A text-heavy journal

It is Monday.

It is early.

It is a day on which I had to remind myself that I really do love my job, when my alarm went off a few minutes before 4am.

Now, I’m at work and mulling over packing designs for strange and random products, looking at art blogs and packaging blogs to get my creative juices flowing.

Unfortunately, it worked a little too well, and now I want to go away and work on my own stuff.  Which is, on the one hand, awesome — I had a few days of not really feeling the creativity bug, which is always frustrating, not to mention, the spark is a little less sparkly after a full work week creating.  But this morning, looking at the super cute and sexy pin-up art of  Bill Pressing, I just want to curl up with a sketchpad.  Not just due to his adorably curvy ladies, but also ’cause of his wonderful use of color and value and composition.  But, I’m gonna rein it in and work on making some packaging.  Then at lunch, I can peck away a little more at my ongoing personal piece that is taking a year and a day, since I have mostly just been working on it on my lunch break.  (Almost there, though!)

Other art-related stuff…a few days ago, there was an internet artistic community uproar regarding a website selling art nabbed off of DeviantArt and another site (and for $200-$300 per print, no less, and of course, original artist getting nothing.)  I dutifully added my voice to the tumult putting out the word that artists should check if their art was being sold without their knowledge or consent.  The site was down within about a day — good job, internet.  And usually, the story ends there for me.  But this morning, a fellow DeviantArt user sent me a message informing me that one of my pieces (that they knew of) had been on the site.  It was taken down before I saw it, but I am…slightly flattered, to be honest.  I mean, no, they shouldn’t be selling people’s art…it’s horrible and I don’t understand how they think that is okay, but the site is down, so…the internet prevails.  But, while it was up, they thought my art was good enough to sell for a horrible mark up.   I always kind of felt like, if my art was good enough for people to want to steal it, then I would know I had ‘made it’.  Forget having a graphic design job, and doing professional illustration freelance on the side.  It’s all about illegal use of my work.

Little update

My personal life has been super hectic and full of changes lately, which has resulted in less time for personal work, but I have been pecking away at this darn project, and there are more changes and alterations and GEEZE wings are a pain.  

The pumpkin saw his shadow and there was one more month of summer

Oh, August...you perch on the brink of marvelous autumn, but so often contain more hideous heat and humidity than any of the prior summer months.  

Luckily, I work in a climate-controlled environment. 

I finished and sent off my first piece of real illustration freelance this week.  I sent an invoice and everything.  A generic, downloaded invoice without my logo or anything, but it was right before bed, and I didn't want to waste time I could be sleeping, especially on a Monday.  Let me tell you, as much as I love my Fridays off, this schedule is still brutal.  Anyway, my art was well received, and the studio is interested in working with me on a bigger project soon, about which I am very excited. 

Since I am between official projects...or rather, taking a tiny break before starting the non-time-sensitive commission that is waiting in the wings, I have been attempting to finish my moth rider.  I'm still struggling with the wings a bit, and making up the anatomy as I go, but not having a proper idea of where things went when I started really set me back a bit, and the size of the wings (much larger than in my original sketch) have changed my composition a bit.  We will see.  

The issue with wings

So, as I was finally approaching moth'o'clock, I did a little internet hunting to see just how one rides a creature with wings.  It sees that, unless you are perched (standing or cross-legged) in the middle of the back, to ride astride a winged creature, a rider is best positioned in front of the wings.  Also, I love the fact that the internet could find me a zillion pictures of people riding things with wings.  And by people, of course, I generally mean 'half-clothed busty women'.  Anyway, this revelation resulted in a bit of adjustment.  I love that working digitally means I have the freedom to make those adjustments, though.  

That's all for today.  Time to get ready for work. 

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