Month in Review: November

I was converted August 31st. The change gave me an additional day off each week, sometimes more, because now I am given off holidays in addition to my standard days off, whereas before the holiday WAS my day off. This has been a blessing. Of course, Emily was born a month and a half later and so any free time I hoped to have was largely lost. Still, we are adjusting to these changes. I have still been doing some drawing, but not much reading. I have only two pages left of my short comic, "Simon on the Shores of Ruin." I hope to finish page 5 today and the last page sometime next week. I am not entirely happy with how the colors look and am considering doing another six page comic with water colors. If I'm satisfied with this I will go forward with the longer project.

My reading was scanty. I've been picking away at Dostoyevsky's novella, The Gambler, but still haven't finished it. I've also read about 50 pages of Adam Smith's The Theory of Moral Sentiments. I read all of Matt Stoller's Goliath and I reread the second half of Jill Lepore's These Truths. I read Dylan Horrock's graphic novel Sam Zabel and the Magic Pen as well. I'm finishing up Francis Spufford's Red Plenty today.

I've set myself the goal of completing one drawing a week, whether it be a page of a comic book or an illustration. I have too many projects that I hope to do, but since my drawing is not quite at the level I want it to be, I don't see a problem with jumping between projects so long as I'm drawing and putting stuff out on a regular basis. One project I want to do is a lexicon of images, inspired by I.A. Richards 100 Most Important Words as found in How to Read a Page. I would make one picture for each of the 100 words. I've already made an outline for my next short comic. It is to be a framing story around which other projects can be inserted. My Simon story, for example, will be one of the stories contained within this collection. Unlike Simon this one will not have a title attached, although I'm already pretty sure what title I will ultimately give it. My larger project will also be a story within this story. My inspiration for this structure is Dickens' Pickwick Papers and Wordsworth's Prelude, but to be honest, there are many other examples I could give, including The 1001 Nights and Don Quixote.