The Art School of Hard Knocks, or The Plight of a Self-taught Artist

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Two days ago I created the storyboard for the final pages of my third book. I can post the pictures now that I’ve finally figured out how to use the Mac Screenshot tool. My frustration level is now so low that I’ve stopped quivering and whining about macOS.

My job as a part-time, temporary substitute project manager will be ending on May 31. It won’t start up again for three months. During the hiatus I’ll be free to finish the book I started writing and drawing 18 months ago. Hardly a day has passed that I haven’t given it some time, my daily inch of progress. In those 18 months I’ve created a monumental number of sketches, experiments, and failures. I’m hoping those failures have been my Art School of Hard Knocks. I’m optimistically believing that I’ve learned something that will help me work more efficiently on my next Jimmy Jay book — Jimmy Jay and the Dolphin Who Took on the Robots. That’s going to be the working title that will inspire me for the next year.

Geting my Mac set up is driving me nuts

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Going nuts because of macOS Monterey

Switching from Windows to macOS is driving me nuts. Programs that are supposed to “just work” are not working. Emacs, which I rely on for technical writing (nothing to do with my art projects) is giving me a depressingly bad time. To regain my sanity, I decided to install VirtualBox and run Emacs in Linux…but Monterey doesn’t support VirtualBox in a simple way. It took 2 hours of hacking to get it working. Monterey is so paranoid it’s putting me into a bad mood.

On the other hand, while my eye (the right one) is healing, I need a temporary pair of glasses with a special prescription. Unfortunately, simple dollar store reading glasses won’t work. I eventually decided to buy some prescription glasses online from Zenni.

Setting up Clip Studio Paint on my Mac

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Testing Clip Studio Paint on my Mac.

I want to do more work on my iPad and iMac. Although I’m happy when working with Windows, just moving an image from the iPad to the Windows machine is a pain. Understand, I have a 2017 iMac with an awesome 27-inch screen to work with. It may be slightly slower than my PC, but I can airdrop images to it, which saves me the time that I would spend uploading an image to iCloud, then downloading it to my PC. In other words, the simpler workflow saves me time and lowers the aggravation level, which makes me a happier, though struggline, novice writer.

Tuca as a teenager

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Today I had cataract surgery. The ophthalmologist removed the cloudy lens in my right lens and replaced it with an acrylic lens. I had been dreading this surgery for years. The thought of someone cutting my eye with a razor-sharp diamond scalpel was more than I could deal with.

Afraid as I was of surgery, I was also afraid of not being able to drive at night. Night driving had become a frightening ordeal .When you have a full blown cataract, the glare of oncoming headlines turns the darkness into a wall of white light, which is not fun when you’re driving on a two-lane highway.. I scoured youtube for cataract surgery videos. As my ignorance of cataracts diminished, I was able to schedule surgery for my eye.

Continuing the quest for the kawaii

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Still trying to make my characters cuter. It ain’t easy…for me, at least. The formula seems to be big head, big eyes, rounded features, no straight lines, short noses. What i’m really missing is cute gestures!

Raising the cuteness factor of my children's picture book

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Looked through my book today and was impressed by the lack of consistency in how I draw my characters. My original concept was to make everyone about 12-years old. Unfortunately, I didn’t stick to the plan. On one page Betty is 10-years old, and on the next she’s 25. This is problem with all of the characters. The big question is, will I redraw the entire book? Or will I wearily publish an amateurish shambles?

Time will tell.

Another version of the jumping dolphin, this time with teeth

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Waves are hard to draw and paint, so I used the Clip Studio Paint Lasso File brush to scribble them in. Good enough? Maybe. Who knows! Perhaps I’ll find a better way to scribble them in tomorrow.

Today I ordered Bone, the 1300-page black and white version. I’ve been looking for a big comic series now that I’m almost finished watching GTO: Great Teacher Onizuka (on Prime) for the third time. I love that anime for it’s big heart and sometimes equally great stupidity.

By the way, that Bone link is an Amazon affiliate link. By now everyone knows that affiliate links help creators make a few pennies at no cost to you. I’ve never made a single penny from affiliate links. Perhaps it’s because I’m the only one reading this. So be it. I’m satisfied to be a legend in my own mind.

On second thought, I have to change that dolphin's pose

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I thought I had the dolphin nailed, but today I realized that his profile didn’t make sense. He had lost his personality and he looked bored. I had to make him look at the reader with a twinkle in his eye. I’m reluctant to go in and change a finished page, but I manned up and started erasing. In the picture above I’m in the middle of getting his mouth open so he can show his fabulous teeth.

Freehand inking versus bezier curves with Clip Studio Paint EX

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After struggling for days to ink this page using Clip Studio Paint’s bezier curves, I decided to revert to freehand inking. Learning on the job can lead to massive slowdowns, even coming to a complete halt, while climbing a steep learning curve. So, back to freehand inking it is. I’m still using CSP’s vector layers and I can still use the vector tools to correct to fix wayward lines, of which there are plenty.

Creating a composite picture using Clip Studio Paint EX

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My plan is to turn these make these pictures work together. The beach scene will all of the residents of Easter Island, the reanimated Moai the the little volcano demon, waving farewell to Dylan Dolphin, Betty Burro, and Jimmy Jay. Since these are two unique scenes, I’m going to extend the ocean (in the beach scene) to behind the jumping dolphin. I’ll have to correct some colors and lighting. I can sense that I’m going to complete this book in the next couple of months.

It’s a bittersweet feeling. I’m happy that I’m coming to the end, and I’m sad that it will be over. I’ve been working on this book for 17 months, far longer that dreamed it would take. There are so many ways it could have been better, if I had only had the skills to make it so. So it goes.