Digital Island Artdump Week 1

A week has passed since rowing off to my Island.

What have I done? Well, some things.

I suddenly have more available time now since scaling back on Twitter. I still have the habit of checking in every so often, but it’s getting better. Hopefully in the coming month I’ll be free from it except in the early mornings and bedtime. (when my Audience is awake anyway)

Would it be bad to say I’m spectacularly failing on my ‘I gotta finish 200 pages worth of sketches in three weeks before my residency’ goal? It’s like drawing blood out of a stone finding the motivation to work on comics — especially when I could be doing easier, instantly rewarding work like these pet portraits.

Luckily I’m not hard on myself (maybe that’s the problem…). It doesn’t hurt me negatively if I must work on my sketches during the residency. Just that I wouldn’t be devoting my entire time and energy to Alexander anymore. Fingers crossed I blaze through a good chunk of the sketches this and next week.

Last week was a riot. So here I was at home, watching my country’s escalating third wave of the plague (due to the Irresponsibility of Certain Elite Persons). I was bracing myself at the possibility of another full lockdown and not being able to attend my residency (One More Thing the Plague Ruined). At the very least, I bargained with whatever higher power exists in this world, at least have my furniture delivered before that.

The lockdown didn’t happen. I don’t know if it will happen. But I got my furniture. An iron bed frame, a rattan ottoman/table, and a proper office chair.

So my bedroom is old. Like, I’ve occupied it since I was 10 or 11. Have you ever known the feeling of moving away and maturing into adulthood in a different place, then returning home to your childhood bedroom to find that you’ve outgrown it? I felt this even more so since I’m no longer temporarily staying in it (thanks to the plague). The room was overburdened by old trinkets – half of them not mine – and books and dust that no longer reflected who I am.

I’ve been wanting to rehaul it into a proper studio/bedroom for a long time now. And I finally got a bit of that with the new furniture and an opportunity to reconfigure the layout. That was my weekend project.

I Mari-Kondoed 1/3 of the room (lots of 90’s and early 00’s clothes from my childhood and from my mother’s younger days; and an unbelievable amount of books and A4 size printer paper of old drawings). It was fun seeing the drawings, and I uncovered the stack of loose paper that documented TWIDI’s first years in development. That was gold so I kept it in a dedicated box. I kept a lot of the things I wanted to keep in boxes. Mostly because of this room’s horrible tendency of attracting dust regardless of rhyme or reason.

After many hours of aggressive cleaning and assembling of furniture (RIP my lower back…), this is what the room looks like now. It’s still awkward because of the other old furniture (which I plan to replace) and the as-of-yet uncoordinated colour scheme, but it’s a significant improvement from before.

The final plan is to repaint the wall a light warmer colour (pistachio shell?), replace the other furniture with black/tan bookcases, hang more art in black and tan frames. I am also thinking bout getting a nice statement yellow armchair. The colour scheme will be black, rattan/tan, white; and All the accessories and decor can be whatever.

Anyway, that was my week. Hope you enjoyed the pet portraits artdump!!