It Comes to a Head

I worked on this on pretty much the entire day.  I thought I was trying to get these done quicker!  Still, I'm really happy with how it turned out.  

You can look at this strip and compare it to pretty much any strip prior, and see how much better it looks.  Why?  Because I Photoshopped it.  Sure, I put considerable effort into shadowing and line-work, and my style has gravitated even further toward my comic roots as I continue to undo the damage caricaturing did to my art-style, but aside from those things, I literally just moved a couple sliders around in Photoshop and got this amazing finished product.  It's really quite sad, but that's how the game is played.  You don't actually have to be very talented to make something look amazing in Photoshop.  Artists these days, or what passes for artists, can perform in a couple clicks what it would take a skilled traditional artist a lot of forethought and technique to accomplish.

So why did I use Photoshop on it?  Because it made the strip look better, and what's more, you can no longer include yourself in the world of professional artists if you don't know how to use Photoshop.  It's really very unfortunate.  But being that I don't enjoy painting (and I'm not particularly good at it), and having to produce artwork so quickly, it's the only logical option.

I'd love to draw this stuff by hand and just go to town with some Prismacolor markers, but that just isn't in the budget.  I mean, we're talking like 4 bucks a marker.  Sucks to that.

Maybe I shouldn't belittle my efforts.  It's probably a bad idea.  I don't want other people to know how easy it is to make things look amazing in Photoshop, because the world needs more artists; the real kind.

When not drawing or house-cleaning (and sometimes during house-cleaning), I've been watching a lot of programs lately involving people travelling to all corners of the Earth, doing astonishing things and seeing amazing places.  And up until recently, I had become once again heavily embroiled in Skyrim.

I realized I was trying to live vicariously through these people (and these characters).

There's still so, so much beauty left in the world, and I want very badly to experience it firsthand, but to do so requires money and freedom from obligations, both of which I have in short supply.

I still haven't given up hope that I'll soon be relocating, where I can live a life that more closely resembles my ideal one.  But I think about Kyoto and British Columbia and the Himalayas and the Alps and New Zealand, and I get very sad, because I know I'll never see them.

God, but I get mopey, don't I?  Sorry.  Occasionally I remember that this is a blog page, and I just start dumping out all the stuff that's been weighing heavily on my brain.

No more of that.  Gotta keep it professional.  Stiff upper lip, and all that.

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