I was watching McKay and Gray's videos about making webcomics, and saw their series on the 100 days of comics challenge. It's a challenge where you try to work for at least 30 minutes a day on your comics project, for 100 days in a row. I've been trying not to burn myself out on projects lately, but I think a big part of my problem is that I'm not good with doing things slow and steady. When it comes to art projects I tend to marathon sprint. I've been thinking about how I used to draw before going to art school (sadly I deleted my old blog so there's little to find there, I'm a bit sad about that) and how I really felt like a part of a community through HxH fanart and deviantart rp groups as a kid.

When I went off to art school I started feeling like I had to make "serious" art. The pace of school was so ruthless I didn't have time to sketch and doodle, it was just big project after big project. My mental health declined and I stopped being able to do anything. The pandemic hit and it felt like everything was at a standstill, but time went on and now I find myself graduated, at 25, with very little art I can say I'm actually proud of. Working on stuff like Chondriatic and Shedding Velvet was super cool!! And then I bit off more that I could chew with a third game jam that myself and the team are still trying to finish because we were overly ambitious. I wanted to finish it before the end of the year. I don't think that's gonna happen. I'm hopeful we'll finish it eventually, but I've realized that taking on that project at this moment was a super bad idea. It's hard not measuring up to your own expectations. And I know every artist feels this multiple times throughout their career. I know 25 is still young and I have tons of time to make incredible work. It still sucks.

This challenge might not go well, but I want to try it. I've been dreaming of making comics again, and I'm a little over 100 days from the Island Entertainment Expo in PEI. So it seemed like perfect timing! I obviously won't make a blog here every day, but maybe every week or two to update my progress and post sketches/in-progress work. I want to do something simple, that won't stress me out too much but will still feel meaningful. I've had an idea of doing a comic about two queer kids at a baptist youth group event grappling with their relationships to the church while being too young to really know how to conceptualize their thoughts on it. Doing something based off my own experiences, rather than making something up that would take a ton of research, seems like it would be less stressful while coming out of this art rut!