Momentum. Far more than creativity, talent, skill, or anything else, I think the key to comics is momentum.
Today was busy. In addition to this evening’s comic, I worked on a commission, did a half-dozen acute perspective drawings of various objects, because perspective is one of those boring, troublesome, tedious things that you gotta work at until it’s second nature, and I have far too much of a tendency to either fudge it, or put everthing on one plane. Bad Ursula. Then I blocked in some color on a canvas that, Muse willing, will become a portrait of the heads of sable antelope. Most likely, no one will buy a painting of a pair of sable antelope, but for some reason, I keep getting this insane desire to paint close-up portraits of hoofstock. Camels. Takin. Sable. I dunno. I think it’s some kind of combination of the fact that they’re generally overlooked for more charismatic mammals, and all the spectacular variable fur on their heads. Like camels. You can’t beat a camel’s head for sheer daggy matted weirdness. Sable antelope lack the dags, but have these gorgeous facial stripes. I dunno. This is as close to pure art-for-art’s-sake as I get, really–the desire to paint them for no reason except to paint the facial textures. Oh, well, maybe eventually I’ll have enough wildlife art lying around that I’ll suddenly be mainstream!
Naaaaah.
