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P.S. That’s my guillotine in the bottom-left corner. The thought of moving that huge thing abroad definitely played into my original decision, but now I think I’m gonna keep it around. It’s not the kind of thing you buy twice.

…with drawing, that is. I think it’s good that I’m doing this drawing practice, but there’s a queasy feeling to drawing subjects I don’t have an attachment to. I already struggle with the idea of how hard I should be working at this — whether it’s okay to go on instinct or if I should be dismantling everything and learning from first principles how to compose a scene, etc. Am I lazy, or am I being true to my style?

I don’t want to draw the same thing over and over again from different angles. That feels like a waste of time. I could be learning all kinds of academic principles, yet to a certain degree every new drawing requires starting from scratch — unless you’re using learned techniques to crank out the same tree-lake-mountain-sunset picture over and over again.

I dunno. I guess the whole exercise here is not to think or question, but just do the work.

The first is from a writing prompt, the second is something I was informed of this morning”¦

In Toronto I spoke to a social media expert — a coworker’s fiancée. Now, I’d usually snark at the suggestion that anyone’s got a clue about social media, except that she makes her living just by liking stuff on Pinterest. (Yeah, this is a job in 2014.)

She suggested that I share my process online. I’m not set up to make videos, but this morning — from the Tesco’s cafe — I documented in photos how I go about making a drawing these days. So here’s that (forgive the quickie Comic Life treatment):

I’ve decided to do a hundred hours of drawing before my birthday — just an arbitrary goal, based on a conversation I had with my friend Lisa.

When I stayed with Lisa and her family in Toronto, she was in the middle of doing 100 hours of ukulele practice — an hour every day — even though she’s already a professional musician (her Dixie/Bluegrass band, Dirty Dishes, is a lot of fun). But she wants to get better. So, in true Suzuki Method tradition, she’s showing up, setting a timer, and putting in the time — and has witnessed her skill with the instrument take a leap forward.

So, yeah, I want that with my drawing. One challenge has been knowing what to draw when I’m looking at the page. I like doing diary comics, but I’m not going to progress if I just keep drawing me all the time, so — again, taking my lead from Lisa, who had a grid of exercises to choose from, I’ve made a list of different things I want to practice (gesture lines, charater anatomy, composition, animation…). Yesterday I got an app that spits out random story prompts for writers, and I’ve started using that to conjure up images to work on:

(I did another drawing that was a total hash — which I’m allowed to do in practice, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to share it!)

I’m also trying to give my days a bit more definition, ’cause they’d become kinda saggy, with some work done, then me getting lost in the afternoon.

I didn’t really intend to focus on books this year, because there’s really no multiplier there (the effort that goes in is disproportionate to what comes back, which is usually nothing). Still, I’ve got an Ikea cabinet full of paper — paper I don’t intend to take across the Atlantic — so I want to use my couch-time to stitch together all kinds of books just so I can get that paper out the door in some sort of hopefully desirable form.

I started last night with some old postcards and cereal boxes, making them into gift-boxes and notebooks. Here’s one I made for myself out of a granola-box:

This puppy is proving very helpful: a “saddle-stapler”:

I gave my long-reach stapler to the charity shop (they get a lot of good stuff from me!), ’cause I just couldn’t set a staple reliably with it. I’d line it up so carefully, drop my hand — bang! — and… crooked. With this thing, the spine of the booklet sits right on the metal arch, so it’s impossible to miss.

That this is so much easier makes me more inclined to produce stuff.

Speaking of producing, it’s time for some copywriting…

Last night, Craig and I were sitting on the couch, triple-screening (each with an iPad, plus the TV on), and I had that pressing feeling that this was one of those moments that could either slide into brain-mushy nothingness, or be an opportunity to get out, be alive, and enjoy this place.

I asked him, “Want to go for a walk?” I could see him go through the same mental and physical process of summoning the energy and will to live that this would involve, but he said yes.

We walked further along the coast than we had before, and discovered an absolutely huge colony of sea-birds screeching at each other, nestling on tiny cliffs, and swooping down at the water.

Here’s the whole set of photos on Flickr. (It starts with Craig’s pictures from Wick’s Harbour Day, which he took part in.)

Click to embiggen”¦