I've been busy.

Seriously, seriously busy. I've been going constantly working on expanding, solidifying, and making five separate authors AND an editor happy, along with two farm owners and business e-mails out the you-know-where.

Hello, I'm The Artist and I have established myself into some stupidly complicated careers.

Just kind of trying to keep up with this blog because I feel like I've let all of my five readers down skipping out on postings. It still amazes me that a small handful of random people actually read this stuff, and I'm really sorry that I've skipped days!

I just have NOT found the time to do personal stuff. I haven't slept in three days because I've been so busy. I'm about to go to bed, but I just wanted to hop on here and write.

So, just to fill you in on the life of a 3x artist.

In the fine arts field, things are crazy. I'm expanding my business into the digital realm. I've been experimenting and goofing around in Photoshop paintings since I was a teenager, but I've never offered it professionally. Now that I've inserted myself into the world of character design and concepts, it would actually be better for me to do them in Photoshop instead of on paper, just because of the industry right now. Some authors have been asking me why I DON'T do that, and have acted interested, so I've been readying myself to offer the PS paintings professionally.

But that means lots of research, lots of practice pictures in all of my spare time, and lots of tutorial reading to be sure I'm not doing anything stupid due to a self-taught background.

Which is the PITA for every medium I've ever worked with. I've never taken art lessons, and every time I do something I haven't done in a while I get paranoid that I'm going to miss something or skip over important stages out of ignorance. Which really doesn't happen, but hey! I'm super anxious.

So aside from the Photoshop, I've had a huge stack of designs and concepts to work and research, and then a "rush" portrait to do. All in all, in the span of three days I've had to sort through about 17 drawings in some way, shape, or form, and I've done 3 practice paintings in PS along with 2 studies. I've also had to do a few anatomy studies because in the stack of character designs I've stumbled across some shady areas of my knowledge of the human body in motion. Which is extremely frustrating for someone who's been professionally drawing humans for the past 7 years.

Due to my sudden rise in fine art demand, I've had to bench my novels for a bit. I just can't keep up with them. I just sent that e-mail off today, but before then I was struggling to write a couple thousand words a day along with everything else just to shut the editor up (he keeps demanding to know why I haven't sent anything off to the critical analysis lady who is the MOST USELESS CRITIC EVER). But I can't, I need sleep, so I probably won't get ANYTHING written until next Monday.

Which is sad, I like writing, but art is making me money so I have to side-track for a bit.

Then, because it's September, there's a bunch of BBQs and parties and picnics and the like, along with some weddings gearing up for the "pretty week" in Alberta where all the leaves are bright red and orange, so my band just got an onslaught of "play for my party" e-mails, and I've been juggling those and booking with my band mates to make sure they can make the shows and THEN explaining exactly why some clients are not able to pay us $50 for the whole band for two hours of music, because our flat fee for two hours is $750 and that is a considerable difference. And because I'm over-tired, these e-mails take FOREVER to type because I have to make sure I don't say something along the lines of "YOU IDIOT, YOU NEED TO PAY YOUR MUSICIANS PROPERLY. WE ARE PEOPLE TOO."

Because that wouldn't be professional.

On top of this all, normal life is still a thing and I still have to do thing like grocery shopping, cooking meals, showering, meeting customers, some semblance of housework, and acknowledging the existence of other humans in my presence. There's just not enough hours in the day.

With that, I'm going to bed.

If any of this post is incoherent, I apologize. I'm too tired to proof-read or properly function, which is a dangerous combination.

Also it took me a couple of hard-thinking minutes to realize that the word I was looking for in the above sentence was "incoherent." You know I'm tired when my vocab tanks.