Hopefully I'm not being presumptuous, but I'm really trying to make an informed decision and I'd appreciate the help. Anyway, through a friend, I met an Indy publisher (comics) while I was vacationing in the South-East of England and she liked my colour work enough to ask me if I'd be interested to come on-board and colour for them. Flattered as I was, I declined.

My reasons being I haven't 'coloured' in a year, I've got University and my pathological fear that once I do start colour work, as a colourist, I'll be stunting my growth as an Illustrator.

That last reason being the most worrisome and the reason why I 'stopped' colouring a year ago. To my knowledge there aren't any comics colourists who also draw comics. At first, I picked up the pencil and pursued art with the singular goal of drawing comics professionally one day and I realised I've only got four years (exact to the day when I stopped colouring and when I come out of University) to make my black and white illustration work of professional quality. A quality good enough, at the minimum, to get a job be it in games, screen or print. There are other issues like my speed and stamina that were a factor, but it was mostly the above.

Not being an idiot, I know it's easier to get a job now whilst in University than out of it, so the prudent thing to do would be to pursue freelance work of some sort to gain the resume credentials that would be of use tomorrow. I can also see my colour work is vastly superior to my line work.

Maybe I'm regretful about declining her offer and that's leading me to reconsider my decision from a year ago, but I've got to ask this question, because I'm worried about the 'what if' I don't?

Simply put, is it possible to juggle a part time job - freelancing as a comics colourist whilst pursuing my education?

Perhaps the time isn't quite right yet, to be afraid or otherwise, but this is the day and age where a Black man is elected the ruler of the entire free world(!) Let's face it, the world is changing and I'm not sure how much longer feminist ideals will still be valid before they degrade into extremism. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with equal rights. I just don't hold true to the idea of equal rights just for women. Being under 30 and posesing a penis, I've noticed how very disadvantagous this world already is for men in both the eyes of the law and legal rulings. Maybe it's my upbringing which taught me from a very early age that both men and women are (rather than 'born', which implies there's a stage in life we aren't) equal, but I don't really think it's fair women have an edge in the court room strictly, because of their gender. How long will it be until men need legal protection? Or legal impartiality?

Yes, yes, I know there are scum bags out there and certain grey areas that exist, but I can say with absolute certainty men don't like other men and would just as easily step over each other, so the idea of a misogynistic state or other is complete bull. On any good day, no two human beings like each other, regardless of their gender, and this is true on both misogyny and feminism fronts. But I ask, while these two are locked in an increasingly fading war, what about those left behind?

As with all things, this arose from a divorce piece in the morning paper and something I later watched on a Cable documentary involving two opposing feminist debates. While one actually sounded sane and reasonable, I felt her generation on feminist ideals ceased to be relevant with the birth of her daughter (again, I'm drawing on My generation, people younger than 30), the other was borderline extremist. It's disturbing how the people who will potentially influence future politics bare outdated ideals, whether they be male or female. Granted no politician is a good politician, but I do hope the first female czar will not be a feminist, or hippie, or heck...so long as she steers clear of any socialist group and is simply human, that'd be grand.

And before anyone brings up the diatribe regarding man having laid his dominance on the word human, I find the term 'mammal' degrades us to the level of beasts. And there isn't any living being smart enough to contribute a new legitimate word to the English lexicon (as shown by the last three attempts at this. The irony is, one of those words was 'fanboy', whilst they left out 'fangirl' entirely)

Screw this, the world is depressing enough. I'm going back to watch Moonlight...

It's around 6:30am and I'm clocking off for the day. I've just realised working this late at night for the better part of two, or maybe three weeks (I don't really remember anymore) is counter productive. The whole point of forgoing sleep to put in over time is to complete work, but when it becomes your schedule, you're screwed. At least I'm having fun.

And in other news, it has (very unceremoniously) been brought to my attention that I whine. A lot. Almost as if my natural state of being is always set at 'complain'. Being the subject in question, I disagree. I'm a very happy, if sometimes content, individual. I just translate as pessimistic when I write my thoughts - or speech- down. My work makes me happy and challenging it, doing what seemed impossible yesterday today, in 2d, is my life's ambition.

Right now there are projects that I'm not looking so enthused about, but this has been a very productive month. Only, because I've had actual art work to do and not wasted several hours commuting to University. Being under the deadline puts a weird kind of pressure on you and there's a certain kind of revere you associate with that deadline. You love and hate it both.

For me, I just have to try not to take on any more work if I ever want to go back to doing pinups. I've been in touch with a few pinup artists, asking questions and doing more research into this wonderful art, even joined a few communities and subscribed to a mailing list, and I'm thankful for their encouraging words of advice and fonts of wisdom learnt from years behind the canvas. Wonderful thing, this thing called e-mail.

The illustrations that I'm doing at the moment have given me ideas about things I want to carry on over into my pinup art, e.g. image processing, computer arts and faux traditional painting. As an attempt to gain some form of identity or style, I'll try to go for a classic men's adventure magazine style of pinup art illustration and move away from simple design based pinups. Those will strictly be for the ol' moleskine. Hopefully I'll be able to mesh intricate commercial illustration with traditional pinups and find a balance somewhere inbetween.

Two side notes:
If you're not watching Burn notice, please, do so now. Gabrielle Anwar, Bruce Campbell and Jeffrey Donovan, I mean, come on!

Archie Dickens quite possibly could have been the greatest thing to come out of Britain. He was bigger than the Beatles. I kid you not. He's my new favourite personal hero.

It's been a busy week. A very busy week. As I write this I'm still terribly aware of how behind schedule I am and my weekend prospects include spending hours in front of a computer screen staring deep into the depths of Photoshop and Microsoft Word. Desperately did I want to go watch Jun Ji Hyun's Blood the last vampire, alas...

I've got just two more commissions to complete, one being a long overdue image for ~alacDA, two comic book scripts to write (technically two pitches, one each for ~Studio7days and *OvergroundComics. Both are project proposals). My lunch and breakfast has consisted of 30 minutes of chewing down brown bread and pouring over 'How to self-publish for comics' to learn management tips.
What the book and my liver aren't telling me is how to get the time to actually do any of all of that. Working in Photoshop (CS4 now, if only Adobe would hurry up with my student edition's serial no. Down to 6 days on trial. Ugh) and on the trusty Wacom has sped things up considerably, but the work keeps piling up. I'm nervous and twitchy, not on coffee and potentially developing the equivalent of artistic hypochondria. I'm worrying about every little thing art related and the only thing keeping me sane is the actual drawing and painting itself. When I stop, however...

Looking forward to Monday. Monday means more work.

Oh God...