The End?

Sorry again about the lack of updates. Again there wasn't much to say about things that I couldn't show. But I'm not here for excuses, so on with the story about the book I illustrated...

I'm done. Yay!

THE END....?!?

Ok. I'll give you more detail.

First, let's flash back to Election night...

Jill (one of the authors) wanted to get together and figure out how large each of the drawing were going to be, so we decided to meet up on Tuesday the 4th of November. I had completely forgotten about the possibility of history being made that night along with the fact that I live in Chicago and could have gone to Grant Park to see Obama's acceptance speech. On the night of the meeting I had realized what day it was and wanted to reschedule but this is a job so I bit the bullet and did what needed to get done.

So I went to Jill's house and we all (Me, Jill and Billy) discussed each illustration and the size they should be when I inked them. Luckily she had election coverage on so I didn't feel bad about not canceling. Nothing to exciting happened during that meeting, we just went over everything that I had done and things that I still needed to do (changes, etc.). After we were done we all just sat around her T.V. watching the outcome of the election.

The next couple weeks went by and I inked what needed to ink and changed what needed to change. And this brings us to Friday the 22nd....

I had finished all the inking that needed to be done and Jill and I went through them all trying to figure out where they belonged. We also printed them out so that she could write notes about where the drawing would go and we would discuss any needed changes. After the meeting there was a few more changes that needed to be made, nothing too difficult.

I spent that weekend finishing everything up. When finished I burned them to a CD and gave Jill the CD when she dropped by my day job.

Last week I heard back from Jill. The editor loved the pictures, which is the main thing that I was worried about. So when I heard that a lot of stress that I was feeling evaporated instantly. So now I'm all done with my first major project of my new career as a free-lance artist.

But that's not it for this blog. I'm working on a Christmas card now and after that I have a tattoo that I'm doing for a friend. So there is more that I can talk about, and probably have more to say since I can now show the process on how I got from point A to point B a lot more in depth. Unfortunately with the book I wasn't able to show anything to you guys but with these other projects I have that freedom. So tomorrow I'm going to talk about the Christmas Card and show you some of the sketches and the story behind the card.

Ok guys. Talk to you later.

Long time.

Sorry about not updating for a while, but since I can't really show you my sketches there isn't really anything to say unless something important happens. Unless you want to read updates that basically say "Did some drawing....and that's about it. Believe me it was pretty exciting". I could do that but it would probably get boring pretty quickly. I could also lie, maybe add in a terrorist attack that I foiled or a lost orphan that taught me what it means to really love, but I think that would be wrong and you deserve better.

Back to the story at hand...

Last night I had another meeting with the authors. Luckily they had the election coverage on in the background. I don't know if I could have been able to concentrate with out knowing what was going on. We talked about the illustrations that I needed to change and luckily I got them right this time. I do need to change one or two more, but other than those, I'm done with the pencil art.

Another thing that we talked about was the size of the illustrations for the book. We went through each drawing and discussed what would be the best size. Now we begin the inking process. It's a little time consuming but not nearly as hard as the pencil art and all the re-dos that I've had to do. That's one thing that I've learned doing the book; it's hard to draw someone's ideas. You can't really see inside their head so you don't really know what they want. But that's the job, so I need to adapt.

After we got done going over the book we watched McCain's concession speech and the Obama's acceptance speech. Which was good because I don't have cable or any rabbit ears (or whatever box I need to get for the digital change up) so I would not have been able to watch it live. It was also nice to watch it with other people.

So that's about it for now and I think I covered everything that I wanted to mention; meeting, inking and lack of updates. Take it Easy.

Not a good time to get sick or How I Learned to Love My Bleeding Eyes

O.k., so here's the story about his week. I've been fighting a bug since Monday and have been basically bedridden since Tuesday. I've been able to get up a few time but only for a few minutes and really not enough time to get any work done. To be honest, it really hit me a few hours after making my last post on Tuesday. I'm not saying that my writing made me sick, I'm just saying that it's a big coincidence. I ask anyone reading this blog that if you get sick after, let me know so I can take some writing classes and try to stop this epidemic I'm now calling Acute Writingdeficiency Justistosis.

Seriously though, it could not have happened at a worst time. I did get some work done on Monday and a little on Tuesday morning, but the bedridden part of being sick made it so that I couldn't work Tuesday evening or Wednesday.

Now you might think that one and a half days is not that bad of a loss. But the work I did on Monday I decide to scrap due to the fact that I didn't like what I did (I wasn't feeling well either that day and looking back at my work, I should have just put the pencil down and gone to bed), so add that day to the wasted days column. And the work I did on Tuesday was some minor sketching and the addition to the blog. I wasn't able to do anything that I wanted to get done.

Which brings me today. Usually when I work through out the day I take little breaks every few finished illustrations. Nothing huge maybe half an hour, maybe an hour, depending on how much I got done. But today to make up for being sick I've been drawing straight since 7:30 his morning to about 6:30 (whenever I started updating the blog). So that's about ten hours of drawing (I took an hour break around 12 for some lunch, which was the only food I'd had since lunchtime Tuesday). I'm not going to lie, my eyes are killing me.

But I DID get a lot done today. Baring any changes that need to be made, I only have five illustrations left. Tomorrow I'm going to Billy's dog grooming salon to get some ideas on a couple of the illustrations that are left, and will hopefully be done with the pencil art for the book. I don't know if I'm going to be able to stick to my goal of having finished by the end my vacation (I still have a nine to fiver) but at least I got enough done today to make up for the lost days earlier in the week.

That's about it. I think I'm done for the evening. I'm just going to listen to the radio and give my eyes a must deserved rest.