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i went ahead and spent some money and got a handful of markers to give 'em a go. i have mixed feelings of joy and trepidation.

things i like:

1. consistency of color.
2. no streaks/ease of blending.
3. no buckling on the paper.
4. it gives my work polish that i just can't seem to get with paint because of my tentativeness.

things that concern me:

1. Learning to use them. they color pretty no matter what you do with them, which is great, but i don't want to get too sloppy. also, while i like the brush nibs very much, somehow i can't control them as well as an actual brush with paint. i keep wandering out of the lines.
2. cost (?). i bought more colors than I probably really need, though ~ over time i will figure out a palette.
3. colors! zooks, i'm bad at choosing colors. i chose out of the "sepia" family, figuring i'd trust it to be, well, sepia (as i know it), but it's awfully bright. it's not that big of a deal because i can adjust the saturation on the computer (as i did above), but i'd like to figure out a truer color match eventually.

this is all so bizarre. i could color for (technically) free if i just did it on the computer, where i have bajillions of colors at my disposal and can erase my mistakes. but...

it's all about the artifact.

if i don't have something i can hold in my hand, i don't love it.

at any rate, i colored four pages this morning before noon ~ fastest coloring job ever. that alone is worth a lot. now i can spend the rest of the weekend working on totally new stuff! yay!

hope everyone is having a great weekend!

: D

p.s. the panel above is from a page you won't see until october 12th, i think. please note the dreaded corn field!

socks ~ !



the weather is turning and i had a long day of on and off fighting with the Reconstruction project (and mostly winning, so it's all good), but i thought i should take a little break and work on something else for a while just to get my energy back up.

i could have washed dishes or sorted the laundry or cleaned the bathroom, but that'd be boring, so i tried to watch Lost (everyone and their mother has recommended it to me). i settled in with a frosty Coke and popcorn, put on the pilot, and enjoyed all the way up to where they shoot the polar bear in the second episode.

i wasn't bothered by the polar bear. i was strangely bothered by most of the behavior of the survivors. of course it's a tv show and we have to expedite the shock and horror and move onto monsters and adventure and mystery and all of that, but...i dunno. the expedition leading to the polar bear sorta did it in for me. first of all, they take shannon, who's totally useless physically ~ and they do it knowing there's a people-eating critter in the jungle. of course, she speaks French, so that makes it okay. secondly, they are on a hunt for water (allegedly), but don't appear to have any means for carrying water. what are they going to do, find it, drink some, then come back and say: yep, there's water! likewise, it just rained. does nobody think to maybe set something up to catch rainwater? they are equally careless salvaging stuff from the cockpit and...wait a minute...there's a man-eating critter snacking on the pilot, but they decide to run from the cockpit instead of stay inside where it might actually be safe? oy vey!

anyway, i was perfectly okay just flowing with all that nonsense until Sawyer pulled out the gun and had his little contretemps with Sayid. instantly i hated Sawyer as a character and dreaded the thought of suffering through untold number of episodes of this guy making trouble for no real reason at all. i took a desultory stab at finishing through the third episode, but it's over for me. i don't like any of the characters enough to stick with it. Hurley and Claire were about as interesting as it got, and i guess Jack was okay, but i didn't like the actor playing him. the rest of them were just cardboard to me.

the show is well put together, but doesn't do it for me, alas. i might give it another go when winter gets dark and cold and there's nothing else to watch. eh.

anyway, so i gave up on that and started digitally painting paper dolls (naturally). and above are some adorable socks to prove it.

hope everyone is still enjoying their weekend!

: D

i can't believe it's been a week since i last posted! i've been working, keeping very busy, trying to build up a buffer. i'm on page 14, so it's going slow, but going. there's so much about digital painting that i'm figuring out along the way that i'm sure the first hundred pages or so are going to be ranging all over the map. style-wise i think there's really only one thing i'm capable of doing, so this is how it's going to look, though it's unfortunately got too much of a Phoenix Requiem-looking influence going. that was totally unintentional. i still really wanted something that looks more like the scribble above, but i seem incapable of scribbling consistently, so there you have it.

and speaking of the above scribble, this was a quickie study i did for a panel on page 13. i like the scribble better than how the painted version came out, so i'm posting this here for my own contemplation. but i won't fixate because that just leads down bad paths.

anyway, we're through the first week of m-th posts! it's been fun writing and drawing the Georgetown College scene that's coming up next week. as a result i have (not surprisingly, to anyone who knows me well enough) revamped the story structure quite a bit. alas, there won't be any exploding heads just yet, but i promise they'll come sooner than in the original plan, so just hang onto your hats.

if you haven't visited the site and seen the week's posts, you can see them all here!

hope everyone is having a great, productive weekend!

i painted this panel this morning. sometimes something just comes out right and you can't help be pleased by it. i'm still pretty tentative with the paints overall, but i have confidence for doing the faces (for the most part), which helps. I'm learning some things not to do and browsing around this afternoon, got some tips on things i can improve (many in the "wow, maybe you should read a basic primer on painting with watercolors!" department). this is one of the problems of being self-taught when you are an incredibly lazy student.

at any rate, i just wanted to share the progress. you will start seeing these pages in all their full glory starting on August 16th.

