Category: Uncategorized

A wish granted in the worst way possible (part 3 of 3)

Post author By redmoons
Post date June 30, 2022

Before I could actually do any big work, I had to send them a pinup of Red Sonja to show them what I was capable of. It took forever, and it wasn’t my favorite picture of her, but I think that given the hours I put into it vs. how much I had to re-learn and re-codify into muscle memory, I did okay. The editor said I needed to tone down the ‘thicc legs,’ which I’m also fine with. Given complete freedom, I like to see big muscle ladies with jacked bodies because they’re barbarians, but I also understand that there is a certain level of “selling the meat” that has to go on to get better reviews in a comic, and therefore, a better chance at getting hired again.

As a somewhat-of-an-aside, there’s a lot of beauty in the world when you find out that you don’t have to give up the thing that you love doing the most. The rain of the last few days were the cleansing showers before clear skies full of bright, white, cotton candy clouds. I was in a parking lot when I went through the official job description for the story and made sure I had the name of the editor for the project, as well as a clear understanding of the importance of deadlines. To this day, the most ease I’ve ever felt in a professional project was just hearing Phil be real about the situation of comic artists: “If you must, you can be late; But you can’t disappear.” I didn’t realize that was an issue with modern comics artists and the various publishing houses. I don’t know if its a life lived with self-deprication as a coping mechanism or what, but the idea of getting to do the thing I always wanted to do had to be the thing other artists always wanted to do, right? That would be like if Kobe never showed up to half his games; People would be more worried about his emotional-mental health than his raw talent.

Either way, Deadlines were already going to be sort of hard since my life has completely changed with the Fibro, but deadlines don’t scare me as much as leaving my Editor & my Mentor out to dry for some shitty mistake I did. Come hell or highwater, I was going to do this project on time and I was going to do my damnedest to make it work.

The original deadline was the beginning of December so that it could go to print by the end of the month, I believe. I had around 30-ish days to sketch, pencil, ink, and tone a really marvelous script by Phil. I went over a few times, and started doing very simplified sketches of the main characters. With Sonja I had to spend time really figuring out her figure in a way that wasn’t too sexualizing but also not too ‘intimidating’, and that was hard. The kinds of eyes she had, the facial structure, how long her torso was in comparison to her legs… I had put maybe a few hours into messing around slowly with sketches while looking for references (something new i’m forcing myself to do!), and my hands started hurting. Bad. Think ‘hand caught in sausage grinder up to the second knuckle‘ kind of Bad.

I should have done everything digitally, but I did not. I was hoping that the full pages would be worthwhile to put up for sale, but after a few pages were pencilled and inked I realized that I’d still have so many mistakes to fix that they wouldn’t look like the comic pages, and/or they’d be patched up beyond recognition. (I eventually ended up saving them for my Brother, who I will give them to when I see him next.) I went “full traditional”, printing off the pages in blue-line that I’d sketched in CSPaint. I thought it would look better to do it that way, not realizing that my 11×17 scanner is still in storage down in the states, and I certainly wouldn’t be getting it up here in time to be able to use it. Each page was scanned in one half at a time, stitching them together very carefully in PS5.0. It works in a pinch, but the results were chunkier-looking lines in a 10-page story that was already having some style-variation issues in it due to how long I hadn’t drawn ANYTHING, let alone worked on a project of this size & finish it on time. In the reviews, multiple people mention it looks like different artists drew the issue, and to that I still must apologize. I was learning to walk again with this comic, and it shows. Next time I will know better to go full-digital and have more sketching/process art to nail down the design specifics instead of pushing myself to make the deadline on time.

Throughout the pencils’ process, I would work my buns off for a day or so to get them looking good, and then submit them for the OK from the editor. The problem was that the first few pages were already coming in a bit late because my hands were going numb, trembling a lot, and eventually spasming enough that I couldn’t use my tablet. On top of this, the stress I was not dealing with in the background caused me to get bed-stuck for at least a week and a half total, so I was going on less and less time. Eventually it became clear I was not going to make the deadline, so I got a small 20 day extension in which I was able to finish up all of the pages.

