Category: Journal

Twelve years working on technique

I’ve been making art my entire life, much longer than 12 years, but I thought I’d take a little while and write about a particular period of my work, from late 1997 to early 2010, which has largely been concerned with two-dimensional art, mostly acrylic on canvas. (Really, this post is about the first and last paintings of that period; as I post more posts about the work I did in between you’ll see more of the development of my techniques as they progressed.) For a few years before that, I’d been doing mostly murals, painting directly onto walls – of my bedroom, my friends’ bedrooms, even my church. Then, in the summer of 1997, I moved out of my parents’ home and across town to Tempe, where I was a physics student at ASU, and into an apartment. Where I was no longer allowed to paint on the walls. Thus, I began attempting to create art on canvases for the first time in the Fall of 1997. (I’d done a few not-very-good paintings on canvas boards at age 12/13, but that’s not exactly the same thing.)

Click any image for a larger view

The first piece of art I created after moving out, you can see at right. I’d been doing a lot of blue skies painting in my murals, and it carried over to this painting, in part. I was also interested in correlating colors to numbers and mixing them and laying them out according to simple mathematical patterns. In addition, you can probably see that I worked colored embroidery floss into my design, sewing right into the canvas. You can see that I was just experimenting, to a certain degree, playing with colors and shapes, with masking techniques, with so many things at once…

Continue reading Twelve years working on technique

Dystopias and Depression

I’ve been reading a lot of dystopian novels, lately. I’ve a long way yet to go on my list of dystopian (and utopian) fiction to read before tackling writing my own. Already I’ve realized that there was a poor decision somewhere along the way which set me upon this path and this task; I am depressed. I am prone to, and have lately been in the throes of, “major depression”, as it were. (And yes, I believe I’m going to begin consistently switching to “logical punctuation”.) A major characteristic of good dystopian fiction is that the settings, the characters’ lives, and often the outcomes and resolutions, tend toward the sad, the grim, the dark, the painful, the depressing, and the destructive. Reading one dark, depressing book after another, after another, on and on, even “for research”, is probably not a good idea for someone prone to depression and thoughts of suicide.

They’re not all terrible. Sometimes the world is terrible and the protagonists aren’t much bothered by it. Often, especially in the recent crop of YA dystopian fiction, the worst of it isn’t particularly grim and then the protagonist successfully changes the world for the better, leaving you with a happy ending and a belly full of warm fuzzy feelings. Several times I’ve read one which walked the line between terribly grim and reasonably hopeful, but then veered off at the last moment into non-sequitur, totally free of any meaningful resolution.

Some of them, especially the pair I read by Olivia Butler, were little more than torture porn in written form. Having read The Parable of the Sower and The Parable of the Talents made books like Soft Apocalypse and Super Sad True Love Story, which cover some of the same apocalyptic dystopian ground (the former more than the latter) seem light and fun and easy to read (psychologically, I mean) in comparison. Of course, being a soft-hearted romantic lent Super Sad True Love Story a bit more punch; it really is a super sad love story. Poor Lenny.

Still, while this ongoing dystopian fiction backdrop has certainly colored my mental outlook of late, I think the darkest place I’ve found myself (emotionally) lately has been in direct concert with the season finale of House, MD. Gregory House may be the character I most identify with, across all the TV and books and films I’ve seen in quite a while. Wilson (House’s only real friend on the show) and other non-crazy persons may look at him and have no idea what’s going on in his head, may see him behave in extreme, apparently irrational ways and have no insight into why, into what would make someone want to behave those ways, but I’ve been right there with him, for years, wishing I knew some way to explain to people like Wilson what’s going on in our heads. (Mine and the fictional character, House, I mean.) I guess it’s like one of those things “regular” people understand but can never explain to me; this experience, this brokenness, is something difficult to relate to those who have never tasted it. After watching that episode in particular, I felt just about as broken and hurt and self-destructive as House, but I don’t have the means to simply disappear… except in a more final way. There’s a dystopia for you: being Greg House.

