I did it in the name of... SCIENCE!

Letters and ladders

When I got home yesterday evening I found an email in my inbox from Terry Nantier, the president of NBM and the person who hired me on the Hardy Boys job in the first place. It was a sweatdrop letter asking where I am in the schedule. After a few moments of panic at being contacted by the PRESIDENT (and using some DBT skills to ride out the emotion and tolerate the distress without flipping into a full-out anxiety attack), I decided to get a good night's sleep and tackle the job with a fresh mind and eye today. I used the witches' ladder I'd created and cleansed earlier in the afternoon to do 40 repetitions of my usual two affirmations before going to sleep, and indeed had a very quiet and refreshing night's rest.

So -- up at 7:45 am, and a letter sent to Terry assuring him that I'm working hard and letting him know where I am in terms of processing the pages. Now I'm back at laying flats and painting backgrounds; hopefully I'll catch up to Daniel's art later today, and can start doing finished pages tomorrow.

The candle is lit on the studio altar before the image of the Goddess, with a prayer asking for creativity and energy as I work through the day.

A good cup of coffee doesn't hurt, either.

( Okay, and a few quizzes, gacked from ravyne_hawke )

Seven hours later

Six hours after starting work -- three pages done. Mind you, one of them was a nightmare page with falling water and sparks (which both required extensive and detailed color holds), and the water wasn't well drawn, which of course made the shapes harder to pick out.

The rest of the pages should go faster.

*offers up a quick prayer to Brigid at the studio altar and goes back to work*

Ow!

Hand cramp after almost 10 hours of straight painting. Ow.

Have to take a break and try to work it out. Maybe have a hot bath, give it a bit of a soak.

Typing probably doesn't help. :-P

*gasp, pant... fall down*

I flatted seven complete pages today, including two Nightmare Pages From Hell and one Nightmare Page that I haven't finished a Nightmare Panel on -- it involves many little watery shapes that I recoiled from instinctively after flatting the first two Nightmare Pages... *sigh, groan, throw in the towel*

I'd hoped to finish true color flats on all the pages I have, and would have, but the two Nightmare Pages made that fucking impossible: too much falling water and too many "sparkles" that had to be thrown into a DIFFERENT color hold than the water. *takes a deep breath* I'm trying to maintain my "the artist is not out to make my job harder" mindset, but damn, pages like that make it incredibly difficult.

That, and I keep picking up mistakes in the line art... including actual notes to correct the art that weren't taken out of the final files...

*sighs again, closes Photoshop*

There's time enough to deal with that tomorrow.