Filler Art Week

Dang. Dang, guys. Seriously, dang.

I hit that burn out thing. Many friends and family members have been eye-balling my sanity levels – dwindling between the increased hours of my day job and a few other real life stresses – and for the past month or so they’d been muttering that “Hey, it’s gonna happen. You’re gonna burn out, Meg.” They knew it. I knew it. Still, I’m stubborn. I acknowledged that they were probably right, shrugged, and pressed on.

My goal was to get to the end of this scene and then go on hiatus for a couple of weeks to get my creative energy back. I’m really close to the end here, but I just couldn’t push it any further.  This last week I first found myself unable to get faces drawn correctly, and then my ability to string sentences together disappeared. Then I started questioning even the foundations of my basic plot and getting paranoid that I was an absolute hack with no business telling stories (this is a thing, it happens). On Thursday I realized I was bashing my head into walls and not getting anything accomplished, and in fact probably doing way more damage than good.

So I finally had to take a break before I’d wanted to. Just for this week, though. Next week the comic returns, and I’ll keep rolling until the scene ends. Then, yeah, I’ll still need that hiatus. It was a mistake to not take a break at the end of the last scene. I’ll aim to take better care of myself in the future.

In the meanwhile, I happened to have a doodle that was lying around of Stiggs’ markings on his back, which we never see due to that big black coat of his. I’d meant to post it last week in the Tumblr, but something stopped me. Now I know what. I realized, subconsciously, that in a few days’ time you people would need….

a butt.