when i began this blog about a year ago, i had some doubts that it’d see a year of entries. but some 40-something entries and 12 months later, i’m still here. i’m not sure if congratulations are in order or if i should’ve spent that time on other things. i do think that blogging has sort of provided an output for occasional writing, which output was formerly provided by being in a band for a few years.
in that time, i think i established a fairly good and natural pattern that goes from somewhat technical articles to lightly philosophical entries about art or art history, with forays into light entertainment and complete randomness scattered between.
moving to europe earlier this year really hindered my pace and made me think blogging would grind to a halt. the blogger site is notoriously slow, and doing this all on dial-up has been painful at times, especially when i go about finding random links to insert. yet i persevered--for better or worse--during what by any measure has been the busiest single year i’ve had in my 11 years at this illustration game. i spent a lot of time out of the studio this year at cons and such and moved a couple of times, yet had a more full workload than in most years, which meant almost non-stop painting whenever i was home. also about a year ago i started dipping into some digital art and that has been a painful on-the-job training, albeit with some clear benefits in the end.
anniversaries are strange things, marked as they are by our relative position in an elliptical solar orbit within a constantly moving universe. why then should they be special? i don’t know, but it does seem to be important for us to stick markers down in our path every so often, to take a breather and look back. having taken stock of the distance covered since our last marker, we readjust the straps of our pack and trudge on.
thanks for walking along this far with me.
11 hours ago