I included the second page of yesterday’s diary comix after all (which is the first comic here).

Friday was a difficult day — I went kind of stir-crazy at home, which carried over into Saturday. All is well, though. The first comic was no big deal, but could be misunderstood, so maybe doesn’t belong here (not that I have criteria for deciding that, or even why I post things here in the first place).

This sketchbook is nearly full, and I want to publish it. This living memoir stuff is tricky, though, since it implicates other people. If it were just me, I’d spill my guts everywhere; I just don’t care. But not everyone feels that way…

I worked on a big article for Strategic Coach yesterday, one that sprawled around and included a lot of different ideas — just barely pulling them together in the end. As I outlined and researched it, it grew arms and legs, and it wasn’t really on-point for what they talk about.

That was exhausting. It did, however, make me realize that I have a pretty good batting average for them: just about everything works out. Except this piece; I wrote to my project manager/editor and suggested we kill it.

So, to make it up to them, I pitched a comic strip series based on a conversation I had with Dan, the Coach’s owner, recently. I think it’s good, makes a clear, relevant point, and is concise, so hopefully they’ll go with that, and I’ll get to draw, too — which I’ve been doing lots of lately. Something about that is really bringing back those old summer vacations.

Funny how different eras in your life can feel like they’re closer to the present. The 1970s are definitely echoing right now. It’s nice, and it reminds me to enjoy the summer.

We drove down to the Central Belt for the weekend, visiting with Craig’s relatives who are over from Canada, and attending his niece’s fourth birthday party.

I drove much of the way down, then to and from our various destinations (like the Scottish Game Fair at Scone Palace  — the biggest collection of tweed and dogs I’ve ever seen). So I’ve finally broken through the last barrier: driving around the South, including the multi-lane roundabouts and the motorway.

The weekend really felt like summer. Maybe it’s because we had Canadian visitors, so I was conscious of being here, in Scotland, like it was a big vacation — because I knew it was for our visitors.

I’m back to work, though the relatives will be reaching us up here this coming weekend, so the summer holiday goes on. There’s a nice dynamic to this family: the kids are really well-behaved, but still very much their own people, full of energy. With just a word, the parents can reign it in, yet it doesn’t feel at all oppressive; it’s just a working relationship — loving and friendly, but still providing the structure to help the kids get on in the world later on by being appropriate and likeable. That’s the kind of parent I’d want to be.

Getting back to drawing practice this morning, I was a bit stumped. I drew some random things I wanted to work on (clouds and trees, a boat entering Wick Harbour), but there’s something lifeless about drawings I do just for the exercise of it.

I’m forever collecting work and ideas to inspire me, but when it comes time to draw I can get stuck. It’s oppressive, this idea, “Produce!” So I stopped, asked myself what I felt like doing, and…

It’s so much fun, being that kid in grown-up form, having the freedom and the skills to do whatever I want to. The trick is getting clear about what that is.

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…