Monday, January 6, 2014

Burning Candles

Anyone who's worked freelance will probably recognise the moment when you decide to work late.

Your body calls quits, your brain calls quits, or your bladder stages a coup d-etat. The bladder wins all wars eventually, so succumb to your coffee fuelled master. The rest of them however, ask us to quit in less cutthroat a manner. 

You can power through, knowing it will cost you the next day or you can quit now and get up incredibly early and finish the work then. The latter is a dangerous one to the uninitiated, as it puts a short and solid cap on your deadline and will be a much harder mark to hit. However, working whilst tired makes for sloppy decision making. And once you're beyond the ability to move a stylus around a page, EVERYTHING is decision making. Is that the right line? Is this the right brush? Does that need a texture? How's my composition. Every brushstroke is a question. 

If it ISN'T you're not being economical, and you're wasting time. 

I got to that point pretty quickly in tonight's stream, and I vote to stand up and walk away for now. I'm cool with that- my deadline's by the end of the week, and I hit the time I promised myself to stream each week.

I did make sure to get down the important stuff so I know where I'm headed- the lines (although there are some sharkwhale designs I might dive back into) and when I could feel myself starting to drop I just zoomed out and painted over the whole thing a rough jist of what I want the whole thing to look like. 

I'm happy to stop here- it's enough to tell future-me where things are meant to be headed.

This is a marathon, not a sprint ;)



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