In a lot of ways, I was (and still am) in denial about the Fibromyalgia. I couldn’t understand why everything hurt, and things move much slower for me due to the accompanying CFS/ME. This project was an eye-opener in “you are going to want to go back to old habits, but unless you want to end up with non-functional hands within the next 5 years, you’re going to have to switch around your workflow, Lady!” The biggest tip-off was that for weeks after finishing the comic, my hands were throbbing in pain. At one point my index and middle finger on my right hand swole up like a sausage, and bending it felt like the skin would tear. After the pain went away, I found working while wearing compression gloves was helpful for keeping me from gripping as hard as I normally do, as well as keeping my tendon-tunnel in both wrists a bit more protected.

The inking process was probably my favorite part. Having these big A3 boards to work on while I watched documentaries or whatever I could find for free was the kind of work stage I enjoy. Fill in the blacks/betas, start inking in background details, work forward in the scene with a 1.0mm fine-liner going all the way down to a 0.05mm fine-liner. I went to scan the pages, and as stated above, everything came out looking a wee bit chonky. I have this wonderful tabloid scanner in my storage unit of stuff in the states, but not only do I not know where it is in the mess of that all, I’m not even sure it would work with my current computer. That, and with Canada’s insane tariffs on EVERYTHING, I’d probably pay more in import fees than the scanner is even worth. To try and course-correct, we went out of our way to buy a tabloid-format printer for printing the pencil bluelines, and then the scanner that came with it is this shitty little “all in one printer”, 11.5 x 9.5 type scanner with terrible B&W pickup, so anything 0.1mm and below was basically either gone completely, or dotted in like eraser dust. The amount of anger I had scanning in the pages made me a combination of frightening and hilarious to my partner, who consoled my artistic tantrums like a champ.

The assignment was black and white art with spot reds. I didn’t have the time I would want to put into doing my normal coloring which takes a while even in greyscale, so I went with tones. If it were a perfect world the editor would have seen my note about sending the original PSD files to them so that the linework (true-black) and the tones (K-black) would work with the reds (M + Y = Red).

They did not see the memo.
I would not find this out until I went to my local store to buy an issue since the editor also did not send me a comp issue to preview.

Before I get to the final reveal where I bought a few copies of my comic issue, I finished the last 2 pages just before Christmas, if I remember. I ended up having to rest for weeks afterwards to keep down off-and-on swelling that kept happening in my hands and wrists, but I had finished it all and sent it in, and was able to finally show Phil that I was good for my word. That was the best feeling of this, that I finished what I set out to start on a very short time limit and with rust and cogs forming a cloud around me like Pigsty from Schultzs’ Peanuts. It isnt my best work, but I had to go through INCREDIBLE odds to get it all finished, and in the end I finally had my wish come true. It’s fair to say that my wish came true in the worst way possible, by going through an amazing amount of trauma from 2A, my multiple medical diagnoses, and lack of practice/resources to do the job in a way that would have best reflected what I could do… but even if it came through at the expense of a lot of bullshit, it still came true. You don’t get to choose how the journey goes most of the time, but you can definitely control how you respond to the quality of the road under your feet.

The Big Reveal!

I kept waiting for my comp issue to come in the mail, before I settled into the situation that it wasn’t coming. Phil was stumped, I was stumped, and every other comic artist who had worked for similar publishers that I asked about it said “eh, it happens sometimes. You’re new and unheard of, and they have tons to juggle.” Fair enough.

