Things left on the YPH to-do list:

• Erase pencils on the last like 7 pages
• Scan
• Touch up mistakes
• Upload
• Order prints

Yeeeeeaaah! This is finally happening. This will be a mini-comic of about 21-23 pages (I may add in one more page, and I forgot if I’ve already made 21 or 22… hence the discrepancy), and I already pretty much finished the cover in my digital coloring class, so I don’t have much left to do! Unfortunately, I am kind of busy as of late. Hopefully, Thursday morning will be free, so I can do pretty much everything then.

I CANNOT WAIT. First, I’ll be ordering probably just one or two copies to make sure that it prints the way I want it to. If there are any problems, I’ll fix them, and then I will order like 10 or 15 more. I will then have them up for sale and hope for the best! It’s been a couple of months since I started, and I hope it won’t be too obvious in my artwork, but I will talk more about what made this comic happen later. Like, after I’ve had it printed later. I really hope to have this done very soon, so there shouldn’t be a huge delay unless my work or school work gets in the way, and you know, priorities are a thing I have.

1. Did well with my internship.

2. Had an internship at all.

3. Made a full 40-page water-colored children’s book for the internship.

4. Got my driver’s license at long last.

5. Made some money for once.

6. Made a skirt and started on another skirt and a dress.

7. I probably did some other illustrations and sketches and worked on my stories.

8. Have, as of this posting, completed 10 pages of Young Prince Hatfield and half-way finished the pencils for the 11th page.

9. Read Good Omens, Life, the Universe, and Everything, So Long, and Thanks for All The Fish, The Great Gatsby (re-read that one, but had never finished the very end), and several short stories by Calvino, Marquez, and Borges (probably the most reading I’ve ever done in a single summer).

10. If you can call it an accomplishment at all, since it was so easy, had an amazing time with friends all freakin’ summer long.

11. Drew a bunch of double-chins.

If I think of anything else, I’ll add it to this list.

I have had two images from Daydream Lily open in my browser for probably almost a year now. Why? I adored the poses and images of the two girls featured in them, and I wanted to do some study sketches. Here is my study of a photo found here, and taken by photographer Steve Gourlay for a collaboration between Daydream Lily and Element Eden. I was in no way able to capture the beautiful shape of the profile of this girl, but hopefully I’ll get around to doing some traditional sketches in my sketchbook, and those might be more successful. I’m still not that great at sketching in Photoshop, but with practice, I hope that can change!

Again, original image is from this article.

Be sure to add me on Tumblr!  New URL is Cottonbook, to match my other accounts on other websites. I can’t change this URL, though.

So, I started working on a sixteen-page comic that I posted to this blog last summer, with the intention of submitting it to the anthology, Sugar Ninjas. But at this point, I find it to be… not up to standards. This left me rushing these past couple of days to create some content for it before the deadline, mostly because I had been so tired with work, which also involves drawing.

I’m very glad I made that comic from last year, since it was my first real finished piece, as far as I can remember, that was of any actual length. I’m sure there will be a day when I look back on the content I’ve just submitted for Sugar Ninjas and think that it’s awful as well, but for now, I’m really pleased with my pages.

All I can think of when I see other people’s minicomics, like Mare Odomo’s Letters to an Absent Dad, is that I need to get it together and make my own! If I didn’t have an internship this summer, that is what I would be doing. I hope. I think I’ve made an effort this year to really start making and finishing comics, and I really hope that soon, I can have something to be proud of! For now, I think I’ll try my best at what I’ve got, and… sell a signed and embellished copy of Sugar Ninjas: Sweet volume 2! I might put it on Etsy, so let me know if you’re interested.

So, I keep putting away into a folder all the old pictures I don’t like any more, but this one that never got finished still resists being put away. I’m pretty pleased with it! I think the dress and headpiece was inspired by the work of Andre Kim if I remember correctly, and these were two characters from a story I came up with that didn’t go anywhere. If I had made it into a book, it would have been like Twilight, but less creepy, so… needless to say, it was pretty half-baked.

