Weeknotes 4.1 (Apr 8, 2020)

Quarantine squirrel is watching you.

If you’re not staying home as much as possible, wearing a mask or face covering when you go out, and generally trying to keep us all safe by flattening the curve, what the fuck is wrong with you?

I’m tired of the people who look at the state of the world and choose to spend their time and energy spinning conspiracy theories, selling snake oil, or snarking at those trying to be as safe as they can. I give up on y’all. I wish you well, I hope you stay healthy despite your own actions, and that’s the best I can do anymore.


Last week’s note would have posted April 1, but I wasn’t in the mood.

Despite that I am, mostly, finding my way through all this, and most of the time, happy. I’ve cleared out a space for a tiny “corner” office (as in, it’s a corner of another room), and I’m getting things done. Drawing daily, blog posts, even working on a novel once in a while. My son is fed, my cats are snuggly, and my pandemic haircut is extremely cute.

Watching:

I reviewed Stray Dog on the 1st; you can read that here. I also posted a reprint review of Were the World Mine on Monday; if you haven’t seen it before, you can read it here.

Also, Tales From the Loop dropped on Amazon Prime this week and I’m not done with it, but if you like slow, atmospheric anthology series with weird physics and robots, you’ll love this.

I got into Simon Stålenhag’s art years ago – his rustic futurism is grounded in nostalgia for a world a lot like the one I imagined as a kid, but we never actually got. He built a game called Tales from the Loop based on his art, where kids solve Mysteries in their own hometowns, and that inspired the series. I love the game, which reminds me of both Shadowrun and Stranger Things, while remaining uniquely its own thing. If you haven’t seen his art or played the game, I recommend them both.

Reading:

My comics re-read continued with DMZ. I also read the first two collected books of Matt Kindt’s MIND MGMT; I wrote about “The Manager” here, and “The Futurist” review goes up Friday.

Extra Bits:

Daily warmup sketch, April 3, 2020

I’m posting my daily warmup drawings for April over on my Instagram. They’re not great, not my best work, but they’re fun. I’m sharing them because a) it’s good for me to get over feeling like everything has to be perfect before I show anyone, and b) it’s good for me to have this daily drawing practice, and remembering that I promise to post them helps me allow myself to make time for it.

Notes and References:

Stay home, and stay safe.

Weeknotes 3.3 (March 25, 2020)

Various hands, March 2020

Still drawing when I can, which is more than nothing, but not nearly as much as I want. Making progress, though.


Having everyone here, staying at home, staying in place, isn’t much different from my life before, except there’s no opting out. My son’s not going to school. My partner isn’t leaving for work or going out to do his own thing. I don’t have the uninterrupted hours I had before to do my own work. I can’t even run errands to get out of the apartment by myself.

But I like these people, my cats, my little home. We already split our time together on the weekends between actually being together and doing our own activities by ourselves in separate corners of the apartment. We’re still doing that, but for more days at a time. I cook more, because three people x three meals a day, and clean more, and I’m keeping my son on a loose schedule that has us doing art and schoolwork all throughout the day, but in between, we have chunks of time for ourselves. My son plays games or watches videos, and I spend a little time on my computer, or – whenever possible – draw. An hour later we’re doing the next activity together.

Continue reading “Weeknotes 3.3 (March 25, 2020)”

Weeknotes 3.2 (March 18, 2020)

The State Theater in Ithaca, March 2020

After six and a half weeks (I counted), two doctor’s visits, 3 bottles of NyQuil, more cough drops than I can remember, a prescription decongestant and a 5-day course of antibiotics – plus the medications I already take everyday – I’m finally almost done being sick.

Continue reading “Weeknotes 3.2 (March 18, 2020)”

Weeknotes 3.1 (March 11, 2020)


Anatomy practice continues. One of my favorite practice pages from the last week is this one:

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I really do think I’m getting better at drawing people.


March is chugging along despite the incompetence of our federal government and the spreading plague. At the moment, Ithaca is still mostly open for business: the colleges have asked students not to return from Spring Break, but they’re still staffed and running at the moment; the k-12 schools haven’t announced that they’ll be closing; stores are out of the expected stuff (toilet paper, hand sanitizer) but stocked with everything else. We’re not yet where a lot of bigger cities already are.

Give it another week.

Continue reading “Weeknotes 3.1 (March 11, 2020)”

Weeknotes 2.1 (February 2020)

Anatomy studies after Bridgman, Feb 16, 2020

In February I started anatomy practice, shoring up the part of illustration I think I’m the worst at: drawing people. I’m doing studies from a couple of different books (first up, George B. Bridgman’s Constructive Anatomy) and then practicing my line work by finishing my sketches in ink pen (mostly Pigma Microns). This is my favorite page of bones I’ve drawn so far.


February was an entire month, huh? A for real, at least 4 weeks long month? For me, it was mostly a blur of being asleep, coughing myself awake, and trying to get back to sleep again. I caught the flu some time around the start of the second week and here I am three+ weeks later, mostly better but still can’t shake this deep-in-my-chest cough. Doc says I’m not contagious, and my son – who also got sick but recovered quicker – is back to school, so I’m doing my best to get back to work. Part of that is this: regular blog updates. This one covers a whole month, but don’t worry. Like a February you mostly slept through, it’s shorter than you expect.

Continue reading “Weeknotes 2.1 (February 2020)”