To the Artifice

Tying to get ahead on my comic for the days I'll be losing to Comic-Con, I spent a lot of time inking and colouring yesterday. The Howard Stern Show and Nick and Artie are both on vacation, so I listened to audio books--Seamus Heaney reading his translation of Beowulf, Nicol Williamson reading The Hobbit, and the first hour or so of The Brothers Karamazov read by someone with a slightly distracting, perpetually snide tone. So that's over nine hours of listening to audio books, during which I inked and coloured all the while and I still think I'm going to need to be playing catch up next week.

There's this "Comic Creator Connexion" service Comic-Con provides where writers can meet up with artists. Registration capacity has been reached for writers but not for artists. I doubt there are many other pre-registered events at the Con for which capacity hasn't been reached. This disparity does not in the least surprise me--it's a lot easier to say you're a writer even if you're not than it is to say you're an artist. There are people who write twenty five words a year of creative writing who are comfortable calling themselves writers--after all, who would check? People have a hard enough time reading renowned writing nowadays. But there's too much easy proof in the pudding with art--it takes more time to make, and it doesn't take long to form an impression of the results.

Anyway, to-night's Preview Night, the Con begins. I need to get my stuff together. I probably won't be posting much until Monday. 出かけます。

Twitter Sonnet #404

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Pulverised pearls displaced the lonely brick.
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Ink indicates the calamitous fool.