More Yakety Schmakety About Art

[the_gneech]

Herbie expressed interest in my art! SQUEEE! =^.^=

*a-HEM*

Sorry, had a fanboy moment there. Anyway, moving on...

I can't remember now if I've mentioned this before or not, so I'm going to go ahead and mention it again: something I need to do is carve out some time in my schedule for non-strip art. Even if it's the same SJ characters, I need to start working in other venues. I did that to some extent with the "tooning up" pics I did of Leona, Jim, and Eddie, and I'm currently working on a cool new pic of Ramses based on a photo of Jason Scott Lee. (Well, sorta currently ... I will be working on it again once I get the strips for Friday and Saturday done.)

Anyway, there's lots of reasons I need to do this, that all boil down to not letting my skill stagnate. If I do nothing but draw Leonard and Tiffany yakking it up in the bar in a panel 2" x 3.75" for the rest of my life, I may eventually get very good at drawing that ... but I'll never be able to draw anything else.

There's also the fact that a change is as good as a rest, so to speak ... by working on a variety of different things, I don't get sick of what I'm doing. :) There are nights when the prospect of working on the strip just sorta makes me groan. I want to draw, yes, but I want to draw something else. By having "draw something else" be a running project, I can forestall any attacks of guilt that come after me for not working on the strip. :)

I am looking to expand my horizons beyond the comic strip, as well. I keep nursing the idea of putting out a quarterly print-only comic book as a collaborative work. In this case, I probably wouldn't be doing the artwork, or at least a limited amount of it. I would probably do most of the writing and act as a general editor/producer type. Right now, that project is just sorta floating in the limbo of possibility, but it's something I'm probably going to start looking into as 1993 2003 rolls on in. I do want to start working on some projects that bring real money in directly, instead of devoting all of my attention to the rather-less-than-profitable comic strips.

Anyway, it's time for me to head home here, so I'll take up this topic some more later. CYA!

-The Gneech

Comments

[chipuni.livejournal.com]

...something I'm probably going to start looking into as 1993 rolls on in...

Did Dover invent a time machine? *grin*

Re:

[the-gneech.livejournal.com]

I can't help it if it's the wrong decade! -TG

[level-head.livejournal.com]

I've enjoyed Ursula Vernon's approach; she does a couple of (fairly irregular) comic strips, but also does other art projects to keep her wings stretched.

http://www.metalandmagic.com/Pages/news.html

Currently, "Irrational Fears" is a comic strip, but she has has two other pieces just posted as well, "Wug" and "Gopher Fanboy". Some of her previous work is particularly attractive, but the point here is the mixuture of "strip" and "art adventure".

===|==============/ Level Head

[katayamma.livejournal.com]

Well, you could always add more background characters. It seems that more often than not you draw the Watering hole with just the people who are in frame, but there's never anyone else around. Even Cheers had background characters in some shots, eh? That will give you an excuse to add more reandom species and expand your art.

PS: You can always add more of the polar bear, you know. ;)

*snickers*