It’s been a tough week for me.

I’ve noticed some interesting granularity of emotion, though. I can feel distinct differences between wanting to kill myself and wishing I were dead. Between wishing I were dead and not wanting to be alive. There are countless gradations and unusual intersections between them, none of them happy and shiny and smily and bright.

Still, I’ll try to persevere. I’ve been getting a lot of good ideas, good insights, for my own novels. Though… I have found that I have a lot of excellent, important, character-building, gripping, torturous, terrible, painful things for the protagonist of the-book-which-is-supposed-to-be-a-utopia to go through, and I’m worried it won’t come across as utopian as I was hoping for. I know that part of the point of the pair is that it all depends on your perspective, that what is torture for one person might be paradise for another and vice versa… so as long as she fully believes that the world is beautiful, that all the terrible things she’s going through are for the best, it should work… and maybe I need to make the protagonist of the other book have a really easy-going life for contrast; she definitely thinks things are bad, terrible, and need to change. That might balance things out alright.

Lots left to work on. I want these to be my best books to date. The best I can do.

(…and then I’ll re-write Dragons’ Truth as a formulaic YA adventure story… Next year…)

Numbers for PHXComicon 2011

Phoenix Comicon 2011 was this weekend, and for the second year in a row, I had a small press table there. Let’s start with raw numbers, then get into a description of the experience. I’ll get into a bit of detail below, but in addition to the following book sales I sold two paintings during the course of the con, and traded a crochet sculpture for $50+ of merchandise from another local creator.

Here are my total sales (all paperback, except where noted), with last year’s comparable sales (in italics, in parentheses):

  • Lost and Not Found: 1 / $14 / (0 / $0)
  • Lost and Not Found – Director’s Cut: 0 / $0 / (1 / $10)
  • Dragons’ Truth: 2 / $26 / (4 / $49)
  • Dragons’ Truth MP3 CD: 0 / $0 / (1 / $13)
  • Forget What You Can’t Remember: 1 / $14 / (5 / $70)
  • More Lost Memories: 0 / $0 / (0 / $0)
  • MLM/Pay Attention chapbook: 0 / $0 / (1 / $2)
  • Cheating, Death: 7 / $70 / (6 (plus 2 given away) / $55)
  • Cheating, Death eBook (collectable card): 1 / $7 / (N/A)
  • Time, emiT, and Time Again: 3 / $42 / (N/A)
  • Untrue Tales… Book One (OoP): 1 / $6 / (1 / $12)
  • Untrue Tales… Book Two (OoP): 0 / $0 / (0 / $0)
  • Untrue Tales… Book Three (OoP): 0 / $0 / (0 / $0)
  • Untrue Tales… Books 1-2 (combined, OoP): 1 / $6 / (0 / $0)
  • Untrue Tales… Books 1-3 (combined, OoP): 1 / $12 / (8 / $200)
  • The First Untrue Trilogy: 6 / $144 / (N/A)
  • The Second Untrue Trilogy: 3 / $70 / (N/A)
  • Total Comicon book sales: 27 / $411 / (27 / $411)

…that… didn’t total out the way I expected it to. I apparently sold the exact same number of books for the same amount of money, compared to last year. Weird. Anyway, based on my rough estimate of the same thing, I did pre-pay for a small press table at the 2012 Phoenix Comicon, so I’ll be there again next year.

((For reference, ‘OoP’ is ‘Out of Print’ and is the out-of-print first editions of the Untrue Tales books, which I’d had printed along the way as I’d finished each book – and which, with the new editions of the complete series out, I want to get rid of. Thursday and Friday I tried “Name your own price” but found people don’t like to do that, so Saturday and Sunday I said “50% off” and sold a couple of them.))

