Oh god I'm done...

I've been working on Spiader Webs for five years. I've drawn 79 pages, five pieces of cover art (one of them four or five times), countless studies for future pages, drawn these first four characters hundreds of times...

And now, tonight, I've finished the cover for the first volume. All I have left is to throw some dogging around the moon on that problematic chapter cover.

Four chapters, 79 pages, five years, and a hell of a study in the growth of an artist. The story can stand alone, complete, if it needed to. I have hundreds of pages more sitting ready to transform from words into art.

I am exhausted. I never want to draw Vervain's goddamn vest ever again. I have spent the last two weeks living in the coffee shop, manic and fueled on caffeine and desperation.

But if I get hit by a bus and die tomorrow, I will have died having finished something.

The next few steps belong to my little sister, giving words to my art and correcting my epic failures to colour inside the lines.

I am taking a slight break for the summer now. Now I dive into my summer work, manically cover things in leather and build bags, and trust that by the time summer ends, I will be less exhausted and over it.

Shall we hope the next volume doesn't take five years more?

TEASTAINING!

This morning, with the final two pages of Spiader Webs taped to my lapdesk in the process of colouring, an improperly balanced teacup spilled the better part of a cup of lapsang souchang over the pages.

Well, I was looking for a way to make the inside of the cave look like the inside of a cave....

I'm really hoping that the pages will be clean enough to use, and I won't have to redraw them... Mostly because those are the pages with many dead villagers, which were all a pain to draw.

As of right now, the pages are at home pressing between paper towels. At least I managed to get them to flatten...

Spiader Webs -- Less inactive than it seems.

Last time I mentioned Spiader Webs, I mentioned that I was out of Spiader-coloured ink. Well, I've got that, now, and have finished the last set of pages that I was stuck on, but I do need to do an inventory and go to Blick on the Hill the next time I have access to Seattle. Among the colours that I find myself growing short on is the colour for Lalalie's dress, which is... Well, needed.

As of right now, I have a set of five pages ready for ink, which will finish out the current chapter.

I've got 79 pages, plus covers, and in looking back at the first few pages, I cannot help but cringe. The level of detail I am achieving now is far superior to the detail I was putting into the first few pages. Every time I look at them, I feel like redrawing them, and I might still. For now, however, I am forging ahead with the story, and am finally (finally) getting to the swing of the story.

Now, if you will excuse me, page 75 is mounted and ready to ink.

I've started working on another one.

As mentioned in my last post, I have all the work for The Chameleon War stored on Google.

As it turned out, three of the secondary characters started bivouacking in my head mid-november, and by January I had written out a short (360+ page) comic, and was working on thumbnails. As of now, I'm working on the thumbnails for chapter six (of thirteen), and have actually done watercolour for the first fourteen pages.

It is somewhat exhilarating to have actually finished a story for the first time in years. Even if this story is, in fact, simply an episode in a longer-running storyline, which it is, the fact that I actually have the story itself finished (it has a beginning, a middle, and an end) is exciting to me. The prospect of actually finishing the thumbnails is now within reach (I've made it almost half way. It's all countdown from here), and is terrifying.

The insanity comes from the idea that I'm then working in pen and ink, and then watercolour, and then more pen and ink. Each page takes something in the range of 22 hours to complete. I am detailing down to the stitching in people's clothing.

I wish I knew if anyone else was going to be interested in this story at all...