I’m trying to provide a monthly update of the progress I’ve made on Chapter 5 as a way to mediate the relative silence on the website and associated social media. The short of it: I’ve been drawing non-stop. Below goes over the broad strokes of the last month.
RELEVANT LINKS:
I had the pleasure of being an early guest of the new indie comic creator interview podcast, 4 Tales Podcast, which dropped to the general public today. Hosted by very dear friend, Kyrun Silva––of Taurus Comics––and Danny J. Quick––of 4th Wall Productions––in a mere seven episodes they have established a premier interview podcast that ably and effortlessly balance fun banter with serious and sober creative investigation.
By my metric, it was one of the best interviews I’ve been a part of because it was clear each host did their homework and wanted to dig deeper than a simple surface-level interview that is mostly relegated to people trying to promote something. Kyrun and Danny actually want to talk about stuff, which was great to experience as a guy on the other end of the microphone.
I’d like to thank Kyrun and Danny for having me on and I hope everybody reading this subscribes to their show on whichever podcasting service they happen to use!
P.S. I can’t believe the HBO show, Deadwood, didn’t come to mind when asked about my favorite western show; I’ve seen the show all the way through at least four times and have watched individual episodes and seasons over again many more times. However, The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr. is a very fine show as well.
In a rare moment of inspiration, I drew something so I could practice making art. I’ve stated at various points that I don’t really draw unless it’s either for the comic or the comic itself. Generally, that’s held true. Ultimately, the Sketch Friday exercises are about content for the website, space to fill between comic updates. While I do try to stretch my skills with the Sketch Friday posts, the idea that it’s for the website is always in the back of my mind.
And while today’s drawing is a Sketch Friday, it didn’t start that way. It began when I saw this image from our daily calendar, from the popular Twitter account, We Rate Dogs:
And I thought, “I must draw this.”
More specifically, seeing the inherent cartooniness of this droopy cocker spaniel, Narcos, it immediately reminded me of the pseudo-painterly style I’ve used on a few occasions and how I wanted to try drawing like that again because it seems like a style I should always keep in my back pocket.
It was a rather quick exercise and, upon completing it, I realized that I now had a Sketch Friday for this week. I took a beat and accepted this as a victory––I actually drew…for fun. Weird. We’ll see if it happens again.