The Raven's Roost

New Journal, new month. I never really got on the decorated journal bandwagon, though some people do some really interesting stuff with it. All my entries are text unless I need to sketch a map or a diagram. But I thought that since I like doing fancy hand lettering, I'd try making a monthly lead-off page with a little drawing.

I have found myself in something of an artistic slump lately. Maybe not so much a slump as a slouch. Even having a backlog of sketches isn't helping, though often I can scroll through rough or unfinished pieces and find something to work on. But I may be remedying that soon with some gifts to myself. For many years I've called it "restocking the pond." Sometimes I need time out to go sit and flip through art books, and sometimes I need to acquire new (to me, at least) art books for flipping.

I spent many peaceful and happy afternoons as a kid browsing my mom's collection of art books. She had a lot of technique books - think North Light Books, Watson Guptill, etc. But she also had a few collections of particular artists and some encyclopedias of painting and drawing. In high school and college I found collections of the same sort in the school library. My college had an absolutely heroic "oversized" section of nothing but art books. At least three spans of shelves. It was amazing. But being out on my own has meant having to acquire my own art books, but that's not such a bad thing.

Today I ordered a copy of Takato Yamamoto's Coffin of a Chimera. His work reminds me a great deal of Yoshitaka Amano's, mainly in the linework. I've recently fallen into the trap of a mindset on Reddit's art communities where people are trying to "go line-free" and rid their drawings of lines. I don't know why I set my sights on doing that myself when I trained mostly in pen and ink and I value good linework but there you have it. Anyway, his books are pretty pricey. They only seem to come in hardback, and each one is slipcased with an elaborate cut-out to display the cover art, plus they ship from Japan so there's that.

I also rediscovered a series I'd doted on in College - the Society of Illustrators' annual. I purchased a 2018 one, and will be scouring used book shops for more - I used to love piling up in my dorm room with a pot of coffee and a couple of these bigass collections. If you see someone getting rid of some of these I'll be happy to take them off their hands and pay for shipping and such. They're a treasure trove for me.

Just looking at other peoples' work is usually a tonic. It helps lift me out of a creative rut and gives me the impetus to get back in there and Draw Stuff. This morning's shopping was enough to get me started doodling in Corel, so we'll see where that leads.

For a year or so when I first moved to Louisiana, I designed and painted fake album covers for made-up bands. Sometimes I did covers for fake sheet music for songs that don't exist. Because that's a totally normal thing people do. I no longer have any of them, but my two favorites were a band called Anastasia's Ghost, and a cover for the Whiskey Bayou Philharmonic Orchestra's "Sorry State Suite." I mention this because today I did some "cover art" for Muna, even though it's not a paper comic and doesn't need covers.

I had the worst time getting a fire going this morning and I'm still just sitting parked on the couch. It's after one and I really need to get at least a walk in, and some yoga. I know I'll feel a lot better if I do but the motivation to leave the general area of the fire is low.

 Sorry to have vanished again but Inktober and training for the upcoming races has occupied a lot of my time recently.  But for now I have something I wanna give or sell cheaply to one of you lovely people.

Creating Stylized Characters from 3DTotal Publishing - Because I'm an idiot, I have two copies of this book. It's an excellent book though - especially if you understand anatomy and basic cartooning but are still kind of lost on stylizing. The book not only walks you through the complete character development process, including stuff like color schemes, but has info on how to exaggerate expressions and gestures effectively. Plus it's fun to just flip through. So I'd give it four or five stars.

Since I don't need two copies, I would like to get the other one to somebody who could use it, so if you or someone you know is into drawing (LOL I sound like one of those lawyer ads about suing for mesothelioma) I'll be happy to send it your way. Though it would be nice if you could throw a couple of bucks at my PayPal to cover the shipping cost. If it goes media mail it shouldn't be more than three or four dollars.

Ravens Roost on DeviantArt - the most recent submissions are all Inktober. I'm behind, and likely will remain behind but I intend to finish despite needing to keep working on these into November. I'm using the monthlong challenge as a way to get comfortable with my painting software, and it's forcing me into the habit of drawing for several hours a day, which I'll need to do anyway if I want to put out a webcomic. After all the only "real" rule is to make art and share it.