In addition, I brought a couple of paintings with me to show at the con: The original artwork I created for the cover of Cheating, Death, and my latest, ‘RainbowAwesomeUnicornWow’. I bought an easel specifically to show these paintings at this con, and I suppose it worked out alright, because the unicorn painting (which I had at/above eye level throughout the con) certainly brought more visibility to my booth than I would otherwise have had, and before the convention was through, both paintings had sold, for $400 apiece. I’ve still got to deliver them (this week), and both buyers will be working out payment plans with me over the next few months, but they’re also repeat customers who are also friends I trust. I’m sure that part of what made up their minds about buying the art this weekend was that I was showing pieces they were interested in, and that other people were expressing interest in buying them. So… not technically sales I made / money I took in at con, but certainly sales which mightn’t have happened any time soon otherwise. I feel a bit bad about it; it hadn’t been trying to pressure those particular people into buying those pieces, I simply wanted to sell the art. I haven’t done any Art Walks or other shows in over a year, so wanted to take advantage of the opportunity. :/

On the other hand, if I add the art sales to the book sales total (using accrual method accounting, of course), my sales at this year’s con are nearly triple last years… even though they were actually, eerily flat. (Come to think of it, the only non-book I sold at last year’s con was a crocheted artwork, sold for $55, and this year I brought a single piece of crocheted artwork to decorate my table which I traded, at the last moment, for roughly the same value.) Eerily flat.

Of course, there are also expenses. The cost of the table, of gas to and from downtown every day (or, as others do, of renting a room downtown for the duration), the cost of parking (last year I was trying to use free street parking ~1mile away & ended up getting a ticket – this year I paid to park in a garage adjacent to the convention center & ended up paying much less), the cost of food while captive downtown for ten and twelve hour days, the cost of the new easel, a few display materials, hundreds of business cards, and (I never account properly for this) the value of my time. I’ve been coming out a bit ahead each year, though realistically -if I want to do any better- I’ve got to spend significantly more money. Buy bookmarks or postcards or the like to try to sell or simply give away. Buy big, full-color signage; at least with my company name, possibly with my book covers, et cetera. Pay for a full-size booth instead of a small press table. Worse, perhaps worst of all to me, and most-recommended to me by other creators and by fans/attendees alike, is to show/sell at more conventions. Leprecon, San Diego Comicon and Emerald City, Tuscon Festival of Books and TusCon, Saboten-Con (really?), CopperCon, and on and on… Each one a big up-front cost for a space, tied to the hope/dream that I’ll sell enough to earn it back, and most with travel expenses far, far beyond both booth costs and my best sales experiences, ever. Hotels, gasoline and/or flights & shipping, and the cost of eating out multiplied severalfold (I could eat breakfasts at home, this weekend, and make/pack lunches, which is difficult or impossible from a hotel room in a strange city) and I doubt I could make enough sales to break even with such expenses. Yes, it’s a problem of confidence. It’s also a problem backed up with data, as in: $400 in book sales doesn’t cover $1000+ in expenses for a non-local show. Heck, a standard 10’x10′ space at SDCC is listed at $2200 for 2011. (The Leprecon & TFoB web sites are so terrible I can’t quote prices for you here; I can’t find them.) If I were motivated by money, I’d likely either have some terrible plan to make conventions profitable or have given up on the whole thing by now…

Realistically, I wouldn’t be doing Phoenix Comicon, either, if my wife weren’t in love with the whole thing. It’s a lot of effort, it results in a tiny amount of profit and a huge amount of stress and a small number of new readers. (For comparison, I sold books this weekend to only 20 new readers and gave away roughly 200 business cards (most of which have probably already been thrown away) – while each of the 13 of my titles which are available as free eBooks and podcast audiobooks finds nearly 200 new readers a month, every month.) There are roughly 3 people I met and talked with this weekend who I expect will, upon reading the books they bought from me, turn into “true fans” of my work (though 2 of those are teenagers who I’m not sure qualify in the sense of a small number of “true fans” being sufficient to financially support an independent creator, yet) – and that’s great… but I wonder about how much time and effort and money ought to be invested in acquiring one more fan… and I really need to get some sleep.

