Today started out as many other New Year Days. I, along with several hundred of my crazy brothers and sisters, jumped into Lake Washington. This annual tradition is a baptism for me, burying the old year and giving birth to the new. The air and water were 46 degrees and it felt a great deal colder. As tradition has it, I took the plunge with my sister-in-law Jill who is on leave from her teaching job in China. It is a great bonding experience that I cherish. Pictures and video coming eventually.
The down side of the day is that my wife Jill has the coughing crud that is going around. Jill happily snapped up her ticket to see the King Tutankhamen exhibit and she took Caleb along with her. It seems Caleb knows more than you would expect from a 2nd grader about Egyptology and was happy to share his knowledge with the adults (which I find awesome). They also went to the butterfly center. That is a great treat because Caleb's class is learning about butterflies in school.
My day (post plunge) was spent either in front of the TV (watched Radio Rebel) or listening to music. I did a lot of drawing. I bought a nice sketchbook and watercolor pencils and I'm trying to do an artistic journal entry every few days. After some deep looks within my own motivations I discovered that part of the reason I don't draw as much as I want is because I fear what others will say about it. Once people say something good the natural high from the praise makes me less likely to get to work since I have to face that fear of criticism again. So the journal is just for me. I can experiment, draw poorly, or do whatever I want. It is also a good place to work out my thoughts and feelings.
I started work on a comic idea that has been tooling around in my head for a while. It is a Harry Potter fan-fic that starts the day after the Battle of Hogwarts when the expert on the physical castle and its built in magical properties arrives to assess the damage. One page is drawn and inked. It might get colored. It might go nowhere. Like the art studio comic I mentioned previously, these are projects that are designed to get me drawing again and not really meant for public consumption. If I get super excited about one I will likely wait until I have 50 or more pages before I start publishing them.
As for ATCs I'm taking the next month off and will consider starting them again after that. I want to get a few larger projects completed first.
As for New Year resolutions I'm keeping those private. When I announce I'm going to do something I tend not to follow through.
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