The swamp is…actually pretty well drained.

Yeah, I don’t know how to act either.

There’s a few personal commissions still floating that I need to talk to people about, and of course there are various art directors who will undoubtedly pop up with a gotta-have-it-right-now cover at some point, but for the most part, my schedule’s down to the good stuff. Like the mini-comic for the Digger collection, and once that’s done, getting some serious work time in on Black Dogs. And naturally, there’s always Digger. (By the way, if you checked Digger today, and got in, go back and check again. There was a date issue, and you may have accidentally read Thursday’s comic rather than Tuesday’s. You don’t lose much continuity, but the question of “What is up with that acolyte?” will be on the test. ‘Pologies.)

And of course, once James works out the last coupla bugs, I’ll want to transfer over the website, a Herculean task in its own right.

Having consulted the numbers, in the last three months, commissioned work has formed…err…carry the one…less than 10% of my income. Print sales and original sales continue to roar along. The LE Naked Mole Rat print was a roaring success–I just took the last order for on-line sales (I wanted to hold two or three for conventions/auction/etc.) So obviously the jumbo LE thing worked for that particular image, and I’ll definitely try it again in the future. It’s not the money I’d make from an original, but it’s enough to make the relatively lesser time investment on a digital piece worthwhile.

So, here I am. Can paint more or less whatever I want. Starting to think about a show again. Gearworld, alas, is still pissed at me for trying to force things and has a restraining order on my brain. (Sorry, muse. I was wrong. I promise it won’t happen again.) So that’s out. Anything really ruthlessly mentally structured is probably out because my brain is a perverse sort and once I decide “I will do THIS and only this!” I immediately start wanting to do a lot of other stuff. I rail against this, but it’s the basic reason that I generally like doing my own work much more than commissions, and if that hasn’t changed after all these years, I should probably just resign myself. So we’ll see what I come up with. If I get some pieces done that I think might be a good foundation for a show, I just won’t list ’em as for sale, and see what response is like, I suppose, and perhaps things will snowball in my brain from there.

And that’s where I’m at…