Creative Hibernation

Work on the studio is inching along.

As you can see above, things like wrapping duct work in aluminum insulated sleeves and  adding more mud onto the walls is where it's at at this point for the studio progress. Thanks again to the support I've gotten from Patreon and from this year's show incomes, which are all going towards this to get things completed.

Every year, about this time, I tend to slow down a bit, and as I get older, the time frames become longer because I want to reflect on my favorite seasons, autumn and winter. You know, take a breather.

I don't hate summer or spring, it's just that growing up, fall and winter were the times of year that not unlike probably a lot of you, I had time spent with family, school breaks were going on, and of course good food abounded in most cases. So a lot more good memories are rooted internally for me during that time of year.

Taking a look back at the year, it's been a bizarre and bumpy ride. But I have made it a point to stay focused on the positive, and just learn from whatever failings have permeated the year. Downtime is something that should not be a premium in life. But there is a difference between taking time for oneself and opening up that enormous bottle of procrastination.

Thankfully, I've not had some good upturns as of late, from contract work to other opportunities come around for me to work towards. The mentorship group I work with Scribblers has started up again, in fact the second session went amazingly well.

Few feelings are as overwhelmingly positive as seeing young creatives experimenting and collaborating on artwork.

I and my two fellow art mentors were extremely happy to have a good sized group for this day's lesson. The end result was a large amount of free form artwork created using ink stamping, pencil, marker, watercolor and imagination. I left there so dang inspired it wasn't funny.

Afterwards Allyson and Cecilia both led the discussion of the day's artwork creation.

After that was all done, I had to rush to get back to working on some new project directions and a commission I am almost done with.

Adding the final protective coating on this comic box.

I tell you, my hours have been really just so off as of late. I don't like doing that as much, because then I feel the fatigue overcoming me, and I've done good keeping getting a cold at bay. 

But, there is something about staying up late for me, even on work nights (which is like practically every night when you do freelance and contract work). I've been back on a Green Day kick as of late, and have been listening to some of the live performances they've done tonight like this great performance:

During the month of October, there's this thing that goes on called "Inktober", that urges a lot in the creative community to get out ink pens and brushes and start inking each day. I have no idea who started it, but it's not a bad thing to try and do for at least the 31 days of that month. It's a great habit to develop for all the rest of the year.

I only got a few days that I sat down and worked on a few quick left handed works (I'm normally a right hander).

Lady in armor, skeksis inspired sort of character, girl with cat

I worked with pen and marker on these three, trying to build up my left hand usage for illustrating. All three were 15 to 20 minutes of work or so.

The first one I did though (using my right hand and a brush pen), was while listening to one of my new favorite groups, One Eyed Doll, and after posting it on Twitter they actually liked it!

Nice way to start off October's effort.

I also added a new podcast, the official beginning of Season 2 of Radio74 went live last night, and it's back to the shorter form for my time frame of around 12 minutes. I talk about it a bit on the episode, but sincerely, thank you all that have been listening to it, for the feedback, constructive criticism, and shares. The show is constantly evolving and I have had plans for where I want it to go for some time that I haven't been able to get to because of time constraints and scheduling of various people, but I hope to have that all ironed out soon. Either way, thank you for an incredible 1,675 individual downloads off of just Podbean!

Give the new episode a listen here!
Until next time, support your local artists, be kind to your fellow beings, and always take the path less traveled!

- Mario, the Artisan Rogue
Illustrator, Podcaster, Writer, Toy Collector, and Animal Rights Activist

www.theartisanrogue.com