So in my post “My Art Journey”, I briefly talked about how I finished my first two issues of my personal comic. And while I was proud of myself for doing so, I was not truly happy with the product I put out and decided while working on penciling issue #3 that I was going to redo the whole thing as far as the art went.
So now I want to go into one of the reasons why I was not fully happy with my work. (There were other reasons, but this was one that I knew always played a key role.) When I was working on writing Lynk, I had a co-worker who I became friends with who was also creative. I was able to talk to them about the world I had build within Lynk and the ins and outs of what I wanted to happen in my story. They also would tell me about the possible projects they wanted to work on in their own life.
Over time and discussing my story with this person, I would start getting the questions like if I had started drawing anything yet or if I had an idea on how long it would take me. Over time while still trying to figure out certain details of my story and also trying to learn how comics work, it was becoming obvious that my friend at this time didn’t think I would ever do anything with the story outside of talk about it.
Since at the time they were the only creative person I knew that I felt comfortable to talk with about my story, I just started to talk less and less about it outside of if I needed to explain something out loud to work through a thought or if they asked about it. This put me in a mind set of ‘I need to prove myself’ to this person by completing this project. This caused me to put everything outside of working on this comic when it came to my art on hold, including learning how to even tell stories through comics.
(An Original Page from Issue #1 of Lynk)
So I was busing out pages of Lynk as fast as I could while working two jobs and still taking care of myself and my dog. This of course didn’t work out with the desired results I wanted in many ways. My work suffered because of this. My friend at the time told me they didn’t thin it was up to my standard of art that I could have done and because of that I was even harder on myself going forward for years.
It wasn’t until one day I took a step back and realized two things that changed my thought process going forward. “These may not have been the best thoughts but it helped me get out of the rut I was in of beating myself and my art up.) One: I had to admit to myself and be proud of myself that I actually completed a comic issue of my own by myself and put it out there in the world. No matter how ‘Good’ or ‘Bad’ it was, I completed something I set out to do.
My second thought (Which this is the one I may not be too proud of right now, but I still feel the same way to this day.) “Why on Earth am I taking advice or care about the thoughts of this person who hasn’t completed one single idea they have ever thought about?!” I have this person knocking me for the work I put out, but at least I did the work. All this person does is talk. They didn’t even have scraps of paper where they may have jotted down ideas to present to anyone.
So what I learned and what I would tell my younger self: Take your time to create the art you want to your standards with the understanding that it will never be perfect. You will always continue to improve. Don’t try to prove yourself to someone else, and do finish your project so you can move on to the next one.
So as I work on rebooting Lynk, I know that this will be the last time. The story will never be ‘perfect’, the art will never be ‘perfect’, and I might not even like the art I put out maybe five years from now, but I will have either completed the full story I wanted to tell by that time or be close to. (I am hoping to be done with the story before the end of 5 years.)
(Actual line work from a panel from the rebooted Lynk)