November Trees

 Inspired by Leonardo's sanguine chalk landscapes, I sat in our sunny field and drew a few of my own. By the next week most of the leaves were gone.

Two Ways to Think

 

I'm Sure this Door is Some Kind of Metaphor

 I've been designing doors in my sketchbook. At a certain point I visited the Strong Oaks Woodshop with a scheme in hand. I've been stopping by periodically over the winter, in my little red truck, to pick up loads of scrap bits to burn in our wood stove. 

Keeping warm with cast-off bits—one of the little things that gets you longing for Summer.

Over this last weekend Mike built the door and helped me arrange for my design to be cut from a sheet of 1/16" steel on the wood shop's laser cutter (it was amazing to watch). Then we polished and placed the design as the last of winter's snow flurried outside. Finally we wrapped the door up in padded plastic and I drove it home in the back of my little red truck. 

Not scraps this time but treasure. 

And it all began as a few sketches. 

I've written a longer piece about this process over on my Patreon, along with video and lots more pictures. It's an open post, so feel free to have a look. 

Still Writing, Still Learning

 

It was August when I opened up my notes and started serious work on redrafting this novel. I had planned to wrap it up in mid-November. I never guessed that I would still be working on the final few chapters with March looming. But one thing I can say: 

I have learned a lot from writing, and re-writing this book. And I’ve learned a lot from sitting with a story for fifteen years from inception to final draft. And even here in the final weeks, as I push to the end, I will sip my morning coffee and a little bit of plot or theme or a moment of character will snap into place like a puzzle piece. 

But still, I am *aching* for this one to be finished!

It’s time to turn this one in, hoist my little knapsack full of lessons learned, and walk on down the road to the next project. 

The Walker

 It’s the most frequent scribble in my notebooks, that little analogue that is Ben-but-not-Ben. Always walking, always thinking. Often head down. Frequently with a satchel or bag. A wanderer. A traveler. 

Of course it’s nothing new to say that the legs the the brain are connected, that walking and thinking go hand-in-hand. But for me scribbling completes the trifecta, the Creative Trinity. 

Move the legs, move the brain, move the pen. 

And repeat. 

The legs wander, the brain is messy, the lines are crooked. But if you ask me that’s where the real beauty lies.

So keep wandering.

Keep thinking.

And, if it’s your thing, keep scribbling.

The Story of the Fox (1937)

 Today I sat down to close some browser tabs. You know the ones—you find something that makes you think “oh, oh, that’s interesting. I will share that somewhere” But instead of sharing the link or bookmarking the site you just keep the tab open. Any day now you’ll get back to it. But you don’t. You keep the tab open for months. And when you finally think things are getting just too ridiculous you sit down meaning to close tabs and then, somehow, you have even more tabs open. 

Well, this time around the first tab, the one that’s been open for ages, was something I’ve been meaning to share here. Last October I posted a Youtube link to a 1920 film called Der Golem. Sometime after that I happened upon this fantastic 1937 stop motion film recounting the original Reynard stories. It’s wonderful:

I hope you enjoy it as much as I will enjoy having one less tab open on my computer. 

And while we’re on the subject of Reynard, here is a look at a close-to-final version of the title page for Reynard’s tale:

This illustration originated as an attempt at a cover, but the final cover will be a little different. I liked this picture, though, so we moved it to the title page. 

Of Models and Muses

I am solidly into the thick of the Winter Doldrums here. The warm sun of summer seems like a figment from a half-remembered dream and the Little Studio with it’s TARDIS blue door catches the freezing western wind and isn’t quite insulated enough to keep reliably warm. So I either set up inside the busy house or I sit at my quiet desk with both a space heater and a fire in my tiny wood stove, embracing both the chill and the melancholy.

Here in this low ebb of the year I’m trying to draw up an illustration for the cover of Reynard’s Tale. This book is important to me and I am so intent on getting all the little details of design to turn out right (let us now obsess over paper texture! and colored drop caps!) The cover, in particular, has been giving me fits.

But it has turned a corner. I think.

One thing I did to jog myself out of stagnation was reach out to Erin, who did some modeling for me back in the halcyon days when I was able (with the help of Rose) to put together semi-regular life drawing evenings. 

It seems counter-intuitive to have a wood elf pose for a mermaid, but it worked. And the cover illustration has started to come together. 

Drawing from life. It never fails. 

Sad Clown Returns

 I was talking with Landis the other day about our shared dream of populating the world with weird little books, and about how difficult it can be in mainstream publishing to find ways to stretch creatively, and push into new and exciting spaces. It’s almost an axiom in creative work that any measure of success also builds up an expectation for more of the same. In these circumstances it's up to the artist to step lively—to "float like a butterfly and sting like a bee."

