Fuck it

Fuck it. I'm going to fucking do them both. Let's see what happens.

Audentes fortuna iuvat, or something like that.

2013 is going to be both productive AND painful.

Never ending stories

So I'm sitting here working on the third draft of my novel and my mind keeps tacking back to a tale I've growing in my mind for several months now. In a nutshell it's about metamorphosis and maturation. It's a about a young girl who hungers for adventure and who yearns to explore her world who starts out very much like Link from Nintendo's Zelda series or Sansa Stark from George RR Martin's Song of ice fire novels (Know to everyone in TV land as Game of Thrones) : nieve, brave, trusting and fiercely self righteous.

Over the course of her tale she grows and matures into a noble and fierce warrior. But also scarred by what she's seen and done. She essential transforms into a cross between Logen Ninefingers,  Conan, Brienne of tarth, Guts and Mokoto Kusanagi. I want to write it in the old pulp style. A la Robert E Howard. Short, dense, fast moving and full. Each punt would be a maximum of eight thousand words. Figure I could write one a week if pushed. And I want to write it for a teenage audience. Something that teenagers could pick up when the become tried of their videogames. I want to write the kind of book that I would have picked up when I was fifteen.

But, and here comes the kicker, I would want to illustrate the hell out of the fucker. I remember being enthralled by the beauty of capcom illustrations by Shinkiro, Bengus and Akiman. Their work for such games as Final Fight, Magic Sword and, most famously Street Fighter 2 had me locked in my bedroom with an endless stream of paper and pencils trying to capture the brilliance and energy of those two Japanese masters of illustration.

I want to inspire the same awe in others that I felt when I was in my formative years. Or try at the very least. But i have a hell of a lot to learn and a hell of a lot of drawing to do, and a hell of a lot of bad drawing to get out of my system to do before I even begin to reach that level of proficiency  Gotta start somewhere though, right? One illustration a week would force me to commit pencil, ink and brush to paper without fail. I'm so tempted to do it along side the writing of Frostfeld but I wonder if I might not be filling my plate with too much work.  My reach has always been shorter then my grasp.

Well surely the only way to know for sure is to attempt it, right?

Arse backwards and back to front

So I'm working on the third draft of the novel while trying to simultaneously do the illustration when I came upon these videos by irish illustrator PJ Lynch.





It occurred to me that I was approaching the project arse backwards. Book illustration is a response to a finished text. Not a text in progress. And as the novel in still a work in progress and has changed a lot between drafts-one would hope for the better-there's no telling what will be junked or rewritten between this draft and its final version.

So between now and the final dotting of I's and crossing of t's, I'm going focus my energies on the character designs and reference collection. As the bulk of the story is set in Amsterdam/Netherlands it I'll be a safe bet that anything I collect will be usable.

And I still need to approach that Malaysian illustrator to see if she's interested in contributing work to the project.

More later.

Observations on flaws in work ethics

The underlying flaws of my approach to my work are easy to spot once the best of my work is collected in one place.

These flaws are numerous but fixable.  They are as follows:

1: A constant repetition of mistakes and no effort made to address them. 

Hence the repetition.

2: Not enough time spent studying the techniques of practitioners. Not enough time spent trying to reproduce the said techniques. Enough so that I am able to reproduce those techniques AT WILL.

3: Not enough time spent focusing on one illustrator.  Too much time spent jumping from one influence to another without learning what is needed. 

4: A lack of critical analysis of the illustrators being studied.  Learning and understanding both how and why their work works.

5: No time spent on learning the basics of drawing.  The fundamentals.  The building blocks.  Too much of a desire to jump forward.

6: A reluctance to spend time on either life drawing or observational drawing.  Both essential to learn how to draw the figure in space.

7: A refusal to collect, study, acquire or use reference for illustrations.  No realisation that I lack the skills to draw directly from my head.

8: Not enough time spent mastering one tool before moving to another.  (Dip pen(s), brush(es) pencils….)

9: A fear of working due to not being able accomplish a perfect image first time.

10: A reluctant to work large.

11: A reluctant to experiment with materials or tools.

12: Work environments are frequently cluttered and distracting, leading to an inability to focus on the task of being creative.

The war of art

I have a confession to make: I find it really difficult to drag myself to the drawing board to produce artwork. Its akin to pulling teeth: both excruciating and avoidable. I've deliberately devoted more time to the writing aspect of my novel because I find it far easier to paint a picture using words than doing so with art materials.

Every once in a while I'll drag out a sketchbook run some pencils and ink around the page because I have a killer idea for an image that I must commit to paper before it evaporates. But for the most part the art side of the book is, and will be, the most difficult and demanding aspect of the novels creation.

Why is this the case I hear you ask? Well unlike writing where you can write pages of work before your realise its errors and plot holes and the nessitation for rewriting, where as with art or illustration the mistakes are instantly obvious. Also, there factors the artist, if they're producing figurative work, has to have beware of as whiles they're working.  Factors such composition, colour theory, anatomy, perspective, mood, lighting, technique all come into play.

Simultaneously.  Whiles you're working.  You have to have a clear goal in mind for end product as well as,  at the very least, some mastery of your tools.

I've dreaded putting pencil to ink to paper because I have a keen enough eye to know that work does not match up (yet) with my ambition.

But here's there thing: no ones first work ever does.

You have to do a ton of work before your work comes in line or at the very least begins to approach your ambition.

That fear, that dread, is a barrier that you need to fight against. Because the world is filled with people who reached this stage and stopped dead. They could not continue. No light at the end of the tunnel.

You have to fight to be better.  You have to be hungry. You have to be self confident to the point of arrogance but be humble enough to both ask for and take advice.  You have to be humble to enough to shut the fuck up and L.I.S.T.E.N to advice and criticism given you by professionals who work in the industry you wish to break into.  The phrase "Yeah but..." should never exist in your lexicon.  From this moment onwards it shall be considered a blasphemy.  Punishable with scorn and ridicule.

Do you really think that Christopher Hitchens or Masamune Shriow or Joanne Rowling or Jean Giraud (Moebius) or Warren Ellis or Ridley Scott or Frank Frazetta turned their nose up at advice or criticism given them by their peers?

Really?  You think so?

Ev-ery-one you admire has gone through it. And I'm afraid that there are no shortcuts.

None.what.so.ever.

You just have to do the work.

You have to fight to be better.


Ira Glass' thoughts on the matter are more concise and to the point then mine.

You have to stay hungry.  You have to have your eyes open.  You have to be confident.  You have to be humble.   You have to be prepared to make sacrifices.


And you can never, ever give up.

Because those who inspire you never did.

Don't be a pussy.

Now get back to work.



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City of the Lost

Just picked up Stephen Blackmoore's début novel City of the Lost.  A pulp horror novel set in LA illustrated in black and white by the mighty British illustrator, Sean Phillips. Check it out.

I mention it for one very special reason: apart the the cover layout, It's almost exactly what I want the Frostfeld novels to look like.  I'll be using it as a template for when I start to design book one.

Its coming closer.  So much so that I can almost see it.

Back to work.

You have to let go

You can edit.

You can rewrite.

You can re plot. Restructure. Rethink.

You can redraw. Recompose. Revisit. Revise. Repaint. Re-pencil. Re-ink

But at some point you have to say: "I am finished. It is done. I have tired my best. I can do no better. I have cut no corners. I did not sell myself short. It done."

At some point to have to let go.


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