I haven’t been on my bicycle in six days. I haven’t picked up my brush in four. This is slowly killing me.

It’s an awful cliche´ but you just don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone. Not that I’ve lost anything, I but haven’t had time to focus on painting and the weather has been so poor that cycling is a dangerous activity.

I have been sorting through some of my artwork photos and have begun prepping them for print work. I have the RedBubble store going, yes, but that’s not likely to do much of anything at all. Instead, I’d like to start promoting myself locally and handle any real web sales through this (or some other) website. Here’s a preview…

What will eventually be an 18"x24" reproduction for sale.

A big problem I’m having is the amount of photoshop resizing and stretching I’m having to do in order to get the photos to maintain the correct proportions. In the end, they’re still not a 100% faithful representation of the work.

I missed my own self-imposed deadline of getting one painting a month done for the year of 2011. March was way too busy and April is turning out to be the same. I guess that’s what happens with a job, school, girlfriend, family and just about everything else.

In my own defense, I did start a painting before the month ended. So if I can get two paintings done before the end of this month, I’ll still be on track.

Heh.

I read an article by Jimiyo which more or less said “go forth and create”. The idea is that the more you create, the less you should consume. And the more you create the more others will consume your work.

This isn’t really new thinking by any stretch but it’s nice to see it repeated. In my 9-5 world we really try to follow the “iterate often” mantra that has made software development a living thing. I’ve been trying to follow this myself for the past few years (and recently the past few months) and to date I have half-a-dozen projects on the burners. I don’t think I’ve drawn this much since I was a kid.

Work, school and other art have kept me so busy that I haven’t been able to post anything here. I’ll try to change that.

I’m rather uncertain about the work I’m producing lately. I feel like I rush myself because I want to be done as soon as I start. Why? Because the idea of leaving something unfinished sits poorly with me.

The reason for this is because I have left so much unfinished in the past.

I think the next decade will be about finishing what I’ve started. When I was in 8th grade, I thought it’d be great to have a turn-based strategy game centered around snowball fights. I went so far as to play test the game with my friends. Now, as I enter into the later years of school, I have the option to take some game design classes.

I think my only option for myself is to create a real time combat game based on the same premise. So here we go down the rabbit hole.

In a fit of frustration I started sketching on a prepared canvas that I’ve had ready to go for the past four months. This is the start of a work that was promised to a friend several long years ago.

I need to finish what I start.