Sketchy... at best

Just a little, non-weepy, update on what I have been up to.

I blog here to get a break from drawing. I also use this to hone my writing abilities, as I will need those skills when writing my own story. So, while I used to blog at least once a day, I do not do so much anymore. I have been able to balance life, work, and my life's work to create a schedule that best suites my needs and timetable. Pauses between postings here mean that I am, most likely, occupied with one of those things above.

The advantage of this blog, is that I can use it to fill two of the schedules: life and life's work. You write what you know. You know your experiences. You experience everything in your environment. This becomes your life. So then, in order to write effectively for this story (my life's work), I must write about my experiences (my life). But, I will refrain from using this as a day-to-day dairy. I have taken care to only include those things that have prompted a certain emotion or personal background for the story.

Recently, I have been creating splash images (drawings of one or more characters posing and filling the image) of Venge and crew. These are the closest I come to sketches. I use them to create and understand the depth of the character from many angles. Also, to get a feel of how well they may translate to a page with panels. I already notice that some of their 'costumes' may be too 'busy' and have too much detail to accurately recreate in a smaller panel.

Case in point: SangGwen's Bloodletter Blade is damn wicked. This has been one of my favorite creations, but the unusual structure of it is difficult to recreate in a drawing without confusing the reader. Above she is shown wielding it; and to the right is my original design in a modified image to bring out it's detail. So, then, I have been creating more images of it, in use, to see if it can still be a reasonable prop.

But, mostly, I have been creating images of Venge, using the time in between calls at work. I have one more idea I want to convey in an image before I move on to producing my first pages for this.