Here it is, kiddies! Designed by Tim Ziegel and myself.

To my disappointment, after explaining how much I liked the job, my friend sighed to himself and told me I should be an art teacher.  I was a bit taken aback, and appreciated the thought until I heard his reasoning.  The phrase ‘waste your talents’ came up more than once, and I know he meant it in the best way…But still.

It bothered me a little once I thought about it again later.  Truth is I had already thought of teaching as a career path, and I’m still considering it.

Put simply, I think I’d go insane if my day job (because that’s what it is to me.  ’Writer’ is the career title I’d rather have on my sleeve) was in the least bit creative.  I think it was in Ignore Everybody (Hugh MacLeod) that a point was raised about a man who went after the dream job that started as a hobby and ended up just as depressed as he was working the meaningless cubicle work.  The hobby died away.

When and/or if I become a professional writer, painting will be my hobby.  Right now they both are, which is why I’m so freakin’ busy.  This was the mistake I saw in considering to be a graphic novelist — sure, it’s a story and it’s made all pretty; that should suit both my talents fine, right?  But it’s a whole other skill set I just don’t have.  It’ll never be a career; nor, I think, would I truly want it to be.  Side projects done for the simple joy of it.

So hell.  I might yet consider the teaching thing for if ever the bills get tight, but for now I’d rather keep my passions in the realm of hobbydom.  As hobbies, my writing and art is mine and mine alone.  They’re like toddlers to me.  I’m not nearly ready to let go of them yet.

This is what I mean when I say I’m a binge worker. The same thing happened while I was writing and editing Summeryear before I fell into that unfortunate slump. But the slump served one good purpose, it forced me to either be productive in something or become depressed and mopey for getting nothing done. Luckily, I chose to do something.

And so I pulled out an old painting I had started a few months ago and have now nearly finished it. That’s Suntamer, if you’ve been keeping up with my news lately.

Suntamer scared me a little. Well, no, it scared me a hell of a lot. It’s substantially outside my artistic comfort zone. I’m used to doing fairly simple portraits which, while they have certainly gotten better over the years, have remained just as dull and unimaginative.

So I had started Suntamer. It’s a figure of a woman holding a phoenix. Not looking straight ahead blankly, not with no real degree of actual design involved. I am tired of just painting faces, and I doubt I will again for a long time now that I’ve started experimenting.

While I was taking a break from Suntamer tonight, I sketched up this:

I am going to paint this. I don’t care how freakin’ long it takes, how much I want to gouge my eyes out by the end or if my tablet pen erodes down to nothing but an eraser sized lump. I am going to paint this.

We’ll see how it goes, I suppose. For the time being I’m still working on Suntamer, two art trades with two of my best friends which won’t be quite as detailed (probably) as Suntamer, and thus shouldn’t take months to complete like this has.

I think this is important. Just as important, maybe, as having decided that one day so long ago to sit my ass down and write a novel, and then actually doing it. This is my novel in digital painting, it’s my mountain to climb, a be-all-end-all test of how serious I am about art and getting better at artsy things.

Funny thing is, I said the same thing about Suntamer and now that it’s almost finished I feel I could have found a higher Everest. So, here we go. I expect this piece (calling it Zaxamara Stone for now) will have the same feeling once it’s done. Just the nature of improving.

And so the thoughty in today’s thoughty gobbet is this… do not believe in comfort zones. They are simply cages. Experiment more. In whatever artistic endeavor you feel connected to – experiment more.

That’s all.
Cheers.

But now, because I wanted to damn well finish something, we have a portrait of Fiona Breens. I was trying out a new style, and I think it was a moderate success. It was a very quick piece, but altogether I think I’m happy with it.

http://amorebravekitten.deviantart.com/art/Fiona-Breens-137932907

For those interested, Fiona is a character from a Harry Potter fanfiction I am in the process of outlining.  I’m going to write the first half of Rusalka for NaNoWriMo, and then start writing this fanfic (titled Novem Ursus for the moment…I seem to like non-English titles) in December.