As the title says, there are only 20 more pictures to reformat. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: There’s a light at the end of the tunnel. Better yet, I’m having fun reformatting these pictures.. As tedious as it is, correcting these images is teaching me a lesson: Always paint to the edge of the bleed area!
Bernie the Buddhist Dachsund owns the house with the deadly chimney. In this picture, he’s startled when Jimmy and Buddy start yelling for help inside the old stove. I spent lots of time on Bernie’s ears, but I’m not happy with them. He looks like a rabbit. Tomorrow I’ll make it obvious he’s a dog. I’ll redo the ears, work on the mouth, and shift his head to a 3/4 view. I’ll give him some canine teeth, too. I think I’ll decorate Bernie’s house a little, perhaps with a nice Persian carpet and some bookshelves to hold his many books.
Bernie the Buddhist Dachsund is my favorite Deadbeat Club character. I thought it would be fun to bring him into the world of the Steller’s Jays, perhaps as a regular character in future stories.
Bernie is getting a makeover tomorrow!
Posting everyday has been a boon. I’ve learned to honor my limits. When it’s 7:15 I stop whatever I’m doing — inking, painting, drawing. When the day’s time is gone, my day’s work is over. I export the image and write a little post like this one. I call it a day and move on to family time.
My new attitude has carried over to my day job. In the past I’ve worked extra hours to finish up some incomplete project. Sometimes I would toil away until midnight just to be able to check the task off my to-do list. But I don’t do that anymore. Now, when it’s 5 PM, I check out. Whatever is left undone can wait until tomorrow. I like this way of living.
Here’s Momma Jay Warning the Kids in it’s final form. I may yet tweak some of the line work. In this project, nothing is ever complete, perfect, or finished.
The title says it all…that’s what I did today. It’s Saturday and my regular chore is to do the laundry, which I enjoy because I get some unbroken reading and surfing time. I had a lot more to do than laundry. It so happens that Spring is here and all of the trees and weeds have gone berserk. It’s my job to keep them from taking over. Weed whacking is one of my favorite chores, and chopping off a huge limb that was threatening to crush the neighbor’s fence was fun.
With all the excitement going on, I still had a few moments to work on the picture showing Jimmy diving to catch Buddy as Buddy is falling down the chimney. I loaded it into Affinity Photo, scaled it up to 5000x3500, and inked it again. I ran out of time while coloring it, so I’m presenting the half-painted picture.
BTW, this image was exported directly from Affinity Photo on the iPad Pro. For the first time Photoshop was not involved in my workflow.
