I was searching yesterday for a quote from F.A. Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom. (It’s a go-to favourite for economic libertarians — those who’d prefer that the government left the marketplace regulate itself.)
In so searching, I found an illustrated overview of the text, produced by General Motors . The drawings are spare, powerful, 1940s-style linework, but: ironic, given the behaviour of the most prominent spokesperson for the modern-day marketplace.
This weekend, I finished the final illustration for the next Strategic Coach book.
I’m learning more techniques and principles with each of these projects, but there’s a point with each of these panels where I’m just applying effects and shapes and layers by guess and by gosh until it feels right.
I wonder if other artist/designers do this, too, or if they actually have a plan.
I’m extremely grateful for the people who developed the program I use to do my work, Clip Studio Paint. The more I use it, the more I discover — and I feel like I’ll never run out of new things to learn.
I usually learn software by just flailing around in it, trying to reach an outcome, but CSP is so involved and there’s such a steep learning curve to it that I watched a whole series of tutorials to get started — a brilliant series by Doug Hills — and I’m really glad I did. I would never have understood or found these great features on my own.
Volunteering at the Toronto Comic Arts Festival was a great experience — really friendly and relaxed, with lots of support and appreciation from the event’s organizers, exhibitors, and guests.
I was a bit worried about doing something new that I knew nothing about, but discovered that being a generally confident grown-up goes a long way. I felt totally at ease — although some of the details and duties were left to us to figure out on the fly, as in:
“Do you know where [Comic Artist I’ve Never Heard Of But is Probably Way Famous] is doing their signing?”
“I have no idea. Let me look it up in the guide [which you also have in your hand and could look up as easily as I can].”
All it took was being one step ahead of the guests — delivering a bit of patter all the while, of course.
And I discovered endless reserves of banter: until the after-party last night, where suddenly I found myself in a dark wooden-floored room with flashing lights and loud music, and spun back to those horrible grade-school dance afternoons or my nights as a single person. Everyone was chatting with their group, and I suddenly felt totally out of place. So I went home.
Over the weekend, though, I did get to speak with a few artists I’ve long admired, who inspired me to get back into cartooning (like Boulet, Dustin Harbin, and Dan Berry). It felt great to credit them, to their faces, with giving me the chance to make a living doing this thing I’ve always loved.
I also tried to make contact with other cartoonists for this project I’m building — Comix.Work — a network for referring paid work to other artists and production people.
(Our clients at work are always asking me if I do freelance work. I don’t, so then they ask if I know anyone else who does what I do. I didn’t, but am trying to change that!)
I went to TCAF two years ago, but ran through and didn’t speak to any of the exhibitors ’cause I felt too shy. By contrast, this year I felt totally at home in the library, wearing my orange volunteer T-shirt, and was much more outgoing because of it. I felt like part of a community I care about, full of people whose skills and intentions I really admire.
So it was a fun weekend, I picked up lots of books I’m going to enjoy, and hopefully I made some new friends I can enjoy creative solidarity with, and perhaps help out, too.
I’m still trying to figure out the best way to post content to the web.
Details follow. Warning: Technobabble ahead!
I publish on this blog, Twitter, Facebook — all that social stuff. And I’ve read some very good arguments for POSSE: Publish On [your own] Site, Syndicate Elsewhere.
(In short, the idea is “Don’t drop different content all over social media like Easter eggs; instead, invest that material in your own site, then lead people there with social media links.”)
I know this bugs some folks who don’t like to see the same message appearing in multiple locations. I’m a bit like that: If there’s too much repetition, I’ll unsubscribe from all sources save one.
If you’re one of those people, I’m fine if you do that with me.
Thing is, this site is my archive, and the content here belongs to me. And if I POSSE, then hame.land isn’t some tumbleweed town, but the central showcase of my efforts.
The challenge is that I created my site in Serif’s WebPlus. Yes, it has a truly horrific interface — a dog’s breakfast, and that dog is named “Windows ME”. Seriously, look:
But — big ‘but’ — it lets me lay out my pages exactly as I want them to look. Except the blog solution in WebPlus is: let’s say “wanting”, so I put a WordPress blog on my server and basically cut a hole in the site so that WordPress blog would show through.
It’s not ideal, but it works.
Again, except: when WordPress POSSEs links across my various social media accounts, it links to the WordPress blog. So you’re not seeing the website frame around the blog, just the raw blog.
So I’ve got to figure out some way to keep it automated, but make sure that links go to my real site, not the stripped-down WordPress shell. If This Then That, maybe?
I got a too-short haircut after work tonight. I think my lady was upset with me for interrupting her television program. Oh well — you still can’t beat eight bucks!
Craig’s out at: something tonight. (Can’t quite remember what tonight was.) It’s very snowstormy. Poor wee lamb!
I deliberately left my computer at work tonight ’cause I’m just feeling altogether too entertained lately, too mediated.
I’m trying instead to just sit with my experience, to stare into the void, to talk to myself and listen. Anything I could really want to understand is there.