: D

i haven't posted a picture of my desk in forever. mostly because i haven't been working at my desk and there's been nothing to see. even in this picture, you can see how sort of scattershot it is. i don't even remember why i have all the glue out (maybe i ought to put it away, you think?)


this weekend i managed to get a bunch of stuff done in spite of frittering my time on watching movies (among them: Crossing Over, which I recommend!), spinning about the usual quandaries, eating popcorn, and spending much of saturday running around at booksales and Cinco de Mayo festivities. a good time was had by all and very little damage was done to the pocketbook.

i also want to say that after 20 freakin' years my character's been lugging around a Navy Colt, i officially switched it to a Colt Dragoon this weekend. i had always wanted a heavier, more ridiculous firearm with a larger caliber (.44 instead of .36) ~ the dragoon is perfect. thanks, jamie, it's entirely your fault.


image for an up-coming scene
it's a good thing the dragoon shares a lot of similarities with the navy variety. it made drawing this one much easier than i suspected!

: D

one of the things that i really needed to fix with regard the Reconstruction site and its contents was the curious absence of Razi-el in all but the pale introduction. i think part of me has always been just a little chicken to fully integrate Razi-el into the story in an overt way, fearful of wrecking the sense of realism (clearly my sense of realism is a little off if that's the case). but considering that the whole story is driven by Razi-el's presence in Lewis Fletcher's life (irregardless of whether he's aware of it), i really need to make sure his presence is felt by the reader.

so, enter Razi-el.

furthermore, i thought it would be amusing to share a rough draft of some small something with you. i often read about the process of other writers on my flist and enjoy (in the best sense of the word) their struggles and wonder, sometimes, at the piles of papers and edits and other detritus that may litter their desktops. editing is a violent thing (leastways i think some part of it should be!).

this is something i wrote last night (from Razi-el's pov to get him into the game). you'll notice it's accompanied by a wee little scribble (thinking forward to what picture to draw to accompany it). you'll prolly get to see the finished product of this by sunday. for the terminally curious, this is written with a plain ol' black Pilot pen on the back of a draft of some boring work thing (you can faintly see the ink bleed from the printing on the other side). sometimes i throw a color wash on the scribbles if the paints are handy.


hope everyone is off to a great friday! i have beta stuff to read and much to write, so i expect it will be a productive weekend in this corner of the world.

I spent most of Sunday gnashing my teeth. the reasons why are pointless to explain (same o'crud). then I did the stupid thing of reading myself a bedtime story so depressing that it carried my mood overnight and now I am officially in the glums.

The book, Dennis Brandt's Pathway to Hell isn't spectacularly written ~ it's rather short (barely over 200 pages), and isn't exhaustive about much ~ but that made it perfect for me: no long explanations of campaigns I already know too well, no endless nattering about hardtack. instead it's a true chronicle largely in Angelo Crapsey's own words from his letters and diary, documenting in the most painful way imaginable, his slow decline into self-destructive dementia.

Crapsey's story is unique as far as books of the war go, though there's unfortunately nothing unique about what happened to him. It tells the story that Paulson's Soldier's Heart tries to tell, but doesn't.

When I think back on the origins of Reconstruction, I think i wrote it in part because this book hadn't been written. Crapsey's story is more heartbreaking than any novel anyone could ever write: a disaster that could have been avoided a hundred different ways. The circumstances of his bizarre upbringing at the hand of a religious whack-job father, his fervor for the Union, his abolitionist sentiments that sour after emancipation drags the war into a seemingly endless slaughter, the shame of his surrender and imprisonment ~ all of it horrible, horrible ~ and then to come home to the father-figure and friend he looked up to the most only to find himself rebuffed, feared, and ostracized. And finally the everyday event that led to Crapsey's end is so banal, almost ~ so utterly human in its simple cruelty. It isn't any wonder he blew his brains out. Twenty two years old.

Of course I imagined a different end once upon a time for Reconstruction which is in many ways this same story: an endless cycle of addictions, an abusive marriage, desolation, death. Even I was never so brave to actually make any of that stick, though. I had to find some hope in there somewhere. So I did.

