It’s been a little while since an update. I’ve been plenty busy both in the studio and out. I’m wrapping up the camp shirt design, I think I’m done with another project for my cousin (still waiting for final word), finally finished up a gift/project for my nephew that became more involved than I originally thought (I got carried away), as well as finished up yet another project (that I can’t post about until next week…you’ll know why when you see it), all while churning away on the comic strip. Outside of the studio, there’s been a few camping trips and the necessary planning and packing leading up to them, a house project (finally. I need to get more of those done), several larger school projects for the kids that require my assistance, and just the every day chaos. The days are just screaming by me and I never feel like I accomplish as much as I want to.

Anysquids…

A few weeks ago, I found myself sitting in the waiting room of a walk in clinic. A tick had chomped into my knee, somehow unbeknownst to me, a few days prior while I was traipsing through the woods on a Boy Scout orienteering camp out . The site of the bite got pretty red and started to develop a small ring, which I thought was likely just irritation. However, I know far too many people around me who have had Lyme, several who have stage 4, so I opted to have it looked at and get the proper meds. Unfortunately, I apparently picked a crazy busy evening to discover this and ended up sitting in that waiting room for over an hour and a half. At some point, when I realized I was going to be there a while, I remembered my trusty moleskin in my pocket and started drawing.

Toby-Gray-cartoon-portrait-me-and-fred

I think both of these images accurately capture the fun I was having.

I’m calling that dashing fellow on the left Fred the Hammer. He was one of those images/characters/ideas that pops into my head when I’m trying to sleep, or first thing in the morning, or when I’m supposed to be concentrating on other things. He will likely show up in It’s Plunger Monkey Dynamo Time! at some point.

Speaking of the comic strip, it’s still consuming most of my studio time each day. I’m still having fun. There have been several times where I’ve sat down and had no idea where I was going with the strip or what I was going to draw, but I just ask Plunger Monkey and he usually tells me what to do. The strip is starting to get bigger, I think, and I’m debating if I can continue it in the strip format, or if I’ll have to rearrange things. I like the strip format for the site, but at some point I’m going to want to work bigger, have more freedom designing panels, and to start adding some color. Maybe things will develop into a graphic novel or something, I’m not sure yet. I want to have something I can update regularly to keep or get people following me and paying attention, which I’m struggling with right now. I’ve only got about 100 people following my Instagram account, less than half of that are following my FB page (and only a handful of those even seem to see my content because of the way FB works these days), and I’m lucky if this website gets 5 views a day, most of them accidental, and I’m getting essentially no traction on Deviant Art. It’s frustrating and disheartening when I think about it, but then again, I’ve only been actively trying to promote myself (starting with this website) for a year or so, and I won’t benefit from dwelling on the negative. I’ll just keep pretending I have a big following and act accordingly. I can’t expect to succeed at having others believe in me if I don’t believe in myself first. Reality be damned! I think I just need a marketing team or something, people to spread the word, keep my social media updated, and leave me to just do the creating and get to a point that I have an actual product. Just gotta stay patient…