the art of Will Terrell

“If you always do what you have always done. You will always get what you’ve always gotten.” –Annonymous

Well the sketch night was fun. Very small turnout this time. Just Luis, Brandon, Trinidad and I. But I really had a blast. We took our first try at doing “one hour” comics. And I think the results were very promising. I feel like this is the most fun I’ve had drawing a comic since my very first one back in 97. No rules, just stream of consciousness. It’s funny how suddenly your obstacles can become a wealth of material when you just throw out the rules. I could have gone on all night if I’d not agreed to meet my girlfriend at midnight. So I’m really looking forward to doing more of these. And looking forward to doing some certain types of material I’ve always wanted to work on in this format.

I feel like I’m finally getting somewhere now. Thinking is my enemy these days. It’s been killing my creativity for years. Normally I would sit down to do something like this and all I could think about are the “rules”. 360 rule, perspective, anatomy, style, storytelling, dialogue order, contrast, shadow, etc… all the thousands of rules I’ve accumulated over the years in my quest to achieve the “perfect” page. But the rules don’t do me a damn bit of good if I’m not having fun. And I haven’t been. Not for ten years. There’s a time for your brain to process the rules. But there’s also a time for just letting your brain play. I lost that somewhere in the portfolio reviews and 5 page previews. I lost that somewhere in the shadow of other talent. But I’m slowly getting it back.

–Will

The next sketch night will be Thursday (April 27th) at 8:30 pm. At the Denny’s on slide road. I want to try something different this time. “One hour” comics. Everone will have about an hour to draw a complete story. Stickfigures and bubble heads are jus’ fine. It don’t matter how good you draw, just how fast you get it done. So start thinking of something fun betwixt yonder and now. This’ll be more fun than licks on a tootsie pop.

And if’n you’re worried this don’t jiggle your jello, I’m sure there will be a few of us doing plainjane regular old fashioned sketchbooksketching so’n you won’t be left out. But I figure this is a nice change of pace, and something I need to be practicing anyways. I’ll bring the blank books. You bring the pencils and fun. See you there.

–Will

Last week was a nightmare. I was knocking out pages Mon-Wed and working to hit 6 pages by the weekend. When I get blindsided by an edit that means I’ll have to rework the last 7 pages of the book. I thought I could handle it, but it really knocked the wind out of me. So I took the weekend to regroup and recharge. I can still make my deadline, which I’m stoked about, because I’ve made it this far. When I started I was terrified I was gonna choke. But I didnt! Monday is a new round and I’m gonna make this happen. Then it’s on to issue two. And I’m gonna be way ahead of the curve on this next issue. I guess this is what they mean by learning to roll with the punches.

One thing I’ve learned, for all those of you out there wanting to do comics… deadlines are a good thing. At least if you’re getting paid. Deadlines never seemed to work for me when I wasn’t getting paid to do this. But not now. It’s a real drive and a real pressure to get it done. I’ve learned more in the last two months about making comics than I did with the two dozen or so comics I’d published before this. One piece of advice though, keep a timechart of your hours and what you do each day. It’s helped me immensely to see how many hours – at first, that I “wasn’t” spending working – then, how many I was wasting on too little productivity – to finally, a reasonable amount of time per page, per day.

Now to work. Five pages in 6 days. I can do this.

–Will

“Drawing and structure suffer when we concentrate on one area rather than on the whole. If we could learn to simplify the subject we could more easily concentrate on shape, color and form.” –Annonymous

What do you do when a pirates been bad? Put him in time out… on the Naughty step.

This is a quick digital painting. I meant for it to be ten minutes, but it ended up being about an hour.

–Will

This is freaking awesome!

Thanks to Todd “El Diablo Robotico” Gray for sending this to me. Made my week!

–Will

This has been a productive week. I’m finally coloring pages in under 6 hours now. 3 for Flats and 3 for rendering. And the quality is a lot better than when I first started. I also did 5 and a half pages this week. A new record for me. That’s with a ton of distractions too. I feel like I’ve finally made it over the wall of anxiety I had before of not being productive. Heh heh, now my only anxiety comes from wanting to be doing my own work. It took me most of the week to figure out that was bothering me. So last night I decided to do a digital painting of an image I have for one of my comics. I remember dreaming up a lot of this story when I was younger and wondering if I’d ever have the ability to create it. I feel like I’m finally getting close.

I’m not going to go into much about the story here. But that I was even more inspired to create it after experiencing the bioluminessence of the pacific ocean during red tide last summer in San Diego. One of the coolest experiences of my life.

–Will

I went sketching last night with my girlfriend at the bar. I had fun but I’m not too happy with my sketches. I did get to see D.G. Flewellyn play last night. He’s my favorite local muscian, and I’ve probably seen him play a hundred times in the last ten years. It’s always enjoyable.

–Will

My girlfriend’s Dad sometimes falls asleep in front of the TV. And we discovered that my girlfriend’s Greyhound likes to sneak up and drink all of his coffee while he sleeps. Which of course makes him hyper-active till 3 in the morning. I thought it would make a funny cartoon.

Fortunately/Unfortunately my girlfriend’s Mom liked the drawing so much she made cards out of it to send to all their friends and family. I don’t know if that’s a good or bad way to start off with your future father-in-law. At least the dog looks cute.

–Will