Page 28 is up now. Which also means that I have uploaded the scan of the original art to my deviantart page here.

Well the Fall weather is approaching here in Ohio and I am actually kind of excited about it. During the summer I feel like some kind of wastrel when I spend most of my time inside drawing when we have the beautiful weather (or maybe I was just raised to think that way). Something that I do strangely really like about the fall is bundling up inside with blankets. Plus my wardrobe just feels so much more limited in the summer.

A little bit of an update behind the curtain is that I'm still continuing my crusade to get all of chapter 2 penciled. They may be taking me a while but let me just say that these are some of the best comic pages I have ever drawn in my life coming up, and hopefully I can keep pushing myself to go far beyond that.

Keep enjoying the comic!
-TiMBo

Now page 27 is up so go check that out. Plus if you want to check out the original or of this said page, check it out here in my deviant art gallery.

Just going to give a quick update about the comic. I have almost penciled all the pages of Chapter 2 and It wont take me too long to ink them all. So my goal of being able to release two pages a week is becoming more of a possibility.

I'm going to be honest. I didn't realize how much of this comic was going to feel like work. I think that I was in love with the idea of making comics, at first that is. Satisfaction has now come in a different way of feeling like I've paid my dues with each page I release.

Well, I'm going to get back to it. Enjoy the comic.
-TiMBo

Page 26 is up so read that to keep up with the story. Plus for all of you that are as nerdy about original art as I am, go check out the scan of the original art of page 26!

From the title of this blog post, I don't want anyone to get alarmed. Noting major or tragic has happened in my personal life, just something that's a big bother.

Something happened to me yesterday that left me in a pretty glum mood. The wire on my long standing graphics tablet was getting frayed and would sometimes short out and not function properly. As many can see who have read this far into the comic can see that digital coloring and editing has now become integral to producing the comic, and using a pen/stylus based graphics tablet is 100 fold better than using a mouse. So I figured that it was time to look into an upgrade.

I did some research as to what my next tablet upgrade should be. I came across something that looked pretty nice and I went ahead an purchased it, and it was a pretty awesome tablet. I was really getting used to the feel and the new features of this tablet purchase. Then yesterday, when I was planning on doing a lot of color work, the functionality of it goes kaput! The driver suddenly doesn't recognize the tablet and every option for trying to get it to work myself (besides opening it up and seeing for myself) couldn't bring functionality back to it.

I know that all sounded kind of vague, as of right now I am e-mailing the purchaser back and forth so I don't want to sully any products or services just yet. For right now I am coloring back on my old tablet.

It's hard to say how You should react to things in life that you don't expect to happen to you in life but there is one piece of advice I can give for certain after yesterday, ALWAYS HAVE A BACKUP PLAN! I didn't totally know if my old tablet would be of use so I didn't just scrap it or give it away. Now it has become almost invaluable. That piece of advice might not be as colorful as my other blog posts but I guess it's important to know what to keep around and not just throw away as junk.

-Hope you're enjoying the comic.
-TiMBo

Page 25 is up now so go check that out! Which also means that the scan of the original art of page 25 is up on my Deviantart page as well so please check that out too.

On the note of original art, in the world of modern day webcomics it looks like there's not a whole lot of original art being made (as in a one-of-a-kind physical piece of art made with physical media.). I don't view this as a bad thing, just that the way in which two-dimensional art is being made is evolving. It is something that makes me feel nervous about being some curmudgeon who's set on doing things the old fashioned way being left behind by the direction that the artistic process is going.

It is because of this that I do try to draw things on my tablet. While the digital tools give us great advantages and the advancements in graphics tablets are substantial, it still feels a little clunky and un-fluid for me (especially in the inking category.). I understand that it's something you're supposed to get used to with practice, but I can just tell that if I decided to drop all of my physical tools and go %100 digital, you might be looking at bi-weekly updates of a page instead of weekly for a little while. I'm open to the possibility of %100 digital art, but a piece of advice I often give illustrators is "It's important to experiment, but when it comes to a gig, you have to know what tools will work for you."

