I’ve talked a little bit about being lucky enough to be a procrastinating digital colorist for the nation’s largest comics syndicate. It’s a tiny side job, I color three strips a week and the gentleman who offered me the position let me pick my all time favourite strip as my first – Mutts, by Patrick McDonnell. Basically, it’s just digital paint-by-numbers, but it can be tricky and it can be like pulling eyeteeth. However, it does have its benefits. Sometimes, like today, I give all the male characters pink clothing just for the hell of it.
And last week, I did not allow any of my characters to be blonde.
The pallettes are limited, and Mutts is the most difficult strip because of the loose illustration style – I can’t just sloppily run the brush in between the lines, because there are no closed paths in Mutts-land. So, this week, it took me six fucking hours to color.
I love that damned cat and dog, but man, was that hellish.
I am still not sleeping and eating poorly. I am writing about this now because if I don’t, I will forget and stay up all night and not eat and do it all again tomorrow, like I have for the entire month of January. I am frenetic, if you can call sitting at a computer eighteen hours a day frenetic, and if I were a teensy bit more self aware I might say I was going through a bit of a manic period.
I don’t care. I bought three Polaroids today on ebay for less than thirty bucks plus shipping. I don’t need fifteen vintage Polaroids (and I have twenty) but I intend to use them for one of two things – either a class at the local Parks & Rec on altered Polaroid art, or putting together packages of film and supplies + camera and selling them as SX70 manipulation kits or whatnot. I make gift packages like this fairly frequently, and all of the recipients have been joyous about it, so you know. I’ve written tutorials on all three standard altered Polaroid processes, and I can write at least three more on other alternative photo processes, so maybe I can take this somewhere.
I am going to go watch Conan, for the first time in two weeks.