Weekly Art Blog 11/3-11/9/2025

I got my zine scanned in and ready to go for digital work, and discovered that my screen is now broken. There’s two stripes of screen that simply won’t interact with the pen, and replacing the screen is as expensive as buying a new unit. So I’m dead in my progress until I get a new tablet. I can still type with this one, so I’m considering keeping it and getting another just for drawing. The shopping process is just so frustrating for me. I don’t really know anything about computers and don’t have a lot of experience with different brands or types, so I don’t fully understand the advice I’ve found. Because of budget and spec requirements, I’m limited in what I can get, which means I might not be able to avoid the most evil companies or AI features like I’d prefer. I know I can’t get and maybe don’t at the moment want the highest end thing, so anything in my budget that’s an upgrade in a coupe key areas would be fine. I’m just so reluctant to part with my money, I want confidence I’m spending it on something worthwhile.

So, without my digital canvas, I’ve been drawing other stuff. Sitting at home, it becomes clear very quickly how much time I have all of a sudden. I’ve decided to post with this some design work for a monster head. He’s a brontothere, aka a thunder beast. Super cool animals. Distinct from rhinos, much earlier branch in that family, but clearly rhinos went down the same evolutionary path as them. The name comes from Sioux tribes, who found their fossil skeletons and thought a beast like that had thunderous footsteps. Which, of course, means my monster can have lightning powers, and a connection to indigenous peoples, which is what I need from this story. I kept trying to make a sasquatch work, but not only is sasquatch likely pulled from European culture rather than indigenous, it’s actually pretty hard to make a sasquatch monster about colonization that isn’t King Kong.

While I have this time away from my long project, I’m trying to focus on what I want to draw. I’ve said before how, as I made this zine, it occurred to me that I wasn’t thinking about what I wanted to draw while I planned the story. I played around with things, and I’m satisfied with what I have, but yeah, I can’t help but think there’s kinds of things I want to do that I didn’t because I was focused on how to tell the story. I need that ability, just not at the cost of missing my chances. So I’m trying to open up my thinking. I see stuff in previous works that I really love, so maybe I should make a list of that for the future, too. I did a piece with more shapes and very little stick figure stuff, which I really love. That said, the final product isn’t the stylistic departure I want to see. Didn’t have to be, I guess, but I want to lean into something else. I keep finding ways to push myself into a corner – a fine corner in many ways – and I want to pull myself out and into a space that makes use of my strengths. I want to be able to go back and forth often, and make comics with more stylistic intent.

I’ve been doing this long enough to come to the conclusion that the only healthy way to interact with art is selfishly. Everything you do has to be for yourself, or there’s no real point to it. The audience is useful for you if you can use them to see how your work is viewed by others, and thus more effectively express something, and as a way to determine a stopping point. If you go full selfish, then you’ll never stop because it’s never perfect, so having others who can establish “good enough” is useful. Other than that, though, you have to do what exactly what you want for yourself and not compromise on that desire. In a lot of ways, I don’t think I’ve ever done things differently since I don’t really have an audience. At the same time, I keep making these choices with my art based on imagined expectations. That’s what I want to get past.

I’m also trying to figure out what it is I do well and would like to make. I have a lot of story ideas, but I know I’m not the best person to make all of them. There’s several I think I can work up towards, and I have every intent to, but some of them are less clear. I’m hoping I can get a better sense of what kinds of things I want to make, and in what way. I always lock myself into doing one kind of thing in one way with one path and one chance, yada yada yada. I need to break through that. Maybe some of my ideas aren’t going to be comics, or I’m going to have to work with another artist on it. Maybe I don’t have to hold onto everything that passes through my mind. Not all good ideas are the right ideas.

I think that’s about all for this week. I’m a little listless without my project to complete, and that is the idea of this sort of exploration. I’ve done this a lot of times, every time I make something new. Will I ever decide that I’ve done it? Would I want to? Not really. It would be nice if I had at least one decision that wasn’t new. Otherwise, I’ll just have to get better at reminding myself that I’ve been here before.