My workload keeps slipping as I’m flopping between making new art, promoting old art, learning about art, and making posts about art. With the time crunch, I can’t let it bring me down.

Social Media

With social media on fire, I’ve getting more and more signs to putting a larger effort to update my website. For my first baby step, I made an RSS feed for the Blogs! It’s old-school sure, but it’s one new way to make thing easier for following my website activity.

After that, I’m shooting to reorganize my gallery to put my art front and center to my page. The art is unorganized and I haven’t posted enough here that I’ve posted on my new Bluesky account and all the other social media accounts that I’ve neglected this site as a better archive of my artwork.

Book and Bean Cafe

On your next visit to Joliet Public Library on Black Road, grab a cup of coffee at the Book and Bean Cafe and enjoy my select framed pages of my comics, Shirley’s Day and Incident at the Game Store!

My art and my comics will be on display for the entire month of September, so you’re free to come by when the library is open!

Alley Art Fest

Back at the end of August, I was at Alley Art Fest once again! Despite a week of heat wave on the days before, it cooled down enough that I could survive the show without a working tent or umbrella!

Even with the clouds and potential rain, there was still a fantastic turnout in downtown Aurora! I sold out of Donut Cats and Mini Sticker Packs and my order of Pastry Cat Playmats didn’t arrive until the night after the show!

I’m sure, I’ll resupply my stock of prints by the time I go to WaukeCon and Evergreen Park FantaSciFest! So keep an eye open for my announcements on my Convention Schedule Page!

Streaming

Over the summer, I went on a huge stream grind working on my giant commission for my friend on my Twitch channel and show off my art process.

Lately, I’m editing stream clips on my YouTube Channel when I answer special questions on stream. Even with the minimal amount of editing, it’s tough to get these stream archives posted on my archives channel on YouTube.

My presentation can be improved and I keep stuttering and repeating myself, but I’m sure editing these videos can make me aware of how to improve my teaching. Even though I’m back to my day job, I make it a point to make my regular Twitch streams on Wednesday Nights at 7pm CST and block my time to stream.

Misc Artworks

Beside my sketchbooks that I post on my social media accounts, I’m back to experimenting in my iPad to give myself small victories with finishing artwork.

One of these drawings is of the comics version of Adam Warlock on Artstudio Pro. Despite still clinging to paper for my general drawing work, I managed to finish a digital drawing!

The only reason I know about why I drew this in particular is that I was at my day job with my iPad and “Crazy on You” by Heart was playing in my playlists, so Guardians of the Galaxy 3 was on my mind.

I was also experimenting with the Manikin App on iPad because I’m never as good as I want to be with foreshortening. This is nice reminder that’s it’s okay to trace a tricky pose as it’s your own reference.

Blackmask Brainstorming

More efforts to break my digital art rut I colored old ink drawings scans of Cow Characters I drew last year. The first two at top I drew to make a base for interchangeable armor and outfits for Blackmask Sprites.

I spun off into iterating alternate body and costume shapes. Many of these would be great ideas for new characters so I’m interested in iterating these more on a later date or selling them as adoptables or something.

I finally scanned my original 2016 drawing of my Red Wolf Warrior Lady. I’ve been searching for this drawing for years as I never was able to get the initial design back but I was thinking of this design every time I wanted to draw the wolf enemy forces.

I wanted to wolves to have a simple enough design that I could draw armies of them and look similar.

I do want to put them in Blackmask because of course I want wolves in the game!

Halloween Dogs

Been working on some new Dog Characters for Halloween stickers. I drew them during the last few conventions I attended. I’m trying to keep working on them in my iPad and getting over the frustration of drawing on the tablet.

Future Artbook

Another coal in my fire, is this cover illustration for a printed Artbook. At first I was going to make a sketchbook like my previous collection back in 2018, but the book didn’t move at all to the point that I made it a pack in with my other books to get rid of them.

Now that my regular books are dwindling out, I don’t want to print more floppy comics that people aren’t interested in. The plan for this book is to make it a collection of all three of my current comics, and a plethora of my art and behind the scenes writing. My long tutorial on Creating Incident at the Game Store, comes to mind! But this is a much later task and I hope it will be a good test of learning about Kickstarter and Crowdfunding to gauge interest in my art.

Hairstyling

I forgot to mention that I got a color band on my hair. I’d been pondering this for most of the year and I figured, why not?

I’ve had my hair sheared and boring my whole life so it’s and interesting change for me as a person.

Sometimes I feel like I’m behind on so much of my ambitions. What I’m feeling is normal and not a bad one. I only need to take this one day at a time and not compare myself to everyone else’s path.

My year is going fine and I’m sure it will continue to be fine if I maintain a manageable pace. I have future conventions and art project plans so there’s plenty of goals to accomplish! I’ll try to update at a faster interval and I’ll have more to say at a later date!