Welcome to the first iteration of my studio chat, where I chat about hat I did in my studio this week. I hope this adds some sort of accountability to my practice. Or it will just add more words to this blog. I suppose my blog days are now Sundays, which makes sense as on Saturdays I tend to do a lot of running around and carrying on-per my grandmother. This week was one submerged in research and renewal.
There was no drawing to be found this week. Truthfully I didn’t expect to. I still had the stack of reference books to get through. I try to make it a point to finish them all at least a week before they’re due. This lets me prep the pull list 1 for my next visit, especially when the bibliographies are as long as the text for some of these (looking at you Zafar). Once I know what I want to look at next, I can put in the holds and the beautifully expedient interlibrary system will have them at my home library by the time I return this stack.
It’s lovely really, especially when I can request out of system books. (I’ll be trying that next week with a book only at the local university. Wish me luck.)
This week’s stack. Support your local library!
This isn’t a book review blog so I won’t bore you with the play by play. I didn’t even read that closely. (Here’s a big secret. Don’t read reference nonfiction cover to cover. Read what applies to your research, make note of the bibliography for more direct info, and move on!). I knew what I was looking for and most of them had the details I wanted to varying degrees…except Robot Ethics 2.0, which was apparently written by people who don’t live in reality.
Yes, I did bitch about it on my BlueSky. How did you know?
Reading
I do admit the stack is a little big for one checkout. But I have an excuse-I am mentally incapable of working on a single project at a time! Of course I have a selection of books for multiple genres. It makes my pull list a little disjointed, but at this point I’ve got my favorite Dewey-decimals memorized ( Space, robotics, future science: 629; Cookbooks 641; Comics and Sequential art: 741; Writing: 808) .
Not to judge books by their covers, but there’s a clear demarcation between the two projects.
I tend to limit my pulls for each project to four, out of respect for my poor desk. It’s already overloaded with all of my art supplies and various really important glass skull bottles (full of nothing, just for lookin’ at). Yes, it does sag in the center and yes I am stressfully saving for a new solid wood top.
The first group is all about space travel, robots, and writing sci-fi. Technically these topics span all of my Future Recurrence series, but for ID-the main project I’m working on now- research is complete and I’m deep in scriptwriting and character (re)design. The topic for ID is also medically focused, so I get a lot more out of NIH/PubMed articles than the more fun-fact and personal writing used in these books.
The second group is so wildly different from the first that I had to hold them from a different county’s library system. Different systems suit the needs of different populations. The suburban system I use has a lot of STEM professionals and their high-pressure children. The city system has several colleges full of African American and local cultural studies majors. Different populations, different book availabilities.
The project I’m working on is also wildly different from Future Recurrence (henceforth referred to as FR). I have yet to do a post overviewing exactly what FR entails, but suffice to say that it is heavy. And that’s not just the amount of research I put into it. The space notes are just fun facts. To be completely transparent: FR has been a disassociative coping mechanism more than an art project for most (over half!) of my life.
Research
Working on something this depressing during a time in the world that is somehow even more depressing takes a lot out of me. I’ve lost countless plot points that I thought were cartoonishly outlandish to actual news events2. Thus the emergence of Wonda’s Diner, one of many lighthearted project concepts that had more potential than just being a nice idea.
I won’t divulge too much now as I need incentive build the project pages on this site. As you can see from the book choices: it’s about food and black culture in the area I grew up. It’s going to be aggressively comforting to the point of occurring in a slightly different reality. Sitcom style, slice of life style. the emotional opposite of FR.
Starting research for this new project doesn’t mean I’m abandoning the main dish. Wonda’s Diner is for when I need a break from ID. I’ve been stuck on the script for a while and working on the Diner got me back into the swing of workshopping dialogue in my head. I’m hoping to be able to do that for ID in the coming weeks. I really need to get over this hurdle so I can get to the fun part.
The fun part of course will be redesigning the characters and suiting them to the details of the plot. It’s been a long time since I did the first (and second and third) passes of these designs. Things change, and I consider this a new launch even though I tried back in 2018. Nowhere is that more apparent than on the project notebook itself.
Renewal
I’ve used this notebook specifically since 2017, so the wear and tear of the non-archival binding was always expected. Now that I carry it to my café trips it has gotten even worse, so the only remedy is to use the old standby: Galaxy Duck Tape, savior of at least 3 sketchbooks over the years.
Before and after reinforcing my project notebook for ID.
I very well can’t replace the notebook wholesale like I tend to do with my Moleskines in the event of catastrophe3. It’s already been transplanted once, and this particular notebook in this particular size is no longer available. This is the risk of any long-term project. Nothing is eternal, especially not in end stage capitalism.
Luckily enough, some things are at least archival. This week marks the retirement of my main journal. The new one arrived just in time, saving me the anxiety of running out of paper mid-thought.
The difference between used and new is always surprisingly stark.
I performed my usual end-journal ritual of flagging all of the pages with ideas for various projects. I’ll spend some time in the near future working through the archive to remind myself of plots and projects that I might be ready to pick back up.
But for now I’m going on a different kind of adventure. I’ve completed all of my chores and blasted through seven research books in little under a week. I think some time in Teyvat is well deserved.
I’m off for some light mischief. See you next week!
fatcr0w is a hobbyist artist with a passion for comics and illustration. They take on too many projects and don’t know when to shut up. It is with great optimism that they believe one day this blurb will be more interesting.
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