Time to relax…oh, wait… as you were…
On the plus side, although I’m working tomorrow, I have already prepped enough material for a couple of game sessions so I won’t be too anxious on that front this week.
Oh, and I have of course been doing some more doodling – I’m trying some new things in character poses and composition along with stylised light and dark. I’m not aiming for anything I’m particular, but I am pleased with the results:
I sold my first original yesterday – I was on a Discord server chatting to people and posted a recent sketch I’d done to illustrate to the channel the sort of things I do. This led to an enquiry about sales, so I linked to my RedBubble site, assuming they might find something they liked up there. Instead I got a direct message asking to buy the original sketch.
This was an absolute first. I’ve sold tshirts and some artboard prints through the shop, but a physical artifact? I had to make sure they understood that this was in an ordinary notebook, and posted a picture with my fingers and the rest of the page for scale. This was deemed acceptable, and a price was agreed.
So I bought a card on the way home to protect the piece of paper, and this morning sent my first physical sale off to its new home by recorded delivery.
I’m somewhat blown away. It’s one thing to hear people admire the things I scribble, but for someone to put their hand in their pocket for something I’ve made – well that’s kicked my imposter syndrome between the legs and no mistake.
I may even have included a free mini addition on the card, mostly because getting me to stop drawing is the hard part…
Much to my delight I found out this weekend that Apophysis, the fractal software I used to enjoy making images with as the base of some of my old artworks, is still available and has been updated to work on modern PCs.
Well, it would be rude not to. I’m still re-learning the ins and outs of it, but for comparison here are two old images and two new ones
I’m focusing on being positive this week, what with the anniversary and my brain’s attempts to continue to sabotage me. For the most part this has manifested in new writing, new items going up in the shop (180 odd designs and rising as of time of writing), and going through old backups to find the graphics that time forgot.
Oh, there are so, so, many. I forgot how prolific I was when I was ill back in the early to mid 2000s. Some of the archives have aged very badly, others look amazing, and others are currently inspiring new works as a revisit.
Its interesting to see how I’ve progressed in some areas, and what looks familiar even now. More than anything else it has got me wanting to spend more time pushing to rediscover digital art techniques.
So there’s a positive thing.
I’m mostly creating images based on my line art at the moment for inclusion in the shop rather than the more abstract items. Its partly the joy of seeing something complete the transition from page to screen to physical object; and partly a good excuse to get more practice with transparencies and therefore with more varied backgrounds.
Indeed, some of the most entertaining moments have come from settling on a range of colours for each form, whether it is a throw cushion, a clock, or a metal print. Yes, my life really is that slow sometimes.
I’m back to work in the library next week, so I’m enjoying the quiet before my return. Hush.
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