I believe it came out in late January of 2022, and I ordered all of the variant covers so I could have a copy for myself and then some other copies for friends/family*. I opened it up, and for the most part it was really nice! My stuff was in print, glaring issues and all, but it had made it to print. What ended up being the point to which I will never again do tones unless i know for SURE the editor is grabbing the right files from me is that they printed the flat B&W images I sent in one layer, which got doubled-up on itself to make it all a kind of falsetto ‘true-black’. What does this mean? Well, it means that everything looks like it has a 1~2 pixel stroke around it, and with art that was already scanned in on a crappy scanner that wanted to turn everything into chonky-line territory, it does not look as crisp or clean as I would have wanted it.

There’s so much more I want to say and reflect on, but I’ll have lots of time to do that as I keep working on getting myself back to where I was before christmas 2016 happened. I’m happy to say that 2A is getting the help they need and starting to come to terms with how much it affected everyone in our family, let alone my Brother and I specifically. What’s important is that I fell off the bike, I rolled down into a ravine, and I climbed my way back out. Things will be different — and much, much slower-paced than they were – but they will be better.

All will be well.

BONUS: Enjoy the original pencil files I used for the issue! There are a few pages where i had to make changes from what you see here vs. what printed in the comic. Can you find them all? 🤣👍

[Show slideshow]

-Heidi / D*H

*- WHICH I STILL NEED TO SEND. FORGIVE MY SLOW ASS.

Uncategorized

A wish granted in the worst way possible (part 2 of 3)

Post author By redmoons
Post date June 22, 2022

Sorry it’s been so long in-between posts. I realized while I was typing up the last one that I was probably going to be at least a month MIA from it because it kicked up the very toxic dust of everything that epitomized my “fucked up state of being” for the last half a decade or so. I’m back now, and while I apologize about the time it took to do updates and such, this is also much more indicative of how long it takes me to do things. Don’t ever let someone tell you that having multiple chronic illnesses makes you weak; If I had known this was coming the only thing I would have changed was how much I was trying to pack into a 24-hour period when my body & neurological state would allow for it.

So we left off at me being absolutely crushed, sick AF without being able to see a doctor or pay for medication, and a general malaise about my goals in general. Without drawing, I wasn’t sitting entirely on my laurels. I picked up a lot of other hobbies that I still enjoy to this day: Multi-media Collage making in the style of Jean-Michael Basquiat / Eduardo Recife / Daniel Martin Diaz, Resin Casting, (attempting) from-scratch BJDs of various characters (and fan characters)… Leaving art entirely wasn’t a plan and it wasn’t something I desired. Though every day seemed like it got longer and longer, and even doing my normal day-jobs got more and more draining from the Fibromyalgia + Endometriosis + Thyroid issues running me like a race-horse, I forced myself to continue to work on something. That said, there were certainly days when I really really wanted to draw, when I had been pushing and pulling an image in my head for so long I could see it with my eyes closed and a lot of concentration. Getting it onto paper/tablet was the problem. The very act of drawing or illustrating had been so poisoned in my mind that I very honestly did not draw for 5 years. It was excruciating. 2A does not realize this, and on the off chance they read this I hope it sets in why I have been so careful to shield myself from them even after they have been working on treatment/therapy.

It had been a few years in Canada, by now; I’m living with my partner/wife still waiting on my Canadian residency to go through*, spending my days helping her out with her business which we just got set up online, trying to make social connections with other Chronically Ill, LBGTQIA2S+ folx in the area. We have a cat now, her name is Willow. She somehow outweighs me in unfiltered anxiety. I full expect her to start losing hair when I’m finally able to work in Canada instead of looking for freelance jobs in the states. I am also much more involved with my spirituality (Sanatana Dharma/Hinduism)** and have found not only a wonderful temple family out here in the west, but also my Gurus, who are infinitely more kind and wise and compassionate than any other person I’ve met outside of my Brother and my Wife. And speaking of compassionate, I think this is a great time to introduce my mentor (and extremely loveable Iowa-born Comics Swiss-Army-Man, Phil Hester. In fact, if it wasn’t for him this website may have since gone to the dogs.)