I’ve just looked up and it’s after 2AM… and I’ve been running long, hard days at the comicon since I woke up early Thursday morning. I probably won’t get much more good thoughts out of my now-almost-painfully-tired brain until I’ve slept. Feel free to insert your input in the comments, or by email, or by calling/txt’ing me… Or by buying my books… or art… *sigh* Enough trying to sell. Hopefully for a long time.

A Problem of Confidence

I have a problem with confidence. Self-confidence. I became aware of it recently, when I noticed myself explaining over and over again to people (other artists) that I hadn’t done this, or that, I hadn’t, I wasn’t, I couldn’t… because I don’t have the confidence. The first time I said it, I noticed it, and as I continued to explain about my art (about all the things I haven’t been doing), it began to stand out like a sore thumb. ((Coincidentally, I have a sore thumb, too. I sliced open my thumb on the sharp edge of a can of soup late Thursday night, and managed to re-open it Friday night at the art walk. A very friendly artist got me a bandaid when, while talking to her about art/stuff, I began bleeding all over.))

A large piece of that has to do with marketing and self-promotion; it’s a real requirement of effective self-promotion that one displays self-confidence. I know it. I know it, and my self-doubt gets in the way of marketing my art.

There’s more to it than that, though. There’s not having enough confidence to attempt certain types of art, certain subjects. There’s not having the confidence to create large works. There’s not having the confidence to price my art high enough. Even my not having the confidence to do readings, whether poetry or prose, in front of an audience managed to come up Friday night.

I’m sure that, to a certain extent, this relates back to another thing I kept having to explain; I’ve painted 3 things in the last year, and two of them were book covers. The other is a commission I got week before last (which has been a series of headaches, lately; I have damaged & had to re-paint part of it several times, now, in several ways)… though tonight I managed to begin work on another new work of art, and as I keep saying (but hadn’t been doing), I want to get back to creating art again, this year. I had meant to take some time off last year, but not this long… I had meant to study some new art techniques (actually, to finish a correspondence art course I bought years ago and never finished going through – I can’t turn anything in anymore, but I got them to send me all the materials & books) and then get back to creating my own art when I’d got through, but that didn’t much happen, either.

In a way, that last intention was borne from my confidence, or at least my capability; I had reached a point with a painting (or two) where, even before the paint was dry I knew I had mastered my technique (with the tape/knife/paint thing I do, to create crisp intersections between very specific fields of color) and could go no further with it. I’d worked on it in most of my art for about 12 years, and now I execute it as though it were simple. Easy. I’ve mastered it. So I knew I needed to work on learning some new techniques. New things to start from scratch with and work on for years until I began to be happy with the results, then more years until I mastered them, integrating one skill with another and another until, someday, decades from now, I hope to be able to really begin to create art I can actually be fully confident about. So there’s a thing. Even my confidence (in my mastery of a particular technique) just serves to reveal a gaping void (of everything I don’t yet know and can’t yet do) where I only hope to be able to someday begin to fill it in with confidence a spoonful at a time.

I don’t know what to do about it, or whether much ought to be done about it. I know (and see in that last paragraph a reminder of same) that without self-doubt I might not grow, as a person, as an artist, into who I might someday truly be. That I have lived many years being accused of condescension to others, of seeming to believe myself to be superior, and that I don’t want to end up in that place – a place too much confidence can easily lead one to.

Alternatively, perhaps my lack of confidence has been holding me back from some kinds of success. The assumption that my books would never, could never, wouldn’t have ever sold more than a handful of copies … it’s built right into the foundation of my life, now. It’s a core concept behind my decision (years ago, yes, but ongoing with every book, every format, every hour, day, week, year poured into this) to start my own publishing company. It’s like gravity or electromagnetism or love; it’s something I feel all the time. I’m less convicted about my art’s destiny – I don’t have as deep a belief about the audience or market for the paintings, sculptures, and other visual arts I create, though I certainly have my doubts. Either way, these beliefs and doubts have led me along certain narrow paths in my life. I’ve never submitted, or really even seriously considered submitting, my art or my words to galleries, agents, or publishers. With my books I genuinely believe there is no good, Capitalist reason for a publishing company to take on my writing. With my art it feels more like … ignorance? Like I’m floating in space an uncertain distance from a world I can’t quite see, and I don’t know how to get there, or how to find out, or whether I’d be welcome if I tried, or really even what the point would be, if any – so I just pretend the art world isn’t really there, and when I create art I don’t even bother pushing it in their (still really unknown) direction; I just let it go, adrift in space, like me. I just let it go, and I hope.

