lookingland (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
lookingland) wrote2008-05-15 08:45 am
lookingland) wrote2008-05-15 08:45 am
Entry tags:
a potpurri of random projects ~
clearly i have too much going on. my concentration is shot lately.
the new Reconstruction style is gradually finding its way (the lettering is slowly improving now that my pen and i have come to some terms). today's page is transitiony, but we're getting somewhere, i promise. next monday's page is one of my favorite so far. something to live for in case anyone needs it!
i'm also finding that the new style is doing what it needs to do: shortening the production process by hours and hours. directly putting the words on the page has shaved about half an hour off the drawing time because there is less fretting about composition (about which i am lousy). i drew a page last night and one this morning. i could probably pre-ink both of them before i leave for work, paint them tomorrow, and do the finishing over the weekend, completing both of them in about three and a half to four hours. that's half the time it took me originally to complete a single page! color me impressed at the difference it's made and only about half and hour at the most is spent futzing with the scans.
in other news, i need to finish projects shuffling off to Comic-Con from the Here There Be Monsters Press this year. lots of work to do on that front.
and yeah, i'm still in the middle of writing a novel (slowly, slowly). while In Pursuance of Said Conspiracy is on the back burner (boo hoo) until the summer is over, i still want to try to have a raw draft of this novel finished in the next few months. i'm reading Hanging Henry Gambrill as research (which i desperately need for this one), and though it's a good book, it's a bit slow going and i have a lot still to get through. unfortunately, a lot of my novel depends on my reading this book, so there are plot points i can't finalize until i've finished it. i'm going to try to spend at least some part of the coming weekend dedicated to barreling through the 400 pages i need to cover (ughhh).
i know. i brought it on myself.
and yet the accident of setting this story in a town so infamous for its violence that it was nicknamed Mobtown is really helping me fill a lot of early gaps in the overall narrative that i could never quite explain before. Isaac's obsession with fire engines, Lewis's "street" mentality, the xenophobic religious roots of Maryland's desire to secede. given that Baltimore had the largest urban population of free blacks in the country (some of whom owned slaves themselves) slavery was barely a corner of a multitude of political issues that made the city such a furnace. all of this also goes far, i think, to fill in Lewis's own bizarrely conflicted ideas about race, immigration, and religion.
and yet it was all a happy accident. i originally chose Baltimore because it was where the Booths grew up. it was the only 19th century city i had any sense of (back when i was a teenager). of course, the more i have read about it since then, the more i realize that anyone growing up in such an environment of political hostility and constant rage and brutality couldn't possibly help growing up under the impression that violence and assassination were legitimate ways in which adults resolved their differences. as a side note regarding Booth, i would go further to say that someone ought to re-examine his politics in light of this upbringing. while i am sure those kids were not exposed directly to the worst of the rioting, Mobtown was still their town. and it was a town in which the majority anti-immigrant anti-Catholic pro-slavers were diehard Unionists.
inneresting stuff, that.
of course, you know the best part of all of this is that i get to invent a 19th century volunteer fire department company, which i have been wanting to do the whole of my life.
: D
the other reason i initially
chose Baltimore as a setting was
because it was home to the nation's
first (and at the time, only) Dental
College. from inception, Lewis was
destined to become a dentist ~ at
least that was what i wanted
the new Reconstruction style is gradually finding its way (the lettering is slowly improving now that my pen and i have come to some terms). today's page is transitiony, but we're getting somewhere, i promise. next monday's page is one of my favorite so far. something to live for in case anyone needs it!
i'm also finding that the new style is doing what it needs to do: shortening the production process by hours and hours. directly putting the words on the page has shaved about half an hour off the drawing time because there is less fretting about composition (about which i am lousy). i drew a page last night and one this morning. i could probably pre-ink both of them before i leave for work, paint them tomorrow, and do the finishing over the weekend, completing both of them in about three and a half to four hours. that's half the time it took me originally to complete a single page! color me impressed at the difference it's made and only about half and hour at the most is spent futzing with the scans.
in other news, i need to finish projects shuffling off to Comic-Con from the Here There Be Monsters Press this year. lots of work to do on that front.
and yeah, i'm still in the middle of writing a novel (slowly, slowly). while In Pursuance of Said Conspiracy is on the back burner (boo hoo) until the summer is over, i still want to try to have a raw draft of this novel finished in the next few months. i'm reading Hanging Henry Gambrill as research (which i desperately need for this one), and though it's a good book, it's a bit slow going and i have a lot still to get through. unfortunately, a lot of my novel depends on my reading this book, so there are plot points i can't finalize until i've finished it. i'm going to try to spend at least some part of the coming weekend dedicated to barreling through the 400 pages i need to cover (ughhh).
i know. i brought it on myself.
and yet the accident of setting this story in a town so infamous for its violence that it was nicknamed Mobtown is really helping me fill a lot of early gaps in the overall narrative that i could never quite explain before. Isaac's obsession with fire engines, Lewis's "street" mentality, the xenophobic religious roots of Maryland's desire to secede. given that Baltimore had the largest urban population of free blacks in the country (some of whom owned slaves themselves) slavery was barely a corner of a multitude of political issues that made the city such a furnace. all of this also goes far, i think, to fill in Lewis's own bizarrely conflicted ideas about race, immigration, and religion.
and yet it was all a happy accident. i originally chose Baltimore because it was where the Booths grew up. it was the only 19th century city i had any sense of (back when i was a teenager). of course, the more i have read about it since then, the more i realize that anyone growing up in such an environment of political hostility and constant rage and brutality couldn't possibly help growing up under the impression that violence and assassination were legitimate ways in which adults resolved their differences. as a side note regarding Booth, i would go further to say that someone ought to re-examine his politics in light of this upbringing. while i am sure those kids were not exposed directly to the worst of the rioting, Mobtown was still their town. and it was a town in which the majority anti-immigrant anti-Catholic pro-slavers were diehard Unionists.
inneresting stuff, that.
of course, you know the best part of all of this is that i get to invent a 19th century volunteer fire department company, which i have been wanting to do the whole of my life.
: D
the other reason i initially
chose Baltimore as a setting was
because it was home to the nation's
first (and at the time, only) Dental
College. from inception, Lewis was
destined to become a dentist ~ at
least that was what i wanted
no subject
no subject
: D