For those who aren’t big into comics, Phil Hester is a Artist-Writer-Editor who has been doing almost every job there is to do at a big-name comics company. He’s been around the ‘biz since the 1980s if I remember right, and is most often noted for his runs with Swamp Thing, Green Arrow, The Wretch, Wonder Woman, and Superman. I had read some of his comics in the 1990s without realizing it was him (Swamp Thing & The Crow, mostly), and when i first met him in person at one of the local artists shows at Mayhem Comics was putting on. I remember looking at his pages, 11″ x 17″ towers in all stages of work (including some really cool ones that were made with a kind of chemical-reactive zip-tone I had no clue about!). I, of course, was in my Blue Lanterns & Undertale phase, and I believe I was drawing a picture of Sinestro that my brother had dubbed “space hitler” because of the pose. Phil came over to say hi and was like “hey, you’ve got a good grasp on your art and the DC characters. We should do a project some day.”

I can not tell you the feeling I had at that moment, somewhere between humbling/astonished/amazed/imposter syndrome/I’m going to piss myself I’m so excited… Me? Lil’ ole rinkity-dink me who had been around the internet so long and yet had next to no-one know about me? It felt like Stan Lee came up to me and gave me a thumbs up and a “nice work, kiddo.” It was life changing.

Over the next few years (early 2010s ~2017), we would see each other on and off at conventions or in the DSM Mayhem location. He gave me a starting project that had been done by a previous artist to see how I would handle the script and character design, but I absolutely dropped the ball on him. I think I produced two character sketches in a 4 month period and he eventually had to call it off because he, like any professional, needed to put time and effort into paying jobs. I felt like the world’s biggest asshole for not having it go much further, at the time. Having about a decade pass since then, I can be much more kind to myself about it: I was working 2 jobs at the time, just starting to deal with how much stress was causing my Fibromyalgia and Anxiety Disorder to blow up, and an endless list of other equally shitty jobs I could move into by working for the IT temp agency. (my advice on temp work: DON’T. ) I didn’t have the time to draw because I was spending 50-ish hours working a week with a constantly changing schedule, no vacation, no sick leave, and no ability to quit without going immediately bankrupt in a traumatizing way. Phil, as is his way, was nothing but kind and reassuring: “this happens a lot. Now isn’t the time. We’ll try again in the future.” I thought at the time that was his way of backing out in a professional way while also leaving my feelings intact.

Fast forward to September of 2021. I don’t remember what day it was, but it had been raining outside for some time. It was a late summer thunderstorm that was less rain and more heat-lightning, the kind that leaves the smell of petrichor in its soggy wake. I had been sick and largely stuck in bed for 4~6 days at a time due to the heat of summer and the Fibromyalgia co-conspiring to dunk my body into the nearest dumpster. It was not great.

During this period of time I was still working on hosting nightly satsangha classes for the temple, and helping out a bit more with social media stuff for the website, since I could do all of that from bed on my ancient 2010 macbook pro (which still works!). I was feeling emotional because it was getting close to the holidays, and while I was still not really talking with 2A they were wondering how I was in an email and if I had any plans. In my meloncholy and the stiffling heat of the bedroom in a unit without AC, I remember sitting down and trying to divert my focus with youtube, pinterest, and other online time-sinks. I eventually checked my astrological charts that night in passing, and felt like I had been punched in the tit! : “You have been mentally working towards an artistic goal that will come to fruition in the very near future***. An old friend or teacher will return to you with an assignment.” Interesting to hear, but also not something that I hadn’t seen before in previous readings. If anything, it felt like this rando app was laughing at me from whatever cloud-based data rack it was sitting on, sneering down on my misfortune like some prickly imp. I was frustrated as hell, so i put the phone down and went back to winding down as much as I could. I woke up in the middle of the night and checked my phone:

<( Hey Heidi, this is Phil. I may have a paying project for you. Interested? )

I read the message again. and again. And again and again. The screen went dark after a few seconds, and I tapped at it just to see if the message was still there. With my body a combination of sleep-deprived, pain-addled, and now undergoing some level of shock, I closed my eyes and fell asleep faster than I think I had that entire summer.