Still, my story had some ideas in it that interested me. I mean, why else would I spend so much time with it if there wasn’t SOMETHING there? The girl, Sonnet, refuses to let herself fall in love, because she’s worried that she’ll lose herself to this man. She’s afraid that by consummating their love, something will change, and more importantly, that something in her will be gone forever. …Other than that, there wasn’t much interesting or anywhere close to original.

So, we’ll see if any of that ever appears in my other sequential endeavors.

I’ve been busy at the internship working on watercolors for a children’s story, and it’s been really busy but definitely a good exercise of how it might be once I’m out of school. This is a practice piece for the watercolors, and I’m glad that they’ve really only been getting better! …*knock on wood*

I’m also working on my website, though mostly the content for it, since I’m awful with coding (despite my attempts, things don’t seem to be working!). My friend, Nicole, who has done such a great job putting it together so far, is now at a summer job, so I don’t blame her for not wanting to spend her free time coding. I’ve found some amazing blogs lately, too, like the Draw This Dress tumblr, where Vera Brosgol and Emily Carroll challenge each other to draw fantastic historical garments.

I’ve also just been drawing goofy pictures of friends, finding swing dancing in my area, hoping to go to a life drawing session at Artspace, playing Eufloria, eating tea-flavored candy, and sewing skirts. My lady friends and I have been having tea parties a lot, and I can’t wait for Elizabeth to host the Woodland-Fairytale-themed one! Also, I got a filling today, but it wasn’t so bad.

My friend and I have just been watching Masterpiece Mystery’s Sherlock series, and we are in love. I’m not very good at digital painting in Photoshop, so I’ll have to find some new program to replace my long-gone openCanvas, but for now, I’ve got this. If you’re interested in watching the show, I highly recommend just going on Netflix (if you don’t have it, they give you a free month as a trial, so just use it for this and then cancel if you must) and watching all 3 of the first season’s episodes before going and looking up pictures or videos. Probably the most popular video would be the season finale, which is AMAZING, so I’d avoid it until you’ve actually watched the show. It’s kind of less amazing if you don’t know what’s going on and haven’t had the build-up.

This is one of my many attempts tonight on a Tumblr banner. I really can’t decide what would best represent me… Currently, it’s this great lineup of characters from a board game concept (which was terrible, and for a Color Theory project) called Murder at the Space Disco. It’s goofy and fun, but I think I need something else that describes me. Mermaids, mori girls, Arabian fantasy type things… What best represents me? I’m always trying to figure these things out, since my interests are fairly wide-spread, both in how I decorate my webpage, and also my room. I’m currently taking it apart since arriving home from school for the summer, and I don’t know what to do with it… Arabian would be so cool, but it’s already pretty mori-girl-ish, and just needs some touch-ups. What to do? This problem is going to come up again when I decorate that nerf gun for Lolis vs. Zombies…

Anyways, I’ve been moving all this time and working on finals, and now… I’m working at my internship! Here’s hoping I can keep motivated all summer!

Things I had to research:

Daguerreotypes-

appearance, process, equipment, timeline

Mexico/California timeline 1800s

California aridity, precipitation maps

Individual city histories

Map of California, 1840

Men’s clothing, Mexico, 1800s

Women’s traditional clothing, Northern Mexico/California

Native plants of California

Arid landscapes, California/Mexico

Joshua tree details

Villages in Mexico/California, 1800s

So far, that’s the extent of it. Yes, you can write about things you don’t know about, but it may take a lot of research, and proper research, too. Assuming you want people to read your story, someone’s bound to read it who actually knows what they’re talking about, and you don’t want to have a million mistakes for them to catch. I’m currently freaking out because I think this will happen to me, despite all my research, because I’ve had serious issues with the women’s clothing research. Why don’t I just change the location further south?! Then, I would know what they’re wearing… Anyways, this is the beginning of the end here, since it’s the first day of finals week, so soon, everything will be finished and ready for summer! …Right… I still have to pack everything up and move to an apartment down the street. Still, exciting! Stressful, but exciting, as always.