i hope everyone has celebrated a safe new year's eve and is starting their new year with cheer and optimism. be gentle with your resolutions if you are prone to make them: you don't want to trap yourself with obligations you can't or don't want to fulfill and find yourself grumpy and disappointed before the first quarter is even over!

for me, i've written my list of the year's goals. last year i didn't get as much done as i would have liked, but i feel more focused this year (or at least have been more recently). so i am hopeful.

in reading: last night i considered challenging myself to finish reading Quicksilver (i had said i would), but instead i read Enid Blyton's The Enchanted Wood (or at least the beginning of it). Blyton's style is rather simplistic (it's a children's book after all, and definitely a product of its time), but i am reminded of how prolific she was. she was a natural storyteller, i guess. that's something i have never been. i can weave a charming anecdote, but writing has always leaned more to the technical side for me.

i will finish Quicksilver this year at some point, but at the moment i have so many more exciting things on my night stand. you will be hearing about them along the way, no doubt.

in writing: in 2009 Reconstruction will celebrate 20 years (officially in August). i guess i ought to polish off the writing of the old thing, shouldn't i? i mean, the sequential version will keep just fine running as it is (and it is!), but the narrative text it scattered over so many places right now. this will be a year of gathering it up and trying to put it into some sort of order.

anyway, i am celebrating this milestone (and semi-resolution) with a bottle of absinthe today (because what could be more appropos?).


in writing (cont.): the last thing i wrote in 2008 was the annual Christmas story. clocking in at a little over 30 pages, it turned out rather amusing, though has a lot of rough edges and a couple of dropped threads that need to be basted back in. but i managed to write it without any pressure whatsoever of feeling like it had to be the least bit good or feeling like i had to defend it. i honestly don't think i have enjoyed something so much for a long, long time. i am hoping that this bit of liberation will free me up to be more productive in the coming year.

i haven't given up on In Pursuance of Said Conspiracy either, by the way. i am trying to figure out how to fit it into my schedule (it's going to be a tight race if i want to get it going by april). i just need to clear some other unfinished business off of my desk.

finally, The Orchard debuts today and will be posting weekly on thursdays. yay!

okay, enough potpourri from me: tell me one thing you want to try this year that you've never done before ~ and one thing you really want to focus on accomplishing!

: D

If the condition of my desk is any indicator, I've had a pretty good weekend as far as productivity is concerned. I've really taken the pressure off myself with regard to certain specific goals. This weekend I mostly ran errands, changed a broken headlight (I'm so car-savvy), wrote Christmas cards, and worked on the annual Christmas story. This year's story is pretty silly, but I'm having lots of fun with it and I'm pretty sure it'll be done by the coming weekend (haven't decided whether I will draw pictures for it, however). I wanted to finish a draft this weekend, but I have some key conversations yet to write and there are tons of transitions missing (and it's so far a very sloppy first draft). I'm going to print it out tomorrow and maybe finish it during the week.

Otherwise, I worked on paper dolls. No particular reason except that I've been sorta sloughing off on making dolls, etc., and I'd like to have some done before the year ends since it was one of my "non-resolutions" for 2008. Interestingly (or rather, typically), I started with one set of dolls and worked on them Saturday evening, and then today decided I didn't really like them as much as I thought, so I completely redrew them and then made a third that turned out better than the previous four. Hey, I'll take it!


I didn't work on Reconstruction at all (the break I was taking last week spilled over into the weekend), but I think I'll be ready to get back to it soon. This Wednesday we wrap up all the "buffer" I had socked away, so I've got to get on it. I don't know if I have solved the problem I am having with the style, but the time away has given me some space to mull over the style changes I'm looking to make. I think they're a go, so after this week, you will probably start seeing a noticeable difference in the artwork.

And now I'm going to take some drawing stuff to curl up in bed (and my laptop so I can watch The Dark Knight for the 187th time ~ I believe in Harvey Dent!). Looks like the snowfall will nicely replace what got rained on this morning. I love waking up to a fresh white world!

