Hindsight

Wow, I’ve been bad about posting lately. I’m in a tricky transitional phase where I’m trying to get up to full production speed on the finished art for The Odyssey, while simultaneously making a few last edits to the layouts. Anyway, here’s a fun little scene I ended up cutting because it was breaking up the flow too much. It’s the flashback of young Odysseus getting his leg wounded by a wild boar on Mt. Parnassus.

A collaborative project! Alison painted and collaged this birdhouse, and I drew birds on the sides. I’ll draw on the roof too, I think, but here it is so far.

My favorite again, Mt. Auburn Cemetery

Last weekend, Alison and I were at the wedding of my friends Paul and Heather (you may know Paul as Antonio in the Merchant of Venice). It was a beautiful weekend, and we wandered around Northampton, where Alison went to school (Smith), and Greenfield and Montague, where a bunch of my folksy-dancin’ friends live.

Here are a couple of drawings from the Smith College plant house.

Finished the first round of edits on the Odyssey layout. I think it’s pretty solid, though I’m still wrestling a bit with the last couple of pages. The original ending is abrupt, and I’m trying to make mine a little less so, but it’s not easy. The total page count right now is 242. Yikes!

I created a Facebook group, called “Odyssey Helpers and Officionados” (yes, I mis-spelled that — I mean no, it’s a new word I made up!). If you’re interested, please join. Benefits currently include a chance to be in the book, and to chat with me and my friends/fans.

I still can’t share much Odyssey art, but here’s one of the layout sketches from the end of the book.

This is actually from that same night that I saw Shakespeare on the Common, but I had to put a little more color on it to get it looking right.

I delivered my first round of layouts on Monday (yay! 240 pages!!). So yesterday I took the day off to relax. I got over to Mt. Auburn for a bit in the afternoon, and did these, plus another piece that needs more love before I post it.

Incidentally, these were done using a cool new toy I picked up called a Niji Waterbrush. It’s a nylon brush with a water reservoir in the handle, which means you can do watercolor without carrying a separate water container. It’s awesomely handy, though the drawback is that you don’t have as much control of the loading & flow as you would with a regular brush.

Sorry, I haven’t been posting much because I have a nasty deadline looming. I have to deliver the Odyssey layouts to my editor next week so I can get feedback before she goes on (an inconveniently long) vacation.

I tried to record myself working on it, to show how my new layout process works. But I haven’t found the right software yet to capture video from the screen. It seems to be a tricky problem to record what I’m doing, because I draw very quickly with a very thin line, yet I don’t want the video to be enormous. The freeware I’ve tried yields too low a framerate, too big a file, and loses all detail if I downsample. Anyone have any experience with this? I suppose I may have to try zooming in on a small section and using a thicker line in order to get something that looks decent.

Actors’ Shakespeare Project, my favorite Boston Shakespeare ensemble, did a reprise of their great Love’s Labours Lost production out in Harvard Square this weekend. It was just as good the second time, although a lot more distracting (ambulances, thunderstorms, smokers, etc). I also happened to meet several of the cast as well as the woman who is directing their Merchant of Venice in the fall.

I also did my first “animated” play drawing. It’s a brave new world (to quote the bard).

I wasn’t terribly impressed this year. It was lighthearted and had some very funny bits, but I found myself bored more often than I should have. Oh well, it’s a huge challenge to perform a play outdoors — or then again, maybe the problem was just me.