Although this topic is not just pertinent to traditional and digital. It could mean things that you change solely in the digital or traditional realm. I decided to take a look back at the past few years and point out some significant changes I made in my art repertoire.

-Penciling with Col-Erase or Erasable colored pencils:
I used to only use these for underdrawings that would go underneath my HB pencil. Now I will pencil full comic pages or pin ups with these pencils. The advantage of using these? You don't have to erase the pencils away after inking. However this only works well with light or powder blue or carmine red. Though recently I did text a multitude of colors in my scanner and Orange, Lavender, Pink, and Grass Green all work pretty well too. I might oder more of these different colors and use them to do clean and organized pencils for layered perspectives.

-Painting:
I know how I was and how many young artists tend to think. That painting is one of those hard, complex things that only the people meant for painting can do and that you'll only be good with a pencil. WRONG! The only real layer of complexity to get over with painting is color (if you decide to paint in color that is), other than that it's using most of the fundamentals of drawing. Also, this day and age is one of the best times to try to get into painting, with all the online tutorials and videos, and library books available to you. It's easier now more than ever to learn the tips and tricks about painting.

-Nylon Bristled Brush Pens:
I have been brush inking for a long time. Most of the brush pens available to me were felt tipped which would become frayed and useless for me halfway through a drawing. So the only way to ink on the go at this point was a paintbrush, bottle of ink, bottle of water, and a rag or paper towel. Not the most portable set up if you like leaving the home or studio. Now recently brush pens have been cropping up (particularly the Pentel models) that sport actual nylon bristles out of it. These make the brush both much more durable than a felt tip and much more fluid for brush inkers. I find myself using my Pentel pocket brush pen pretty often since I don't feel more tethered to my drafting table.

-Using the Pencil Tool to do flats in digital coloring.
A lot of people who have colored on the computer know that the first step it placing or painting on the flat colors underneath the line art to both create a nice mid-tone and to make targeted areas to color easily selectable. Some would do this with the brush tool, which would be fine but the brush tool is anti-aliased which means that it has a fuzzy edge to it. This may interfere with when you're trying to paint to the edge of a flat area and you see a weird inconsistency where one fuzzy edged line of a flat meets another fuzzy edged line of a flat. The pencil tool uses a more pixely-looking line (or aliased line) that has a hard edge a has no fuzziness to it. Which makes the selecting process a much more clean one.

There's to name a few. So keep and open mind and try some new things out!
Thanks for reading!
-TiMBo

The new page is up. I don't have a lengthy topic to talk about this Sunday because I honestly want to get back to drawing fun stuff!

But on the note of drawing an art, on my deviant art page I decided to scan in strait-forward raw versions of all my original comic art pages HERE. This was inspired by my nerdy compulsion to browse around to look at the scans on Albert Moy's original comic art site.

Well I'll be going back into the trenches of Chapter 2 art on monday so wish me god speed!
-TiMBO

Well, A little milestone for me has come. The end of one chapter and the beginning of a new has happened. Anyone unfamiliar with comics would say; "Great Job! you've accomplished so much!" While if you're a veteran of print comics or very familiar with print comics you would say "PPSSSHHH!! Whatever! Talk to me when you have more than one chapter behind you." The latter reaction might sound a little harsh, but for what I want to accomplish as a comic creator, the more critical of those two is the one that I should take to heart.

Really, think about it. Who would think a doctor was a satisfactory doctor after doing one checkup? Who would think a hair dresser was a master after doing one hair cut? Who would think a plumber was a superb plumber after fixing just one drain? Well, I have finished one chapter of a comic but that by no means makes me an expert. Sure, I've put the work into doing 22 pages of content but that by no means signifies that I've achieved all there is to know about making comics. I'm not saying this to dog myself or humble myself by any means. It's just a simple, undeniable truth. Understanding what there is to making comics takes more than 22 pages.