When I woke up the next day, my entire morning was spent looking at this message on the phone and ruminating over it. I felt like it was both a second chance and cosmically unfair. It took me almost no time to dismiss the ‘cosmic unfairness’ as ‘too much importance put on passed time,’ and knew that it was going to be my second and likely last chance. I talked with my wife — Well, I sobbed at my wife for an hour or so, just letting everything come out unfiltered as I felt it. She listened to me patiently, and gave her opinion to me on the matter at hand: This was luck & an A+ Human Being™ coming back into my life at exactly the right time. Even if what I produced looked like stick figures, it would be better to try and fail than not try and mentally live my life as a benchwarmer.

I messaged back saying I was 100% on board. He got in touch with me a bit later and explained the situation: He was doing a story for a Red Sonja compilation series through Dynamite, and needed an artist. Preferably one who was comfortable with doing pencils/inks/spot-shading for each panel. I was still in, I wanted this so badly I couldn’t even tell you. He gave me the editors name, a rough timeline, and a thumbs up. I immediately put myself to work trying to do short 2~5 minute figure studies just to shake the rust off — and I mean RUST. It’s not like you completely forget to draw after 5 years, but between constant pain in my hand from my normal ‘death grip’ on any stylus/pencil I use even just trying to get back in the swing of drawing was still anxiety-inducing, and now, incredibly painful.

Ever since meeting and getting to know Phil and his work better, I’ve had him on my bucket list. My wish was being granted. I was so happy I was basically buzzing everywhere I went!

* – as I still am, even writing this. I know American immigration is one of the worst in the world. Having been trying to even talk to a human being from the IRCC is like filming a unicorn giving sasquatch a blow job. This is both the happiest and the most stressed I think I’ve ever been in my life.

** – I don’t tend to talk about it much because coming from Iowa and being a practicing Caucasian Hindu, most people consider it ‘cringe’. I’m at the point where I no longer care what people think because I am happy and I try hard not to talk about my spirituality to anyone unless I know them really well.

*** – something like 3 days away was what it was referring to, when the moon entered the next zodiac sign/paksha. As far as astrological apps, I have had pretty good luck with this one because it is using Indian Moon-based timings and not Western Sun-based timings.

Uncategorized

A wish granted in the worst way possible (part 1 of 3)

Post author By redmoons
Post date May 11, 2022

Hey All! How are you doing? It’s been a long time, yeah?
Well, don’t feel nervous! Pull up a seat, get a glass of your drink of choice, and lets have a little jam sesh’ on 2016 ~ 2022.

As you can see, the website is still outdated. Old art from the “pre-COVID times” remains, old perhaps in a sense of counting what we lost instead of what we gained on a dizzying worldwide scale. As I type this, America is beset by angry fascists pushing racist theories from the WWII days, but instead of fighting the nazis these same people decided to become them. Families get pulled apart daily by news stories we’d expect to see from old eastern bloc countries; Instead of coming from places whose names we’re too lazy to learn, “the call is coming from inside the house.”

Our states. Our backyards. Our Homes. None of them are off-limits to the swagger of politicians who could care less as long as they get their paycheck.

As a preface to the story, I should let you know a few things:

I come from a family where both sides have shitloads of chronic & autoimmune related health problems. How we survived to this day is a mystery to me.
This same family is also… complicated. Outside of my Brother, my Aunt, and my Paternal Grandmother, I don’t have an honest clue how any family members see me anymore. Anywhere from “Queer mistake” to “disaster caused by a very Toxic Childhood,” if I had to guess.
We do not talk about money in our family. Having that sort of discussion still makes my blood pressure spike just hearing the word.
MAJOR TRIGGER WARNINGS: Gaslighting, Substance Abuse, Emotional/Psychological neglect, Em/Psy abuse, Self-Harm.

