admit. I would love to think that if I did X and Y, art would just flow out of me eight hours a day and I would be blissfully happy. It's going to be more like A-Z, in some agonizingly encoded order. And maybe even then, it will be 2 hours a week. I just don't know.

Patience.

Drawing from life isn't always easy.

Today I am working on a commission. Surprise, it's a house! Now, I like drawing my landscapes from life. I recently gave in and did one from a photo... but it's not as satisfying. I like how being there in real life causes certain features to pop out. The pen flows a bit more organically and I tend to pick up and move over to whatever area interests me at that moment. That results in more of that abstract, mosaic style that I (and apparently others?) enjoy. However...

...currently, it is 21 degrees farenheit, with heavy snow flurries.

Needless to say, there are some challenges.

My strategies:

1. Long johns, thermal socks, and fingerless gloves. Turtleneck, hoodie, winter coat, cap, scarf.
2. Tucking pens under my clothes so they don't freeze.
3. Keeping the board at a near-vertical tilt as to prevent snow from sticking to the paper (causing fresh ink to bleed).
4. Regular warm-up breaks.

Soon, I go back out into mother nature's frigid trials. Oh, the life of an artist! (Where's my beret?) Oh, the suffering for the sake of art! (Shouldn't I also be a beat poet?) Oh, the... toe warmers I forgot. But it's a good time! And the act of making the drawing feels so much more satisfying.

Children's book.

I am up to my neck in Christmas commissions from family and friends. One is a short story put to illustrations - the first I've done, but it should be a lot of fun. I've been given "full artistic license", which is exciting and terrifying at once.

Another will be an abstract landscape, and two more are pet portraits. It's a lot to do and a lot to choose from. It will be a busy, but rewarding, month!

A new space.

I'm very happy to announce that my husband has finished building me a drafting table. I've always been skittish about them - normally I draw on a couch, curled up, with a clipboard on one knee - but as time goes on, I realize I need a workspace. I need somewhere to plant myself and say, "OK, let's go!". Honing some good posture wouldn't hurt, either.

It's up in the attic so I will not be easily distracted. There is a mini-fridge is stationed just to the right. Yes, good, good. While it will be a difficult task to keep cats from using it as a scratching post or bed, the plus size of living with animals is their potential for cuteness, company, and a handy built-in paperweight feature.

Can't wait to give this a whirl!

What's a girl to do?