And now, for a different approach -- Photoshop!

My frustration has led me back to Photoshop. I originally stopped using PS when I decided to use only libre software such as Krita. This momentous decision was a side effect of spending painful months learning how to use InDesign and Photoshop together. It was a stressful, high pressure experience that left me looking for simpler solutions. It turns out that there aren’t simpler solutions. You still have to do the work, even if you’re using simpler, less robust tools. It’s not the tool; it’s the tool holding the brush in their hand that has to keep showing up everyday. Wherever you go, there you are, whether you using a 32-inch Cintiq or a pencil and paper.

The picture above is my rough concept of the kids flying over the border wall: Buddy is holding on to Betty’s arm and she’s holding on to Jimmy’s arm and they’re flying past the guard tower on their way to the Golden Mountains. Today was actually fun.

Tools: Photoshop and Kyle’s Gouache a Go Go brush.

inDesign: It's Not Hard; It's Tedious

Besides going shopping at the local food co-op, I spent the day moving text and files to a new inDesign template. My reason for moving everything? The reason is that I screwed up the margins in my first template so badly that I couldn’t figure out how to straighten them out. I spent an hour cursing inDesign, even though I secretly knew that I created the problem myself. In the end I decided to create a new book template with the correct margins and pour all of the text and images into it.

That was a great idea, but I couldn’t find a way to “pour” one file into another like old wine into a new bottle. When I admitted to myself that my knowledge of inDesign was minimal, I started copying one object at a time from the original messed up document to the new template. This method works, but it’s slow. That’s me all over: working, but slow.

Here’s dusk as I sometimes see it from my backyard.

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