Hello!  Look, a shiny new blog thingy!  Jen was so kind as to instruct me in its use (as well as the 40 zillion ways I could mangle the site if I pressed the wrong button, eep!).

Thank you, first of all, to everyone who helped to get this site up and running.   All the tech support, the encouragement, the patience with midnight coding emergencies, and the people who let me “borrow their eyeballs” are greatly appreciated. 

I’m trying not to panic, as my art has suddenly gone from mostly private to about as public as it gets — the internet.   But ever so slowly, I find myself adjusting to the idea, and seeing all potential reactions & criticisms as a challenge and a chance to improve, rather than a reason to feel inadequate as an artist.   (…Yeah, I have issues with perfectionism.   Me and, oh, just about every artist ever.  I’m managing.)

Right now, I’m itching for the comic to move forwards.   Only not really, because I want to keep a buffer of several comics ahead of the current post.   But my art has been improving so very quickly, much to my surprise and pleasure, that I squirm every time I look at the first few pages.   I seem to be stuck in one of those phases where the page I’m working on right now is the best I’ve ever done, the page I did before it is at least passable, and everything before that, I would just as soon sweep under the rug.  It’s a good sign that I’m improving, if I could only hang onto my pride in my earlier work….

I’m up around page 16, right now, and the art has taken a leap for the better.  Suddenly, we have dynamic angles!  Varying distances!  Proper perspective!!!   And I’m feeling less and less scared to try unfamiliar approaches, and more and more eager to, because I’m starting to trust my own abilities.   I may not know how to do some things, but I’m smart and a good artist and there’s no reason why I can’t learn.

(Also, I’m finally out of the diner scene.   Thank heaven.)

Really, the worst thing is that this is my first graphic novel, and there’s just no getting around that.  I can either go back to the beginning and draw every single page over again, or I can make my peace with that fact, get over it, and keep moving forwards.  So, on I go!