Inspiration Comes and Goes

As the coming of a storm, my passion for drawing sets in. Sometimes it lasts for as short as a couple of minutes and other times for many months on end. Friday it arrived, yet I was too sick to do anything with the desire. Luckily, it stuck around for a bit.

One thing I rarely do is draw my friends. This is for the same reason why I do not make them into characters into my books (or at least why I do not tell them I did), because of interpretation. How I see them may or may not be how they see themselves. For better or worse, I have always found it better just to stay away from it all together. Sure I see a picture that inspires me and I have to at least try and draw it, to get it out of my system, much like the ideas for writing are.

For the past year, most of my inspiration has been to draw guys. Typically, it is one and sometimes two, but usually is someone I find attractive.  Every so often, I draw a girl or something else, but it is pretty much just guys. To my delight, one of the drawings I do, one of my friends will insist be a great image for the cover of my next book. Then I spend a couple of months fiddling with it and believing it will never work out, until one day that it does.

Take for example the cover image for my upcoming book Drifting. I've fretted over that picture for months, trying to get the drawing just right, contemplating adding faces and although no one else wanted them I had to try and add them. I failed miserably at it and might have gone as far to have a bitch fit. Then when the image was the way I wanted it (and my wonderful panel of friends who provide critique so I have a marketable image) it was down to colors. Unlike the previous two books, the coloring took several tries before I had something that...  looked good, matched the color theme, matched the style and fit with the series. Like most things in my life, when I eventually quit over thinking it, it came together.

Well back to my lazy Sunday of drawing, reading and lounging.