I have heard some say in either text or podcast conversations say that "You are not serious about doing your web comic unless you have been at it for two years." Do I understand what It's like to have been at it for two years? After only having released my web comic site on April 21st of 2013, the answer to that should be a resounding "Of course not!"  And I agree with you. I still have a lot to  prove. In all the categories of writing, penciling, inking, lettering, and coloring I still have so much to learn through doing, hardships, shortcomings, and triumphs.  So making comics is something I want to take very seriously.

When I say to people that "I take comic creation seriously.' There are many times where that is taken as a negative connotation. They think that what I'm creating is either a super ponderous look at the human condition or more of a vapid arrangement of content that only appeals to the "artsy" crowd. And I can tell you deep down from the bottom of my heart (I just started a sentence with 'and' so you know I mean it.) that neither of those things are my goal. I just want to create a piece of content that I would find entertaining myself, as a consumer. If the text or context of my comic  warrants reflection or discussions about theme or allegories for you the reader, then that's awesome! Do that, but it's not what I'm trying to accomplish. It's my personal belief that it's the responsibility of the participant of media to project meaning upon it. No one goes to a fine art museum with an audio device playing in their ear with the artist of each piece saying "This is the intention I had for the viewers of my work" I want to give readers the blocks and they can decide how they want to slide them together.

So when I use the word serious, I'm not referring to the way my comic is perceived or reflected on. I'm talking about myself and my work habits. I want to be able to release 2 pages a week (I want you all to hold me to this.) and being able to work up to a work flow like that is going to take some effort. I have been comfortable for a little while and it's time to push my boundaries to do more, faster, and better. No weight lifter sticks with one weight set indefinitely. Why should I stick with an overly cushy and comfortable workflow? Other web comics release more than one page a week, maybe it's about time I do too.

Here's hoping for a cool second chapter.
-Timbo 

The last page of chapter one is right here.

First off I want to apologize for being a day late. I attempted doing a 24 hour comic (unsuccessfully by the way) and I just wasn't in the mental state to do a site update, but without further adieu, here's today's post!

So here I am. I have one chapter of this comic underneath my belt, or one issue as the print aficionados would say. So I figured with every last page of a chapter, I should take a look back at that chapter that just came to past. So let's take a look at the chapter that started it all, number one.

Well. the first thing that comes to mind when I look back at the first 22 pages of Galsha (24 if you include the covers) is; "I'm glad I took the first step." Most artists are prone to look at their past work and just blast everything that they think sucks, or point things out that they can do so much better now (Yup... I'm pretty guilty of this in most of my work). I look back at the whole of the first chapter and I can honestly say that I'm proud of what I've done. If for no other reason, then I'm proud to have 22 pages of experience. Chapter 1 will definitely be the most unique feeling chapter in the series. I started creating the art for this series in late 2010 and I started off as an iconoclast who was against the use of digital tools to create any of the artwork for the comic. Now I have embraced the digital age that we're living in and and use the digital tools to my advantage for producing the comic. I still pencil and in traditionally so I guess it's the best of both worlds.

So yes, the first chapter more than anything feels like a first stepping stone for the rest of the series for me and the second chapter is moving right along (I'm inking strip #33 to give you a little peek behind the curtain.), and drawing the pages for chapter 3 will come before I know it.

Alright, time to get back to running this comic marathon.

Thanks for reading,
TiMBo

Page 21 is now up, so bounce over to that.

I don't have a long blog post in me this week so enjoy the brevity!

One more page to go and I have a full chapter underneath my belt. While that is both exciting and nerve racking at the same time, I also need to really think long and hard about where I want the comic to go from here, and I don't mean in the story department. If I do say so myself, I think I put enough work and effort into these comic pages that this is beyond a hobby, nor do I want it to be a hobby. I've wanted to do comics from a pretty young age. While there have been many things in my life that tried to distract me from that, either externally or through distractions of my own doing, that has always been my ultimate goal. Age 30 is approaching on me and i would really love to have a creator owned book that I made under my belt before that happens. One way would be to try to get two updates a week, and another way would be to start monetizing things on the site.