Coming up: some more illustrated books and maybe actual pictures of dolls-in-progress!

from LookingLand.com

Nucleus LiveJournal Plugin © Evgeny Lykhin

i've just spent the last three hours over-processing pictures for Reconstruction. didn't i have some very simple rules for this challenge? i especially seem to recall that these rules very specifically meant to cut out the post-painting digital processing (shading, lettering, etc.)

why am i having such a problem following my own rules?

...so annoyed with myself.

edit: okay, i undid the mess. all is well in the world again.

: D

in reading news: last night i finished reading s. weir mitchell's When All the Woods Are Green (such a nice title). i couldn't find any substantial synopsis of the book online. only a single sentence: a family in the Canadian woods. then i read the book and realized that's about all the synopsis it deserves.

this book was an appalling 400+ pages. and i finished it. it was an endless prattle from start to finish between some hoighty campers who considered themselves terribly droll. about 150 pages in there was the hint that the story might be about a murder. then, about 300 pages in there was a bear attack and that almost got interesting. fifty pages later a child's gravestone was stolen and wow what a great plot that might have made. but the characters continued to talk about fly fishing and ancient greek poets and i don't even know what ~ witty nonsense, only it wasn't terribly witty, mostly just nonsense. and then in the last twenty pages of the book, the murderer made her move, shot a guy and only wounded him in the shoulder, and the last ten pages were endless denouement about the guy and the girl finally getting together to live happily ever after.

ye gads what a turd of a book. i've never thought mitchell was a "great" writer, but up until now i had at least enjoyed his stories. this was a waste of a good premise (the stolen grave, rolling rich campers for their money, hunting bears), as well as some perfectly good characters (nerdy ned lyndsey, who got almost no book time after the first few chapters and oliver ellet who was adorable but completely pointless), and had the most annoying heroine in the history of literature (whiny, stuck-up rose lyndsey). blarghhhh.

in writing news: i have spent most of the day working on various projects and have settled in to the writing this evening, though with some unease. it's very hard to cope with a protagonist who is a racist. i never used to let this bother me because i used to avoid the presence of scenarios in which the fact would come up. but clearly i can't write an epic about the Civil War and Reconstruction without addressing the issue. so i've been doing a lot of reading and trying to get some perspective on the exact kind of racist i'm writing about. and it's hard because characters in books are allowed to have flaws, but i have such a low tolerance for racists myself it's hard to permit such a flaw (and especially seeing the degree to which it manifests). and besides, character flaws are usually pc. archie bunker would never fly today. today, it's okay if your character is misanthropic ~ as long as they treat everyone equally bad. but you can't have a character who hates jews or black people or homosexuals. it's too easy to judge.

and today i was idly shopping around online for some perspectives and wound up watching the first part of Goodbye Uncle Tom, which is a heinous film. what is it about me that reads a review in which a film is declared shocking and exploitative and i immediately have to see it ~ i did the same thing with Soldier Blue and i was pretty grossed out about it. i am dead certain i will have nightmares after watching only 40 minutes of Goodbye Uncle Tom, which is ludicrous and offensive in turns. i don't know quite what to make of it, but much of the truth of what it portrays is revolting enough to make me queasy.

America doesn't like picking at its scabs. boy does it have some doozies.



painting of a Richmond slave auction
by english artist Lefevre James Cranstone (1862).
Richmond sold an average of 10,000 slaves a year
in the 30 years preceding the Civil War
you see pictures like this and everything looks so cheery and clean and colorful! then you take a real hard look at what this business was really about (i mean really look at it), and the suffering and indignity of it all can really overwhelm you. it's hard then, as a writer, trying to find ways of making a character blind enough to the humanity of slaves as some vile, egregious justification for their own lack of empathy. merg.

okay, not so cheery a thought on which to end this post. i hope everyone is having a less gruesome weekend!