Inevitably the topic of social media came up, along with questions like “does social media engagement really have an effect on book sales?” And from there came the mention of the quieter corners of the internet—those all-but-forgotten spaces where, perhaps, a different kind of opportunity lies.

“I’ve been blogging again,” I told my friend. “Just quietly. I don’t think many people are reading, and that makes it strangely freeing. Like I have a space for quiet musings.”

“And yet…” I continued, “there’s still the fear of revealing too much.” 

I recently posted an entry titled “Face of a Sad Clown” which was a little bit about what I’m doing with Patreon, and about smiling for the camera—not just about smiling but about putting on the smile.

I took the entry down shortly after I posted it because I thought “no that’s too much.” But I forgot something. Well, I forgot two things:

First, I forgot that often, when you're doing creative work, being uncomfortable can be a sign you're on the right track.  

Second, I forgot that my blog is still linked up to my Goodreads account (I do hardly anything on Goodreads these days). And from there I heard from a few people who connected with the post and appreciated it. 

I shouldn’t have taken it down. So here’s the original entry: 

Face of a Sad Clown

The Patreon is well and truly up and running. And that is good. 

 But it makes me uncomfortable, these days, all the perky smiles for the camera when I am still so aware of how complicated everything is on the inside. But it’s still a part of me, the sparkle and the bounce—the stage light and greasepaint, if you will. And I don’t mind it so much. 

My wise friend recently wrote a bit about different online platforms serving different facets of personality, or acting as stages for different kinds of engagement. 

 Is this disingenuous? Acting differently on different platforms? I think it the opposite. I think all my favorite people are gems. 

And gems are multifaceted. 

That's why they sparkle.

Cold Morning Engine (a return to a process)

 

So. 

I’m working on a new book. 

I’ve been woking on it for quite awhile, actually. I’ve filled a notebook full of doodles and scenes, characters and thoughts. And I’ve written the script. That’s the first really huge step. It’s less that 12K words, but it took a long time and several drafts. I’ve drawn reams of concept art and creature design. I’ve had long calls with my editor and gathered feedback from trusted creator-friends (and my family!) and now… 

Now I’m finally sitting down to draw the thumbnails. 

That’s the second really huge step. 

Drawing thumbnails means I’m laying out the whole book, in miniature, based on my script. In film terms this is when you've got your script and your now shooting principal photography. 

A thumbnail page looks something like this (from Mighty Jack and the Goblin King):

Or this (from Mighty Jack and Zita the Spacegirl):

It’s a fun, but intense part of the process—a time of calming music and deep focus. Scratch, scratch, scratch goes my stubby pencil. Scrub, scrub, scrub goes my eraser. Then scratch, scratch scratch again. 

Drawing finished pages is, by comparison, mentally easier but physically more difficult (to extend the film analogy, drawing finished pages is post production–get rid of all that green screen!). Drawing finished pages makes my wrist hurt, but I can listen to podcasts while I do it.  Not so with thumbnails. 

It’s been awhile since I’ve been in this place. The last time I started roughing out a book was March of 2018. I was visiting Portland Maine and a surprise blizzard had trapped me, all alone, in a cabin outside of town. That was when I roughed in the opening chapter of Mighty Jack and Zita the Spacegirl. So I’m easing myself back into the rhythm of this part of the process. 

Luckily, it seems like half my best friends are roughing out their books right now, which gives me a sense of solidarity. (and just maybe a slight sense of competition, which is also helpful). 

Some artists create very beautiful thumbnails. Mine, as you can see, tend to be barely legible. I’m working fast and loose, mostly in pencil, on recycled printer paper, with a lot of scrubbing out and redrawing and notes and arrows leading to multiple angles and options. Lots of crumpling up pages and starting over. 

One of the aims, at this stage, is to preserve a sense of mutability. Another aim, for me, is to focus more on the rhythm of the pages, and the beats of the story, rather than get caught up in the details. It’s about moments and page-turns and flow. 

Plus, the first dozen or so pages are probably going to get redone, so the first goal is to fall into the particular design and layout rhythms of this book. Right now the aim is to just go. Move forward. Keep moving. Create momentum.

And when I’m finally done with this phase I’m going to trust that the big stack of thumbnail pages will be just readable enough that I can walk my editor through it, panel by panel, on a long phone call. 

Anyway. It’s exciting. There’s some ambitious stuff in this book, visually and structurally. Stuff I’ve never really done before. 

Gosh I hope this goes well. 

Deep breaths.