I just took my first step into doing that today by putting that Donate button on the top of the right column of this page. It's not much but it is a start. So along with updates and musings I will also maybe be writing business announcements in these blog posts. If anyone has suggestions on what i can do about this, they can leave it in a comment, or just e-mail it to me at streetsofgalsha@gmail.com.

I'm off to continue to work hard fro you, the readers.
Thanks,
-TiMBo

We have finally reached the big TWO-ZERO on strips so go on over and check it out.

This past week I have been working on coloring the pages to the upcoming chapter 2, and I will probably also continue to work on them all next week. I have saddled myself with this mostly because I have been procrastinating doing them. I don't hate the coloring process, but I do find the penciling and the inking to be the sexier part of the process and in turn a little more enjoyable. I really want to work on a page that I would pencil and ink, but I know it will make my deadlines go WAAAYY smoother if I just got all of the pages colored now.

This is something that we need to emphasize to the younger up-and-comers is that doing something like cartooning is still going to feel like work. There's that saying "If you find a job you love then you won't work a day in your life.", Just go ahead and throw that saying out the window because you're going to run into plenty of things that feel sucky that you can't just shove to the side for something you enjoy, and creating comics is a lot of work where you have to slog though a lot of stuff you don't enjoy doing. If comic creation was all super-fun times all the time, then we would have a much bigger boon of creators doing it. I have talked to some people who are really good at drawing/illustraition that I talk about making comics, and there are a lot of them who's reaction is some variation of "Yea, that seems like too much work for me.", And that's fine, no one should be made to do comics (Well they would be in my perfect world >:-P, that's a joke).

Should this deter you from wanting to pursue a creative endeavor like creating comics? Well, I would say of course not, but you have to decide if it's worth it for yourself. One thing I will guarantee is that no job is immune to this. You're going to hit some rough patches with any job, even if it's the one you really want. I have some friends who are in a band together. They love music and the could play with instruments for hours and hours. They put on a show a little while ago and they ended up taking a good financial hit for that show they put on. Now that's some rough shit! And here I am in this blog post quasi complaining about having to color pages back to back. And guess what? They are still a band and still trying to better their craft and performing shows, because it's still worth doing it.

It might seem like the goal of this blog post is to be disenchanting, but I say that we should embrace the work-like elements of the jobs we want to do. We're all working towards something, and that's something we should keep in mind more than some parts that we like doing more than others. Also in the grand scheme of things, is someone in pursuit of doing art, music, or writing really more dignified than someone pursuing teaching, law enforcement, or brick laying? Of course not. We're all just working at the thing that we want to be our lifes work.

Thank you for reading
-Timbo

Page 19 is now up for your viewing and reading pleasure!

When you work on a big project, it is real easy to get caught up in trying to make everything look crisp, professional, or cool that we loose sight of what it's like to be playful with our craft. Doing comic art takes hours upon hours UPON HOURS of drafting, polishing things up, and problem solving. So putting time aside to sketch gets shoved into the back of our brain and our priorities.

It's also easy to overlook doing sketches because they're not as "sexy" as a comic page or polished illustration. There isn't a deadline for drawing pages in your sketchbook and if you work traditionally, then you're typically not using the highest grade paper neither. Also if you are creating comics you're producing multiple pages in a week or month and you think to yourself, "Aren't I getting a lot of practice just doing those?" But it's not about the practice, it's about the experimentation.

It's your sketchbook, paper, or digital canvas, so no one has to see what you're doing. This is your opportunity to go nuts! Try to use tools you wouldn't regularly use, or use your most standard tools in different ways. I have three sketchbooks (four if you count my graphics program). One for standard drawing with pencils and ink, one better suited for watercoloring my drawings, and one with heavier paper for gouache or acrylics. That might sound cumbersome, but it's nice to have all of those venues open to you if you want to try something out.

"But Tim, what about making time for it?" Well that's a hard question to answer isn't it? One can't really have a cookie-cutter method of how to fit sketching into your schedule. You'll just have to look at your schedule and etch out a spot where it would best fit. like from 7-10 on Wednesday night for example.

So get out there and make some time for some creative experimentation!
Thanks for reading!
-TiMBo