paper, bears, and pixels

It's been a while since I've written anything here. I spent all last week working for the Saskatchewan regional tournament of the Canadian Improv Games (hosting the event every night) and I'm surprised I'm not sick or hoarse. I was also, simultaneously house sitting for a friend who lives 20 minutes out of town, which was pretty relaxing though inconvenient. For doing this, I was given a pack of 100 sheets of 22" x 30" stonehenge paper, which is a pretty sizable gift. I pretty much don't have to worry about buying art paper for a year or two (depending on how prolific I feel like being). I haven't cracked open the pack yet, but I anticipate great work coming from this stack.

Starved from art for a week, I started a short comic for an upcoming issue of Valuable Comics, as well as my comic for Caravan. I've also started a smaller project (18 pages, though it's a mini-sized comic) that came to me at random. It's a development of a strong image I had in my mind for a while of a boy finding a wounded bear in the woods. I sketched out two pages tonight, and I'm super-excited about it so far. I've also realized that at least one of my ongoing projects requires me to create a fictional 8-bit videogame to feature. I set up my NES and Genesis again to get inspiration and was disheartened to discover my Sega CD does not work. I might just have the wrong AC adaptor, but hopefully it is not dead, since I just bought it a few months ago.

I think that the nostalgic ties to these old video games from my childhood is a central feature of my art practice. I'm looking at an unfinished image I drew a few weeks ago and can't help but pick out all the game-related choices I made in drawing it. That's a pretty important thing for me to realize as it gives me some much needed direction. The trees I started drawings a month or so ago were an important turning point. Like anything, it's just important that I keep working.

And speaking of work, tomorrow I need to spend all day putting together an application for a job giving 50-minute workshops in rural Saskatchewan. It sounds like a pretty enjoyable job, and it affords the opportunity to make about $10,000 in two months. I would like that very much.