Practice sketches from over the past couple of weeks.

But, couldn't I be practicing by, practicing drawing the comic?

Uh, well, yeah, I could be, but life is a little turbulent right now with some other things taking center stage coughworkcough. So I am doing what I can to enjoy what I do.

I'm hoping that practice I'm doing also refines my techniques a bit more so that when I return to the comic, things will look an iota better. But, let's not get carried away!

Writing

The other thing I'm doing is writing in the mornings, or I would be if the aforementioned thing was not taking up the bulk of my time.

But, I'm still plugging away at it in those moments when I can.

I was, for a while diligently, using a nice mechanical keyboard and my iPad to write directly into Scrivener every morning, but along the way, that felt very pedestrian. I sit at a computer for work, for play, and for everything in-between.

I watched a Tim Feriss podcast recently where he interviewed Neil Gaiman and they, of course, discussed writing. Gaiman mentioned that he wrote using a journal and fountain pens and I thought, hey, that would be an interesting idea.

It would pull me away from the computer for one.

I got a cheapie fountain pen from Office Depot (Pilot Metropolitan Retro Pop -- it's all they had) and one of my old notebooks and began to exercise my muscles in that way. It's fun and feels somewhat fulfilling to fill up pages with the written word, so let's see how far I can go.

Japanese

I'm still doing this! Daily.

I've actually stepped up a bit. I do a few lessons in Duolingo and I've added Wanikani to the mix to learn kanji.

And, I'm actually retaining some of that kanji and vocabulary. I've found in a few rare instances that I've been able to read more than one or two characters in hiragana because I either know the kanji or can guess at it. My guesses are still off-base, but it's more than I could do three months ago.

Blender

I pretty much failed here. I haven't done any sculpting as I would have liked. In my headspace, practicing sketching like this was meant as a compromise.

Make art.

Somehow.

3D is a time consuming process and doesn't come naturally to me. So I'm not pushing on that. It's also something I know that if I get into can be all-consuming and I'm not sure if the result will be all that useful in the end.

So 2D it is for the time being and maybe that will be a circuitous route that leads back to 3D and the comic and all other things.

But as for now, I'll try and take it easy over the weekend.

Have a good one, see ya next Saturday.