It’s 2016. Trump is president. Eww.

For those who are close to me, I had been dealing with some kind of sickness that doctors could not figure out since at least 2012. Because I was working endless retail jobs during that time (at least 2 at a time to be able to make ends almost-meet like most people in their 20s-30s during that time were), it was hard for me to get into any kind of regular doctors visitation schedule. Didn’t make it better that I didn’t have any health insurance to help me. When I got to the point that I started seeing specialists who would range in $200~400/per visitation, I was only able to see them 1~2 times, and that was with a lot of financial help from my parents & grandparents. It wasn’t until 2016 that after going to get X-rays and MRIs and blood tests and everything outside of asking me to dinner first, a rheumatologist in the area finally put a name to everything: Fibromyalgia.

This was on top of mental health issues like Major Chronic Depression and Chronic Anxiety, Thyroid issues, and a Peptic ulcer. I was in my mid-30s, and I wasn’t a ‘sickly child’ so to speak. But I certainly was a poor AF one. I was one of the lucky assholes fed dreams of ‘5 figure jobs right out of college’ and ‘you’ll do great with your reliable midwestern work ethic!,’ and then given a meal of ‘no one wants to pay you for what you’re worth because the guy at the top of the pay-scale wants another mega-yacht.’ For 10 years after college I was only able to find retail work, or temp work. I tried for a year to do freelance as a self-owned business model and found out that via #3 on the list above & antagonism from my parents, being a small business owner was not in my stars.

Sounds rough, right? In comparison to others in the area, No big deal! I had some jobs, I was able to work for a bit on art when I got home, and ideas were endless and abundant. I was still able to pull all-nighters (groomed into a habit from years of playing WoW), and I was slowly making artistic progress with the amount of work I was able to finish.

That was about to come to an abrupt stop.

The Meat of the Story: Substance abuse issues from within the family, part deux

Both of my parents had issues with substance abuse of various kinds. Both of them were able to escape major issues and/or jail-time because they were found out and forced into help before it killed them (or someone else). One of them had those issues spiral when we were kids. The other had them spiral in 2016. It does not matter which one it was as they both were guilty of the same thing and never really held accountable by the non-abusers. The reasons for non-accountability are various, but they also don’t ultimately matter. This is being stated as a “just the facts, ma’am” look into the background of what happens next.

The 2016 abuser (shortened to 2A from here on out) had been having problems for years prior. My brother and I had made it very clear that we were not responsible for their actions and they were the one who needed to take accountability for previous things said/done. They disagreed.

The actual problem itself was over a week-ish long Christmas visit since we had not seen them in a few years. Ultimately, we came to a head because my brother & I were both poor and looking for work. I was just coming out of the failed “I’m going to have my own full-time business!” and realizing I wasn’t cut out for that (and nor was the economic climate thanks to Mango Mussolini™), so my self-esteem was not exactly stellar. My brother & I told 2A that we’d come visit for Christmas assuming we hadn’t found jobs at that point, but to keep it open that we may have to cancel if something came along. We were not getting financial support (or even emotional support) from 2A, and they agreed through the drunkenness that it would be okay if that were the case; there’s always next year! We would soon find out that was not how they felt. It would nearly ruin my relationship with my entire family.

It was November, and after tons of job searching I finally found a night-shift job doing warehouse/storefront replenishment. It paid okay, and they were okay with adjusting my job load following the symptoms caused by the Fibromyalgia (+ a workplace accident). In good luck, my brother found a small position as well and was able to start making income as well. It came time to tell 2A, so we told them.

2A was fucking. done. with. us.

How dare we not come?! We had promised! We were doing this just to make them sad/upset, it was a totally unfair power play!

