Welcome to the Sketchbook Confessional for February 2020!
It’s the future, let’s enjoy it #jewell2020
The Sketchbook Confessional is a place where I post and describe all of the art that I did in one month’s time, an effort to reel in the chaos of art and objectively know what I did and did not do.
Art:
This month I started working 100% of my time on Crow-Magnum, a comic collaboration with author Laurel McHargue. It’s a small town psychic thriller!
I tried tackling this project last year but wow, I had my butt handed to me while i was also working on Tilted Sun. It’s a good idea for me to pick one big project and work on that project, and intersperse the project with smaller quick wins.
So, a ~50 page graphic novel is a big project. Interspersed with this project, I’ve been working on small commissions in the Toon Me dimensions, like this one of Joe here below:
In making comics and illustrations, what’s great about having almost 100 pages of Tilted Sun under my belt is that every difficult experience, every minute struggle of drawing a square panel or lettering bubble, every time I struggled to draw characters in sequence, has added to my experience in creating comics.
I think overall, my path was a good way to approach comics: I just made a comic for free, kept making it, and eventually I got new projects and assignments. It’s not a way to make a million dollars, but it is very, very rewarding. I’m sure this model would work for most people.
In February I also started working more heavily in gouache, a medium which, for as long as I can remember, had been trash-talked as “impossible” “weird” and “annoying” by peers throughout my art career - so I had stayed away from it. Wow that was dumb! Never listen to the haters. Paint with gouache.
Gouache turned out to be the perfect medium to travel with. Oil paint is fun to use but unfortunately it cannot work for international trips in my case - transporting a painting that is still wet strikes me as something I don’t want to do.
It’s not that it can’t be done, many people do it - I haven’t found a good way yet.
So, Gouache, a sumptuous medium which dries quickly and also appeals to being ‘drawn’ with, turned out to be perfect for travel.
Travel:
This month I was able to get away from DC for a bit and visit a cool place I had never been before: The Bahamas!
I was able to get some beach time in and also was able to do some volunteering with my friends. To volunteer, my friends and I built food boxes for those recovering from Hurricane Dorian. I wish we could have done more. It was one of those moments where something that seemed very small went further than I ever thought it possibly could have.
As far as ‘why volunteer’ I’ve always thought that chances are very good that we all have skills that we take for granted, which are very, very helpful to others. Even if it’s packing boxes.
Fitness:
I was able to hit the treadmill near the end of the month and I hit my goal of running 6 miles in 60 minutes.
6 miles in 60 minutes was a huge, painful push for me this month. My entire body was screaming at me at the beginning and end of the 60 minutes. It really did NOT want to fit in those miles, it was yelling, crying, pleading for me to stop.
I hope that someday 6 in 60 becomes more of a baseline for me instead of a shining, mountainously triumphant goal. I’ll keep running and see. While I don’t use fitness apps, it’s worked for me to post these images in blogs so I can keep track of where I’m at and what I accomplish month-over-month.
This month, a new order of Newton Running Shoes arrived in the mail. When the box containing my Newtons arrived at our doorstep, the box was so light and airy that it felt almost like an empty box! That’s just how lightweight Newtons are.
That’s it for this short, short month! More soon. Until then, see you Space Cowboy …
