A Tricky Week...

...with way too much going on.

Hello from Castrum Lusitania, my fortress in northern Portugal. Welcome to another edition of our weekly newsletter.

This week proved tricky and a bit overwhelming, with too much going on both related and unrelated to work. Still, I managed to get a decent chunk of work done, even if less than I wanted. Enough to save the week in terms of scheduling, but just barely, thanks to a mighty final push in the last couple of days, inking Phenomena pages like a maniac. Here’s a work in progress that pretty much sums up pretty well where I’m at at the moment in terms of inking this batch of pages. Lots done, still some details to do.

Too much going on

The week was tricky because there was too much going on, which is something that sometimes I’m sure everyone can relate to. I try to keep things under control, with my working hours being locked behind an invisible deal between me and everyone around me - mostly family and friends, all very supportive and understanding. Still, some weeks, things just concentrate in a way that you have no escape.

This was one of those weeks. Not only I an extra cover (which you’ll see soon) and the commission you saw last week compressed things for this week, a bunch of extra activities all pilled up on the last few days, as I’m involved on a couple of local activities that required my physical presence and work. All very nice, but when piled up it can get tough.

Despite the insane week, this is one of the pages I wrapped yesterday.

Nonetheless, this is not a complaining newsletter. Just an example that sometimes, despite all best intentions, time doesn’t stretch. The important thing for me is to try to take advantage of the chunks of time (big or small) I can work to minimize losses. I’ve been doing this for years, particularly since I have kids, so I always keep in mind the very simple idea of:

Just sit down and do it

When time is scarce, I always try to maximize it. I sit down and I immediately start working. No warm ups, no Twitter or Instagram scrolling. I just sit, pick the pen and start drawing. Immediately. What if I only manage to work for 10 minutes? Well, I won’t have to do those 10 minutes ever again, because they’re now done.

Like this work-in-progress here below. I still didn’t manage to finish it up (which was my intention yesterday), but there’s a lot there already which allows me to easily pick up the work from there, which is always easier than starting from scratch.

Same idea for this still unfinished sleeping Spike. Most of the character is in place, plus the building blocks of the background:

All in all, I still managed to do a very decent amount of work in all the pages I still have to ink. Now with some clear road in the next few days, I’ll be giving this all a good push and wrap this stage soon. Case in point, the work-in-progress you saw in the beginning of this message belongs now to another finished page:

This is one of those panels that was tough to make, but boy, am I happy I did it. It fits this bit of the story great and sets up the next page (a big spread) perfectly, without revealing anything you’re about to see. And if you know London, this should be familiar.

On the next newsletter you’ll already see some digital grey tones being made, hopefully. For now, back to work it is. Thank you all for reading. As usual, comments and questions are welcome. I’ll see you soon,

André