I’m rambling. I’m writing this after sunrise, but not because I got up early. My sleeping has gone off the rails a bit; fully nocturnal tonight, though shifting by as much as 8 hours (at one end or the other) from day to day. I’ve been feeling pretty low, lately. Thinking about death. Mostly about my own death, which I’m not afraid of, though some thoughts about my wife’s death, which terrifies me… and always seems to lead back to thoughts of taking my own life; I don’t think I’d make it very long if she were gone. For so many reasons. In so many ways. I guess that means that right now I don’t really even have the confidence to live. I don’t have confidence in my own life.

Ugh. I’m going to bed, perchance to sleep. If that doesn’t work, perhaps I’ll go to church in a couple of hours. I’m not happy when my insomnia/insanity puts my schedule at odds with Sunday morning services. But there’s always that question: Is it God’s Will that things happen this way, or was it God’s Will that I choose, and His hope that I’d choose to do things another way? I don’t know. I’m going to bed.

Studying Dystopia

Quick summary of recent events: My Kickstarter fundraiser didn’t get funded. I’m not working on the ‘my experiences writing & publishing’ book right now, not as my primary project – it’s been on a back burner of my mind for years, and it’s much closer to the front of my mind now, but there’s no urgency in me for its completion. It’ll get written, just not ‘by memorial day.’ I am working on my vampire duology. Which is the subject of this post:

The core idea I have for the books is in the world I’ve been building in my mind, where vampires are an accepted part of humanity, using their supernatural gifts to benefit society as a whole, fed by the regular blood donations of the general population (opt-out, not actually mandatory) so vampires aren’t required to be murderous fiends to stay alive, or to live in the shadows, though they most certainly don’t sparkle (and they probably can’t go out in sunlight). I haven’t nailed down all the details yet, though I’ve got quite a lot of detail mapped out that I’m not even hinting at here. The structural concept I’m working on for these books is to write two books, one which presents this word as Utopian, and the other which presents the same world as Dystopian. I want each book to totally buy into its own point of view, for all its evidence, even when questioned my its characters, to come to the conclusion that it is correct, the world is [wonderful|terrible]. I’m structuring each book to be a valid demonstration (think Euclid), proving each book’s position by evidence and argument. I want readers to be so convinced by whichever book they read first that when they read the other book they get angry at the characters in it for being so oblivious/wrong.

As I did with my attempt to write ‘a real zombie book,’ where I read a stack of the popular zombie books before attempting to write my own ((though I still haven’t managed to read World War Z – I kept having people promising to send it to me or lend it to me, so I kept not simply buying it for myself or checking it out of the library, and eventually I wasn’t reading zombie books anymore, and I never got back around to it)), and since the idea for these books was inspired (in part) by my reaction to reading some other dystopian books (isn’t that always the way? You read a book and think “I could do better than this!” so you work hard, study hard, and write your own, in your own way), I’m doing the same thing with dystopian books. I’ve told you before about my not being well read, and dystopian lit mirrors that phenomenon; I haven’t read most of the classics. I read Brave New World in high school for a book report / project, but I never read 1984 or Fahrenheit 451 (or even watched the films). I had never read The Handmaid’s Tale before last year, and it was the dystopia I disliked so much I was inspired to write a better one. I read and watched Never Let Me Go as well, last year, and it was generally quite excellent, also inspiring me to write better books (though in a different way than much-loved yet terrible books do). This year, in addition to trying to read my own books, then, I am trying to read as much recommended dystopian literature as possible.

Continue reading Studying Dystopia