I’m not going to get into the specifics of insults and many, many lies told to my brother & I over our lives from 2A, but we had to stick our feet in. 2A was not financially supporting us in any way, and making 6 figures a year for many years now in a very nice office-job apparently was still not enough to help us during literal ‘I have 0$ in checking, and I had to liquidate my savings to evade eviction’ waves. We reminded them that they said we could do it next year. They said we were full of shit and this was a planned attack. I don’t know why I thought I could reach them. If I had more access to healthcare and counseling, I would have known they were in their 60s and not going to change, especially not under the influence.

What became me not answering calls and refusing to talk to this person in the following days was not a “Heidi needs to protect herself mentally and emotionally from this as it’s triggering Fibromyalgia symptoms”, but a ‘What a selfish, unloving, unforgiving child! How could I deserve to be so loathed!’ pity party that I was no longer willing to entertain. They had all of the resources socially and financially to live a life of relative ease with perks like regular vacations, regular splurging in the name of “keeping up with the folks at work/in the neighborhood,” etc etc. Reasons stacked on reasons. When they could no longer get their way with me putting them on hold, they went straight to doubling down on lies I had been told for years: Your grandparents are only helping you financially because they pity you and know that you’re taking them for a ride financially, and yet they still put up with you. Your art is too much one thing and not enough other things, I’m embarrassed to show my coworkers. (supposedly my grandmother died being both fine with my Queerness and, at the same time, going to a dark place for it.)

The one that haunted me the most was “What… What are you?,” lisped out like an oily slur, like they couldn’t figure out why the hell I wasn’t the mademoiselle débutante they needed me to grow into. I remember saying “well, I’m your kid, for starters,” and them coming back with pure unbridled vitriol for me in waves, trying to stick in the smaller washes near the end in the ears of other family members. “I KNOW THAT. YOU KNOW WHAT I WAS MEANING TO SAY, DON’T TURN THIS AROUND ON ME.” I wasn’t turning anything, i was trying to make sense of questions coming from blackout drunk states, repeated to me over the course of years when I should have had the strength and right mind to say “Enough with the Gaslighting,” but feeling like it was too direct, too pointed and forceful.

I asked my aunt about why my grandparents would say that about me, and why 2A loved to tell other people how artistically supportive they were and then turn around and tell me that I wasn’t making money from my bachelors and that I had wasted their time and, in a weird way, their respectability. Aunty had no clue, so I went to asking my grandparents directly. They were horrified, and could not grasp where I heard that from. I didn’t tell them the source, it wasn’t worth it to stir up more shit when I was already being branded “the spoiled deviant”.

I don’t know when it happened, but somewhere along the line I started to question my sanity. Slowly the insults tumbled down from the years, and within a month or so of the “big explosion” when I called to say I’d ‘…have to come to Christmas the following year…’, I was having anxiety attacks trying to draw. Every artistic failure began to come into view, even ones I had no control over. I would force myself to sit down and try to do something, anything, but all I would get was stomach upset, headaches, and anxiety. It eventually became so bad that I couldn’t even pick up a pencil or a tablet pen without disassociating. Literally.

Over the next few years I would find through talking with some truly amazing social workers & counseling persons in the area, I was having what is often referred to by the layman as a ‘nervous breakdown’, but it wouldn’t be until I moved to Canada to be with my wife that I felt safe enough and far enough away from it all to actually begin to internalize it. “Darkest before the dawn” as the adage goes.

(I was hoping to get more of this written out, but I find in retelling the story I’m getting a little queasy dredging stuff up so I’ll make the rest as condensed as I can while getting the main points in.)

It was either a year or two by the time I saw 2A again, right before I officially started dating my then-girlfriend. 2A was coming to town to visit for Christmas, and requested I be there even though I had talked very little with them. I met them on the condition I could talk to them about what happened and lay down my peace. They agreed.

Long story short, that didn’t happen.

