This is a good example of how I will change the script as I draw, which makes my story/art process very much one thing.  Originally, I thought Felicia should be drone-like all throughout this scene to illustrate how he doesn’t like lying, and doesn’t want to give Grengis the wrong idea.  But, as I was drawing I thought wouldn’t it be funny if instead Felicia was being coy and girlish?

Not only is is lulzy, but now it feels like Felicia really has done something wrong in his ruthless quest to overthrow the king.   He is lying to the person he just so casually deemed trustworthy.  I believe that this minor difference will make future events much more interesting.

Coming off my break, I’m going to outline my new goals for the rest of this year.

New Update Schedule
Emerald Winter on Mondays and Thursdays, Lavender Legend on Tuesday and Friday.
Okay, so this schedule is incredibly ambitious and I probably won’t be able to keep up with it.  It’s just a goal.  The point is that I need to do equally as much work on EW as LL, so EW won’t fall so terribly behind in page count.  If I miss an update, I will simply post it on the next update day.

I am not as concerned with updating on time as much as I am with simply staying on task with a set goal, and not letting myself dip into artist’s block again.  If a week goes by when I do actually manage 4 updates, I’ll have to give myself some sort of reward, haha.

18+ Feature Comics
I’m not sure of the nature of this project yet, and I haven’t officially been included yet, so I am going to keep this vague.  But basically, I’ve been made a pretty generous offer to do some exclusive 18+ comics on the side.

Fine Arts Training
Whether I’m able to go back to school this semester or not, I intend to take up technical training in the arts to improve my skills.  I’ll build my portfolio and do paintings and drawings to appeal to a wider audience than just comics.

PanelBurst Community
Let’s get this off the ground!

Here’s a look at a rough drawing for an upcoming page of Emerald Winter.

Every June and November, I participate in a group activity called NanoMango.  It is a comics community based on the idea of popular National Novel Writing Month, Nanowrimo.  We struggle for a month to do a pencil for each day.  Normally I win or come close to winning, so I walk away with a hefty set of buffer pages to last me through the year.  It helps the comic production in the long term.

But this time, I have no idea what happened.  Maybe I ran into a bout of depression, maybe I was in bad health, maybe my retail job is weighing too hard on me right now, or maybe it was a combination of all those things.  Whatever happened, I ended up with a terrible art block.  I only completed a handful of pencils, and I didn’t get any EW pages done at all.

This has pretty much blown my chances of getting EW’s first book done this year.  Sigh.  But I learned a valuable lesson from it.  Not working is not the solution to not feeling like working.

I did make some progress on my commissions and illustrations, so the month was not a total loss.  I just experienced major comic book fail.

This is the knight who guards Lavender’s mansion, and has a “thing” for Felicia.  His full name is Tobith Grengis.  His mom calls him Tobie.  Everyone else calls him Grengis.

After serving in the army for several years, he was severely wounded resulting in the loss of his left leg.    This injury may have saved his life, as he was relieved from duty and sent back home.  He was knighted for his accomplishments in the war, but this was purely ceremony.  Sir Grengis has received no knightly duties other than to watch Princess Lavender’s front door, which could just as easily be done by a wooden post.

His hair is long, but always brushed back.   His facial hair (which Lavender finds disgusting) is quite scruffy and pointy around the edges of his face.  He has blue eyes and an uneven complexion that makes the amount of time spent outdoors fairly obvious.  Other characteristics include the tight-fitting shirts and brown pants he always wears, his thick belt, the armor on his lower arms and knees, and his inability to tell what gender people are.

Grengis is an easy-going guy who, although he is only in his thirties, feels incredibly old.  His hobbies include training his body to fight effectively even with only one leg, and skirt-chasing.  He is particularly interested in tall, commanding girls with icy glares.  Felicia would be his dream girl if he were just a bit more curvaceous.   And, well, a girl at all.

Underneath this simple man’s skin is a spiritual soul searching for the task that he was meant for,  the mission that God spared his life to carry out, and perhaps even the person who would make everything else worth living through.  He feels compelled to assist Lavender, not because Felicia is ever at her side, but because  he believes such incredible coincidences can’t simply happen for no reason.   The princess needs a knight, and he is in fact a knight.  His path can’t get any clearer than that.

This is a picture I’m working on for a project on Lavender Legend.  It doesn’t have a name yet, but let’s just call it the Jamie Needs Money project.  It will include donation images, donation comics, and art books.

Today was the first day in a long time I really felt mentally energized to draw.  Now I just wish I had the physical energy to keep going like this.

About the actual concept of this image…  I swore I would not get sucked into the recent vampire enthusiasm, but when the idea for this came to me (suddenly, at work, as ideas usually do),  it was just too much for me to ignore.

I don’t want to goof this one up like the last few I tried to do, so I’m asking far and wide for help making the composition and proportions just right.

This is some fanart I did for New Game Plus which I didn’t completely finish because I was in a hurry.  I also goofed a lot of things on the picture because it was already late. -_-;;

Anyway, I like this game and I’m glad I could at least show somebody that somebody out there has played it before.

I am slowly getting back on track after the long stretch of hard work I was doing.  Before I went to vacation, my manager said “hey, since you are going on vacation, you don’t mind if I give you a ton of hours this week right? ”  Then, my “vacation” was actually a business trip to Megacon where I had to get up super early and get down to the convention center to sell my stuff.  Only I didn’t sell anything at all because business was so bad there.  I think four of my books, one print, and two sketch cards got sold total for the whole weekend.

Anyway, I’m planning on going to Mobicon next.  Since it is a local con, I should be able to make back my investment more easily.  I think there’s only 5 tables total, so not a lot of competition.  Fan art is totally not allowed, so my original work should be more welcome there as well.  Maybe I’ll see people I knew in high school, lol.

Doodled this pic of Gisela today to get into a drawing mood.  I haven’t been feeling well this week because of working a lot and other things.  I’ll be so glad when I’m finally off work for the con.

Here’s a sketch!

It is taking me forever to sort this draft out.  I’m sure there are still field of depth issues and proportion problems.  Blarg.  I am attempting to consult my uber talented friends on it because I don’t want to mess it up.  I’m not sure the diagonal flow of the composition is very good either, but that may not be changeable.

I may have to wait until after the con to finish this one because it’s going to take a lot of time.  I had to get it out of my head, though.   Felicia’s costume is extra fabulous here isn’t it?  XD

Hey guys!

Revamped the style around here.  Hopefully this one won’t ferfuxerlate every time I upgrade wordpress.  I could just create my own theme, but that’s work, you know?  I have comics to draw.

Here’s another fanart that I will be selling at Megacon in Orlando in just a few weeks!  It’s so close now I’m super excited, but also really worried that I won’t have enough to sell.  If I can break even that would be marvelous.

This one is a mix of watercolor and Copic marker.  There’s a few proportion issues, and other things I’d like to fix, but working on actual paper means you have to stick with your original drawing once you start coloring, even if you realize something is wrong. That’s why it’s a lot harder for me to do!  But, you know, practice is everything.

You know, it really sucks that I haven’t been able to update very frequently lately.  At the same time, I think it is good to have ground work to finish the pages from rather than finishing one from start to finish at a time.  So, I think maybe taking a month to do a lot of rough drafts isn’t such a bad idea.