I haven't had access to a scanner AND a computer for such a long time now due to my old roommate moving out that it's a relief to have these available again. Add to this that I'
ve been working long hours everyday all day, I wouldn't have had time to update anyways.
A LOT has gone on in the past month and a half. To much to mention here. I've been juggling to freelance gigs plus I'm now trying to get things put together for an upcoming convention. Finding a workable schedule and staying "motivated" was proving hard and I was struggling to stay focused there for awhile...
THANKFULLY, I found away through this
dilema. A few local artist friends and I have started up "Cowboy Robot Studios" in an office building in downtown Lubbock and it's helped
a lot to separate my work environment from my home environment. I'm dropped off at the studio at around 9 in the morning and leave anywhere from around 6pm to 1am, depending on who gives me a ride home.
There's still no wireless in the studio and we decided to keep the studio
TV free. So I'm pretty much held hostage by my work, only allowed to leave when everything has been marked off of my to do list for that day. This has been FANTASTICALLY helpful and it's taught me something about discipline and creativity.
Most artistic types tend to fend away from words like "discipline", "work", etc. But truth is, it's important in a creative career. Waiting until you "feel like" doing something is a creativity killer. Waiting around for inspiration to hit is a horrible idea and a good way to assure you won't be able to make a career at what you want to do. You have to sit with your art everyday and, when inspiration isn't coming, you have to hammer it out anyways despite how much you don't "feel like it".
I've had to learn this in the last year and a half. The only way to accomplish anything you want in life is to work hard at it and make compromises on other parts of your life, at least for a little while. Whats kept me from getting what I want for so long until lately is the fact that I didn't want to give
anything up. I didn't want to admit that I'd have to make sacrifices.
But the truth is, anything worth having in life takes persistence and hard work. It won't happen over night. It could take a year of hard work or ten years. But clocking in daily and doing what needs to be done is success at its heart.
So yeah, having a studio has been great. I love what I do and I thank God for this job every day but it's exactly that--a job. And having a place to go everyday has helped me get into that mentality. Comic books is my business, and business is good. :)
I'll go into more detail about the actual studio later( I may even put a few pics of it up), but for now I'll just post this Captain America sketch card I did recently.
A lot of local artists have started doing
sketch cards on a daily basis to warm up and so I thought I might give this a try as well. More to come. I'm going to try to put a little stock pile of sketch cards together for the upcoming Lubbock Comic Book Expo and will post here with the progress.
Back to work!
You'll be hearing more from me soon, though. ;)
Rachael
