I hit a bit of an artist block in the past couple of weeks.  Not sure when it raised its ugly unproductive head, but it did, and very apparently so that I’d be reading and re-reading work scripts and absolutely nothing of any interest would take shape in my head.  I was stuck.

And in a freelance profession where income is directly proportional to output rather than “hours spent at the desk,” creative constipation is no joke.

But I seem to have gotten over it and I’m back in full swing, but not without proper remedy.  And so, my friends, I present to you Johnny’s Five-Step program to Getting Your Life Back.

Consume – Most artistic blocks i.e, obstruction of output is usually caused by a lack of creative input or inspiration.  It’s a universal law — you can’t make something from nothing.  So plunge your head into other people’s work, other books, other stories, films, new music, and let it all seep in.  Enjoy it.  Don’t think of it as work, and appreciate it for what it is.  Art.

Commune – But perhaps more important than surrounding yourself with media is surrounding yourself with people.  For comic artists, a hermit-like lifestyle is pretty much the norm; but it’s easier to go stir-crazy  than most people think, so meet up with friends, visit family, or just simply go out into the world and take your hat off.  Spoiler: the sky is blue.

Control – Fight the urge to go back or stay at the desk until you “get through” a block.  It’s not a physical object.  It’s not a boss at the end of a video game level.  Your head is hungry.  Feed it.  Your mind is tired.  Let it rest.

Compose – It can take a day, it can take a week, but when ideas start flowing freely again, it’s incredibly easy to tell which is forced and which isn’t.  Think your process through.  In my case, I like to go back to my illustration and sequential basics, and more often than not, the rest just takes shape for me.

Commit – If you’re something I like to call a human being, any creative endeavor will come with a healthy amount of self doubt.  And you know what?  That’s okay.  It’s okay to suck.  The important thing is that with every pen stroke and every new panel, you try to suck a little less.  Accept that what you put on paper was the very best you could do at the time, but drive yourself  to get better.

There you have it, guys.  The Five (unintentional) C’s of how to get over a case of artist’s block.  Of course I realize that not all artists are alike, and this could work only for me, but if you ever feel like your creative output needs a refresher, you might want to consider at least giving this a try.

Time was I’d go through the trouble of redrawing a whole panel with a mistake in it, or at least do a patch or a frisket for a small revision.  I’ve covered up many asymmetrical faces and oversized hands this way, and boy did it take time.  Having to rescan single elements in, then meticulously pasting it via Photoshop like some digital crane operator was never something I looked forward to.

Digital drawing didn’t right away occur to me as the obvious solution.  I’ve been coloring with a mouse for as long as I can remember, and when my peers demanded I get a drawing tablet, it only ever hit me as a coloring tool.  Silly me.

It’s no giant leap, I know.  But now all my page and panel revisions are done digitally.  I erase stuff out and draw things in, all with the Wacom.  Only the correction phase has changed though, all the original art is still done traditionally.  And that retention  makes me happy for some strange reason.

About a week ago I completely adopted the habit of doing absolutely all my spot blacks in the computer.  It’s faster and much less messy, but I’m also left, for all intents and purposes, with an unfinished original page.  There is a balance to be struck here, and I haven’t found it yet.

The irony of being torn between a laborious and messy physical process versus a speedy and accurate ethereal one doesn’t escape me, but hey… comics versus art?

Years ago, when I still had an allowance, a Magic the Gathering obsession, and a fixed bed time, my sister told me that the best way to get to eat your favorite dishes was to learn to cook them yourself. This little nugget of wisdom, of course, was prompted by me always asking her to prepare things like cinnamon french toast and apple pie.  I remember this now, as I am finishing up brunch — french toast and some bacon.

I am at the desk, and there is work to be done.  Today is to be about layouts, a coupla page corrections, and some heavy-duty scanning.  Today is about drawing.

The medium of comics is a funny animal.  Love it too much, and you begin to see the strings; the cyclical nature of the stories get to you and you find yourself scoffing at new ideas, comparing them to some Bronze Age arc you barely remember anyway; and you smell editorial decisions where you could once just sit down, shut the fuck up, and enjoy the ride.

Love Comics too little, and as a storyteller, you feel like a fraud.  There is no passive enjoyment in an artistic medium that is defined by long-term character investment and serial story delivery.

And so we come to a crossroads.  How much do I love comics?

The question didn’t occur to me to ask until I saw this week’s pull list and found myself getting more excited about indies rather than the mainstream.  And more often than not, I feel passionate about the quality of the books I read because I feel a very real stake in it.  I make comics too, having done freelance work for over two years now.  And on top of that, I review them.  I am no longer just a fanboy.  I may be a small fish, but at least my feet are wet.  And this is why the books matter. The better the books are, the better the entire medium is.  And the better the medium is, the more room there is for new stories — not just tights, not just powers.

The best way to ensure that I get to read the comics I want to read… is to make them myself.

Today is to be about drawing.  Tonight, about writing.

It’s about midnight and Jad and I are working in our dining room/office.  My artsy stuff is on the dining table, and she’s typing up some internet voodoo on the momentarily-displaced desktop.  Studio isn’t quite done up yet, so we’ll at least wait until a proper AC is installed before we even think about actually moving PCs into that space.

That said, working in the dining room ain’t half bad.

I’m allowed to eat chips here.

***   ***   ***   ***

1888 #2 is back on track after a brief hiatus to accommodate some editorial changes — nothing too heavy, but I can certainly see the narrative value in what was modified.  Wolfgang and the guys are onto something big, and they know it, and so the blood gushes on.

Been giving JUDAH and CLOSETWORLD a lot of love lately, so those two are feeling all fuzzy, I’m glad to say.  I had a project fall through the other week though, so I’m looking to start moving on a fourth project that I’ve had on the back burner for quite some time.

***   ***   ***   ***

Life in Davao is a far cry from how things are in Cebu, but there’s something to be said for living away from too much city noise.  The sound of delivery boys on motorbikes with ridiculously loud tailpipes passing through the neighborhood in the morning has been replaced with the occasional soy curd or vegetable vendor.  Not to jinx anything, but my output has improved and my ideas feel more fresh.  If I want noise (and come on, we all do sometimes), I have the internet.

And chips.

Every so often, someone calls my attention to a new tool or technique that will, as they say, ostensibly make the creation of art a lot easier/faster/better.  The latest version of Photoshop.  The new Wacom tablet.  The new graphite Staedtler is cutting their leads with.  I call this ‘The Myth of the Magic Pencil’, partly because it just has a nice ring to it… but mostly because I find these ideas to be more about hats than rabbits.  As much as I like to babble about method and style in the creation of my art, I don’t tend to linger on the tools.  Maybe I’m just backward like that, I don’t know… but I just feel this fixation on gadgetry renders you prone to falling flat on your ass because you were admiring your shoes too much.

Call me a dinosaur or a snob, but I’m of the belief that there is no such thing as a magic pencil.  No single tool can make you a better artist.  In a sense, all these things cooperate and contribute to a self-actualized artistic whole that functions through you, the draftsman.  So quite realistically, the illustrator himself is the magic pencil the ancients speak of.  None of it is magic, because ALL of it is.  All of it.  The light in your studio.  The breeze coming through the blinds.  Your posture.  The coffee in your pot.  That last good movie you saw.  That last great book you read.  The music you play.  The silence you enjoy.

The sweat in your brow.

The throb in your eye.

The pain in your wrist.

All of it.

At the end of the day, it’s all there and waiting for you.  It’s just a matter of using it.