Here’s what I’ve been up to the last couple of days:

Not bad for someone a little rusty, huh?

I like the second page much better. The look is, I think, a bit more confident-looking. Both pages have their problems, to be sure, but the first page has a less confident execution than the second, and there are some awkward choices, as well.

Now, my first thought, when I noticed this, was, “Hmm… wouldn’t my first inclination be to re-work the first page?” (And really, thank the mighty Samura I don’t find the first page to be ghastly, otherwise my first inclination would be to redo first page over entirely). And yes, normally, when it comes to pages from the same project, I would want to redo or re-work anything that I don’t think is as good as something I’ve just done. Hell, I want to redo anything I’m not happy with, period. When I did the first two chapters of Max Hades, I wanted to go back and redo the first chapter all over. Of course, in that case, I had some people telling me to move on and some people telling me that if I wanted to pitch it to a publisher, I should restart the series because my artistic abilities were much greater after the completion of Chapter 2 than when I’d started the series two years earlier (yes, it took two years to finish two chapters). Imagine the internal conflict. So, yes, I’m someone who hates everything he does and wants to do everything over, which in turn prevents me from moving on in a timely fashion.

Well, as part of my rehab, I’m not letting myself do anything over again. If a page is done, it’s done and I’m moving on. Hopefully, when I’m ready to move on to larger projects, this self-imposed (there’s that phrase again) mandate will have helped me. Therefore, the first page remains as is. And who knows? Maybe when I go to ink the stuff, the first page will turn out really good and the second page will suck.

One more page of pencils and I’m done with this short story. Then I spend the next couple of days inking, after which I’ll start something new. Perhaps some Inkspills.