I was met with a blank stare, and then rolling eyes. It felt like the air in the room had been blown out of a spaceship lock, and they antagonized me multiple times while I was trying though tears and hyperventilation to get back on my feet enough to answer. Not only did they not see what the BFD was, this was really my fault for not keeping a promise (which I did. I gave almost 2 months in advance warning, in fact) but they thought I was “really emotionally messed up” and “what was I expecting from this? Why hadn’t I moved on?”

When I asked near my breaking point if they were even sorry about anything, they said “I don’t remember any of it. How can I be sorry for something I don’t remember?”

My head hurt. My words felt hollow and wasted. I looked at the door, and immediately got up and left.

I went home. Shattered. Self-harm followed shortly.

Communication with them stopped entirely. As was normal, the story being told was that I victimized them. Multiple people confirmed this fact to me over the years in conversations. During that time, I could not draw. It was no longer my ability or future. I honestly had started giving up on the idea of ever trying to do professional art again.

The first stages of deattachment and healing came around 2018 when it came time to decide between a dream-job I had been working for only over a year and moving to Canada to be with my wife. All I could do to keep myself from shutting down completely (due to Fibromyalgia Flares that would last a week at a time from stress) was counting down the days to being with her again. On my last day of packing I would end up leaving the nearly-completed mess of emptying the apartment to my brother and my parent (without much direction, at that. The fact that they helped me at all was a true showing of their character.)

That very day, I left for Canada. I have not been back to the US since.

It wouldn’t be until late 2020 that I could even pick up a pencil again without disassociation or anxiety attacks.

Uncategorized

Health, Artist Block, and the future of Redmoon Studios

Post author By redmoons
Post date July 30, 2018

It’s taken me 8 months to shore up the courage to write this out, not out of indifference to the situation but largely because of fear & sadness that it’s still going on. If you have been visiting the website for updates (or had given up months ago and just happened to stop by at the right time), you may have noticed that around October 2017, I had some big plans and big ideas about how I wanted the website to continue — I was hunting for a nice new layout, had a store in mind, was working on my other etsy projects… Suffice to say, life does not always go as planned.

Due to personal family issues, a poor local job market, health problems from long, high levels of daily stress, I basically crashed. Not crashed in a way that you flop yourself on the bed at the end of a shite day, or find a home in a pint of something while you binge-watch Youtube for 5 hours straight. Crash in the sense that a car crashes, or a train derails, or you literally pass out after 3 days of not sleeping. Crash in a way that is as physically jarring as it is psychologically jarring.

It is now August 2018 (almost) and I can safely say that I have not produced any art since October of 2017.

I could spend hours writing up an entry about all of the factors that have made this happen, but in the almost-year since it has occurred, I realize that it wouldn’t change anything and it wouldn’t make the struggle of not being able to produce anything feel any more founded. It feels more like the setup to a philosophical question, “What do you call the period of time in which an Artist fails to Art?” Is it a hiatus, even if its not planned? Is it an Art Block if it’s not from lack of ideas, but from lack of being able to make them manifest? I can’t really get any new viewers (or as I’ve found, charge any Patreon patrons) if I’m not creating new things, or going to conventions, or showing that I’m active in any new way. I can’t really start any new projects or partnerships if the thing I am trying to share is not actively being made.

So I have been thinking: Should I keep this website? Should I leave it up as the bones of an aging dinosaur so people can see things that I did? For those who are reading this, the answer is ‘for the moment, yes.’ But I don’t know what the long term of that is. I don’t know when I will be able to start making new art, let-alone making new art that I feel comfortable sharing– or, perhaps, is a quality I feel worth sharing. I am leaving up old gallery images and the like for now in hopes that at least people can see that at one point, I was able Art. When that may come back & to what extent it does, I don’t know.

There is a deep hope that in having to go through this period of loss and stagnation that I will have a better appreciation for whatever ends up coming out of the end of it. In the meantime, I ask for your patience and tenderness with me while I am feeling as vulnerable as I have been for the last year.