Page 2 complete at last, or giving birth.

I think that I've stated before that I hadn't done any finished artwork in some time. I didn't know how out of practice I had become! I can remember a time when I could have done a page like this in a day or two. A day being about eight actual hours of work mind you.

But I am glad to report that page two is now complete. It's been a long time since I've been pleased with ANY of my artwork but there are elements of this page that actually please me. I'm not too please with the figure looking up at the sky or how flat the background in that panel is either. But the cross-hatching in the last panel is somewhat like I wanted it to turn out as well as the leaves of the trees closer to the foreground. Overall I think that a true professional working for a comic book company would be ashamed to show this page to his editor. But for me it's the best that I can do and I'm pleased with it.

Before any of you think I'm being too hard on myself please keep in mind that I read a LOT of comic books, and have been doing so almost all of my life. I'm only trying to keep an honest perspective on things.

I know that this may sound strange to some but I hope that even if I ever do become a professional penciler for comics someday, I hope that I can still look at my work and see what I got wrong as well as what I'm proud of. I think that it's good for me and will help to keep me humble. I've met a few really good artists over the years, some of them professionals themselves, and some of them seemed to me to be arrogant because of how well they could preform their craft. I don't ever want to be like that.

I was talking to my pastor on the telephone yesterday and he asked me if I enjoyed drawing. That was a difficult question to answer, there's no simple answer.

On one hand I love it. The feel of the pencil in my hands. Watching the ideas in my head take shape for others to see. The comfort of being familiar with the tools of my craft, sometimes they feel like old friends. And finally the joy of completing the work and holding it in my hands to look at and show to others.

On the other hand, I loathe it. The difficulty of making myself sit still for hours on end. The utter frustration of knowing what I want to draw but not knowing quite how it's done sometimes. The tedium of first penciling all of the small details I want, and then the anxiety of tracing over them with permanent ink.

I tried to express some of this to my pastor, Chris, and he told me that it was the same for him sometimes when he's preparing a sermon. He called it the process of "giving birth", a term I hadn't heard applied to a labor of love in quite some time. And it struck a resonant chord within me. That feeling of satisfaction that you get when you hear someone articulate something that you've never been able to put into words before.

Yes, that's exactly how I would describe drawing for me.

Giving birth.

So anyway, now that I'm done waxing philosophical, here's my new baby, Page 2. I hope you like it, but either way I'd love to read your comments.


Oh and again, those of you that pray, please do so for me. You see tomorrow, I start having my first labor pains for page 3. {:P