: D

wow, i spent entirely too much time making this. i don't know what i was thinking. that said, it came out pretty nifty. i basically kiped the design from this fabulous library in portugal, but toned down the opulence a bit. i'm still working on the bottom half, but i had to stop after drawing and coloring all those little books. it was a bit much.

it's been a lot of fun doing this today. i seem to work best when there's no expectation looming over my head (no surprise there). and look: it's even in color, which is pretty amazing for me. i might dicker with the tones a bit for the final, but for now i am pretty pleased with it. and i wrote a little today too. about two-thousand words for whatever that's worth. nothing brilliant, but it was nice to throw down some verbiage nonetheless. i can't exactly account for my current good mood, but i certainly welcome it given all the angsting i've been doing lately about my creative stuff. i don't know if this will last, but i plan to enjoy it while i can. i've still got a ton of work to do on other projects and i'm now going to go do it (yes, at ten o'clock at night, why not?). i'd like to wrap up at least one of the major projects on my desk tonight (i'm nearly there!), so that i can work on the other one tomorrow and next week. with the holiday weekend coming up i have an extra day off and that's great too. i'm just babbling at this point. but all procrastination must come to an end and this is it. happy sattidy all! : D

the picture of the day is Van Gogh's "Blooming Plum Tree", which is a copy from japanese painter Hiroshige. you can see it compared to the original here. i think it's pretty nifty. love the colors.

if other news, i am still slogging my way through projects (endlessly, it seems). in fact i must go slog even now.

that is all.

: D

p.s. oh! i nearly forgot! it might amuse some of you to read this recent chat interview about Reconstruction over at the EpiGuide: inarticulation ensues.

i decided to splurge a little on myself and got the HBO series John Adams. i am only a little more than halfway through it, but i love it. i read some super-negative reviews, but obviously these were from people grinding axes because the complaints about it being nothing but a bunch of people sitting around talking are unfounded (yes, there's talking, but a whole bunch of stuff happens too!). also, complaints about the film style are mostly unfounded as well. yes, there is some creative camera angling, but for the most part it works (a few scenes stand out as sort of awkward for the tilt perhaps).

my single complaint is that sometimes context is wholly lacking (and for an audience of ill-educated americans and foreign viewers, this can be deadly). if you don't know much about american history, there's a whole lot here that will probably frustrate you. there has been at least one point at which i had to pause the dvd to look up what the hell was going on because there was no exposition to explain the scene. the performances are great. laura linney is a scene stealer in the best way and paul giamatti is fabulously cloying and nebbish as the title character (that adams fella was a dweeb in his time ~ which is not to say that he wasn't brilliant, but he certainly made his own bed politically).

so it's flawed, but i think very enjoyable. naturally i wish they showed more of the actual war, but the story is about john adams, not George Washington (when are they ever going to make a respectable movie about George Washington?)



ooo snow. a movie with snow.
it automatically gets thumbs up for that.
oh, and in case i didn't indicate enough: George Washington is just the coolest ever (both in the series and in real life).

it was update day thursday, but i didn't blog that day. i'm barely getting by week to week, and second-guessing myself every step of the way. i redid thursday's "page" twice and it still came out middling, and then rewrote this post half a dozen times, which also does not bode well. i keep reminding myself that i started out with this story just to find a style, practice drawing, and get the hang of the week-to-week posting thing ~ to see what the schedule will be like. i figure i have a dozen or so more pages to do before this story is over and then maybe i can get some perspective.

if i struggle through it.

msmcguire made a post the other day that best captures my feelings on the matter. yeah. same-o. and off i go to wrangle with dragons.

happy sattidy all!