But there was none for a lot of young boys like Crapsey. Even Howard Bahr didn't shrink from drawing us a picture in The Judas Field (which is maybe why I didn't like that book as much as I wanted to ~ it hit a nerve with me).

So yeah. I don't know why I am writing this except to wonder at the meaning of it all. I really seem to be out of touch with the world in so many ways. I don't see that improving, either, and it concerns me from time to time.



from LookingLand.com

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i originally made the threat here, and then i followed it up by actually conceiving a character here. but i put it all in the back of my mind because i wasn't quite sure how to fit this strange outsider into the careful epic that i had spent so much care constructing.

well thanks to a wretched sinus infection and a lot of medication that has made me both loopy and cranky (and i mean really cranky ~ like, sleepless, homicidal cranky), i think i've solved all those niggling problems and whitney ballard will be making his debut this weekend (Sunday) on Reconstruction (in his own words, no less, which is utterly terrifying to me!).

i have to say, spending time with ballard, getting to know his particularities has been very disturbing, but likewise very rewarding (especially in terms of bringing together a few loose sheep in the story ~ if i ever thought the plot was intertwined in an impossible complex fashion, it's now ridiculously so). but even more gratifying, perhaps: it's not often that i challenge myself to write a character so utterly repugnant and try see things from a point of view I couldn't disagree with more ~ and to find good in someone whose whole livelihood depends on a gross systematic bigotry.

i actually found qualities to admire in ballard, which is frightening, but i hope good for the story. and i'm proud of myself that i am not going to shrink from putting this character front and center in his own little opera.



a rather cleaned-up whitney ballard
and his long-time nemesis (unfinished),
the mysterious "reverend" luther.
three guesses who the dashing mister luther really is
(and the first two don't count)
( some slightly spoilery background for the truly masochistic )

this morning i woke up thinking about how i had (oops) missed posting the Monday Millennium recap. then i realized it was thursday and boy did i ever miss it! i guess i got bogged down in other truck and deals and annoying life junk of no interest to any of you. suffice it to say, all is well in the world and despite the inhospitably cold temps recently and about of week of missing time, the month of march is rolling through with thus far record productivity.

i launched the Reconstruction site over at EpiGuide last sunday and got some excellent feedback on some of my lack of intuitive web-building. i made some changes to help the site be more user-friendly and i think it's looking pretty great. now i just need to get on the stick about creating content. i've fallen behind and am nowhere near where i wanted to be in terms of catching up to where it was the story left off three (or four?) years ago. beh.

anyway, this is completely random, but here's two recent cool articles on interesting bits of ephemera related to the man in the funny hat:

Collector: Lincoln photo uncovered in Grant album; and ~

In Lincoln's watch, mystery revealed

fun stuff ~ !

: D

I was really hoping to bring in the new year with a clean workspace, but I think the picture below tells it all. On the bright side, I'm busy and enjoying the busy-ness! I'm working on a ton of projects simultaneously and don't know how long I will be able to keep juggling them, but for the time being I'm going to ride this enthusiam train to the end of the line. Today I am cleaning off my actual drawing table (which has been buried under a map of Washington D.C. for the last six months at least) to see if I can't move some my work over into the other room and alleviate a little bit of the clutter.


Yesterday I worked on Reconstruction a good deal and am excited to announce that I think I can probably start posting three times a week very soon! I've finally distilled the process into something I can knock out very quickly. The art only suffers mildly for it and I have so much more fun moving through scenes quickly. I've finished drawing the "For Katie" scene that I have been working on and I like the way it wraps up. I'm glad I started with this sort of non-sequitor as a lead-in. It really gave me a chance to experiment with the tools I'd allotted myself and to get the story rolling. If you have been occasionally checking in at WebComics Nation for the updates, you'll notice that it's not very well organized over there, but I'm hoping to work on the "official" website this month and get that up and running at the start of February. Then maybe it will be easier to follow along.

It's a new year, but I'm slow to change my habits. As usual, I'm struggling with the usual pile of nagging doubts about what I am doing with my life and talents (I suspect many of my creative friends and readers go through the annual self-assessment thing around this time of year), but I'm going to just work through it (and I hope all of you do too!). Even if there are projects on my desk that I'm not entirely in love with at the moment, I will probably love them again next week.

I've been so busy that I haven't been posting much, which is a good thing, I guess ~ but I have so many cool books and things I want to share. I hope this week I can start to catch up!


Lastly, I need to post this picture as annual proof that yes, I do have the cutest dog that ever lived. This was taken at my sister's house on Christmas, which is why he's wearing the silly ribbon with the poinsettia on it.

from LookingLand.com

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