Pages 1 and 2

When I was a kid my biggest problem with drawing was clogged Rapidographs. I dreamed of the day when I'd master those exquisite but leaky pens. Alas, I never dreamed someday I'd be drawing on a tablet and painting digitally. My quandary these days is finding a tool that'll let me insert gradient fills for backgrounds. Add to this the learning curve of file management, .jpg vs. .xcf files, scanning dpis, canvas sizes, and color management. For reasons unknown the scanned word balloons in these drawings came out extremely fuzzy. Oh to be 20 again and have the time to leisurely explore and experiment. I'm still hoping to one day become proficient enough with these new techy tools that I can whip out several pages per day. For now, I'm slow, slow, slow. 

2 pages down, 448 to go. (Notice: I redid the bottom half of page one....).

File Names (record Keeping)

This post is for my records only: how I'm naming my digital files.

Draft Five: rough drawn pages.

Draft 6: printed text (printed on paper hard copy)

Draft 7: hand drawn images (fountain pen) and scanned back into computer

Draft 8: once scanned then digitally colored using Corel Painter Essentials 4

Draft 9: two digitally connected pages (connected on MS Paint program)

Page 1

As elderly readers will notice, the last panel is a riff on Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca. This will certainly alienate me from my target audience--modern university students. Since finding popular culture references that relate to today's 18 year olds requires more research than I'm willing to do, I resign myself to obscurity to all but those in their 60s.

However, as young readers of the first panel will realize, I give a nod to Ultimate Frisbee, a wildly popular game among university students (as far as I know). How well I connect to readers in both age groups remains to be seen.

As far as artistic proficiency, I'm choosing to publish ASAP despite the fact I'm not satisfied with my technique. My biological clock is ticking and want to get this thing done before I'm too infirm to create.

Once I've completed the first ten pages or so I'll publish them all on my other blog for popular consumption. One page down, 449 to go.

Re-engaging, Believe it or Not

My new filing system; two top boxes are EU rough drafts

Since my last post three and half months ago I married off a son, practiced being a new grand father, spent five weeks in a motel with Zelda the cat while repair persons replaced all the floors in our house due to water damage, reignited a speaking career (one gig included creating a 50+ slide Power Point presentation), made daily visits to my beleaguered wife whose health continues to deteriorate, began a massive de-cluttering project in prep for selling our house, transferred all my digital copy (projects, tasks, grist for new books) to Evernote, sent a bulk mailing to 400 former clients giving them a free updated version of a 55 page book, Managing Marital Irritations (get your free copy here), launched a silly website about volvelles (click here if you dare), and discovered Netflix after giving away our TV. (New guilty pleasure: 30 Rock). All this on top of running a one man therapy shop, writing a new book about grief and doubt, frying my synapses reading Kierkegaard, and launching a weekly conflict mediation blog. Click here to take a gander.

Even though I read another book about finishing creative tasks during this hiatus from drawing Ecclesiastes University,  I've been badgered by guilt. I entered my third third (age 60-90) determined to illustrate Ecclesiastes in graphic novel form and have been waylaid by these and a dozen other delicious diversions.

I'm back, planning now to begin drawing this weekend. What has spurred me on (beyond a sense of calling) is the wacky idea of turning Ecclesiastes University into a series of books featuring a host of guest lecturers. I'd love to do to Pascal, Chesterton, Lewis, Kierkegaard, and Camus what I've done to Qoheleth (which would really gum up the works since Ecclesiastes University would include classes NOT based on Ecclesiastes. Sigh....what a mess). But I dare not start anything new until we get Dr. Q finished. I'm looking at 450+ pages of 6 panel drawings each...gulp. Here goes.

Displaced Cartoonist

Since starting this blog I've mentioned from time to time the voice of my inner nag pushing me to work harder on this graphic novel. Well, a water leak in the crawl space under our house required me to move out immediately for health reasons (avoiding mold). Our comfy house has now been turned into a disaster area--all the rugs have been pulled up, soggy dry wall needs replacing, and all our belongings are crammed into two bedrooms. I'm now living in a motel for an estimated two months. Please stand by while I get used to living out of a cardboard box.

Meet Karenoia

Karenoia. 22 year old nursing major. Receded chin, hair in bun, big black glasses. High anxiety, plagued by worry, fear, and panic. Can't make or take a joke, is at the mercy of circumstances none of which are pleasant, and is in a constant state of hyper-vigilance since the universe is such a hostile place. Dr. Q's pessimistic lectures definitely do not help.

15 Characters

Each of the following characters have names and histories and model sheets. I post them here without those details (and in varying degrees of shading) from a weird obligation I feel to dispel the imaginary assumption I believe readers may have that my recent infrequent blog posts are due to inactivity. In actuality, I've been feverishly chipping away at creating these characters. There are five more yet to create, including the main character, Dr. Q. (I work on this project in between running a private practice counseling business, visiting my ailing wife in her nursing home, and washing the accumulated dishes in my kitchen sink).