: D

it's update day, so of course i am posting, but look: there's more!

like, for instance, it's been a revelatory week so far. unsubtle things in the cosmos have redirected my brain in interesting ways: bachsoprano's comments on some pages i sent have reminded me to stop trying to be a linear story-teller (my brain just doesn't work on a nicely aristotelean model), utter_scoundrel's recent post about a sherlock holmes book reminded me of my passion for ephemera, and a conversation about cannibalism at work reminded me that i have a rather prurient interest in the grotesque (in the most faulknerian sort of ways).

i am always telling others to be fearless, but looking back at all the online variations of Reconstruction that have floated around for the last four years, i am amazed at how utterly tame they are. it's like i've been writing the disney rated-G version of my own work. pretty bizarre for a series with a pathologically violent protagonist and a central theme of sexual psychosis.

i reinvented Reconstruction as a webcomic because i was having a hard time finding a balance between illustration and narrative ~ i thought that was the problem and that making a choice one way or the other would solve it and i could move forward. but it didn't and i realize now that 1.) what i have always wanted was a hybrid ~ something narrative with storyboards, for example), and that 2.) the only time this stuff has ever worked has been in an impressionistic style (i won't say non-linear because impressionism can be linear).

so that's a lot of seemingly random potatoes flung all over the grill, but i think it's getting me somewhere, oddly enough. a plan is forming (murky, but a plan nevertheless). yes, the plan calls for much slashing and burning of "things that don't work". yes, the plan means overhaul once again. but i'm going to keep this one close and quiet for the moment. we'll all just pretend for now that it's status quo.


meanwhile, this is a detail from my favorite picture at the moment. you can see the full deal in all of its glory right here.

i know it's not an earth-shattering picture (frankly i have no idea what it is even of, actually), but i love the color palette. and look at the dog!

: D

i am back from the the beyond!

despite taking work with me to my sisters, i accomplished absolutely zero this weekend, which puts me perilously behind in all things. this means more than ever posts may be short and responses may be slow while i catch up.

about the film: (no real spoilers!) despite the lack of sean connery, i was not disappointed with Indiana Jones. the story struck me as slightly bizarre, but i suppose no more bizarre than the previous films when you sit down and think about it. i wasn't "disappointed" with the ultimate resolution, and it was just nice to spend time with Indy and company once again. the major fears i had about the plot (from rumors i had read hither and yon when the project was still plagued by script problems), were thankfully unfounded. i think spielberg (or whoever it was) made some intelligent choices about what to do with this one to please the fans. while some of those choices seem overly deliberate (there's a business about Indy's famous hat that is a tad hamfisted), only a movie like this could pull off such a high cheese factor and make an emphatic point about it. one of the best moments in the film in the subtle way in which the audience is reassured that there is only one Indiana Jones (and there will be no substitutes).

i'm sorry that Harrison Ford is getting so far up there in years, but he pulls this off with great energy. it might have to be his last Indy film (and maybe that's for the best), but i think the whole team did us proud overall.

two thumbs up: go see it!



: D

oh, and Reconstruction updated on monday in case you missed it. i like this page. i like Gretta Collier. i have a story in mind about her and Alan, but i doubt i will ever write it (at this rate anyway).

gotta get back to work. hope everyone had a happy weekend!

tidbit one: it's monday, so it's update day for Reconstruction. if nothing else, today's page is a good indication that Lewis Fletcher's inclination toward violent-mindedness is not a product of his experience in the war.

tidbit two: my cousin (the bee-u-ti-ful and wondrous babalueye bought me my first pair of vans (ooo i know, so trendy!). but check these out. these shoes are the living end!
tidbit three: watched the first season of the bbc Robin Hood series this weekend. it's too silly for my tastes (and the costuming is just dreadful: it ought to be called Robin in a Hoodie), but i was mildly amused by it and came to an astonishing no duh moment (what rock have i been forgetting this one under?): robin hood was the earl of Huntington. if you don't know why it's so brainless that i forgot this, don't mind me, i'm just blithering.

apparently sometimes i'm kind of stupid about my own allegories. wow.

happy monday all!

: D