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Buddhism

Endless Reboots of an Artist’s Intention

So when you set an intention how long does it last? Mine lasts until I need chocolate, sometimes a few minutes sometimes a few seconds. When I meditate I set my intention to paying attention to my breath. That intention sometime makes it to the end of the breath. Then birds, bees, the neighbor outside my window chatting, the pipes in my house burbling, the intention lasts about as long as the second breath usually.

Like Buddha said nothing is permanent. Once the intention goes so goes the attention too flying out the window after it. To stay in one place I have to constantly reset that intention over and over again. At the end of each breath there is a pause before the next one starts a nice place to ding my moron brain and tell it to watch that next breath come in.

Now drawing comics, each panel can serve as a disturbance to whichever panel I’m working on, each background can disturb the attention on the one figure, a hand can distract from a face. It’s amazing I ever draw any comics at all because there’s so many ways to lose focus. And look over there chocolate looms to wipe everything out. And don’t get me started on what politics will do to my focus.

So how do you make a comic happen in any way shape or form. You break it down into steps. The more you analyze your own work the more steps you can find, When drawing storytelling focus on large simple shapes with a dead line in panels, when drawing a figure start with a stick figure construction move to shape a contour line drawing then value. In a crowd once you have it blocked out draw each face one at a time. Each shape value line or color you lay down set your intention to focus on the next one that is artistic right intention.

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