LucGrigg

Just out of total curiosity, does anyone reading this have any useful tips for staying motivated and active?

In my life, at the moment, I make none moneys and I have a baby on the way. This is not a condition that works for the family. Thing is that I know I have the ability to make money, however meager, from my artwork. It would allow me to be a stay at home father if I could work from home. My problem lies in the fact that my drive and creativity both come in spurts, but not necessarily coinciding with each other. There are times when I really want to get things done and feel good about my ability to sit down and produce, but at those times the quality of the work I put out is shit because my heart just isn't it. Then when I actually really do feel the creative juices flowing through me, I just have no desire to be productive. I'll sketch and doodle and just not finish anything.

I need help. I need any and all advice that you all can spare to help me get my shit together. What is it that you do to keep yourselves motivated even against the mind numbing blankness of the paper?  How do you push through the times that you don't want to be productive?  Are there any techniques that I can employ to help me be more consistent?

I'd love to hear back from any and all of you!

Figured I'd give this livestreaming thing an actual go.  Come shoot the breeze with me while I ink some sequential pages.
   www.livestream.com/lucgrigg

Wow, so it's been over a year since that last time I wrote anything here.  That in and of itself amazes me, not for my lack of posting but for how short that year felt.  Many things have happened since the last time I let you all in on my life.  For starters, I got married to a very beautiful woman named Amy.  She is my sunshine, and as another song says, "First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes the baby in the baby carriage!"  So, we're expecting.  This is awesome and terrifying.  See, I left my job of 10 years so that we could move closer to hers, and her family.  What we're saving on gas and tolls for her to go to work is something like $600/month.  I was going to start my own business down here working with the pups, but then we talked about the cost of a baby and decided that I might play Mr. Mom.  Thing is, babies and lives are expensive and I don't have an income.

This comes to something I'm kind of loathe to do, but I need to ask you if you'd be will commission me for some work.  I'm willing to try to anything, but my wheel house in the area of colouring and inking.  But, if there is anything you need, let me know and we'll see if I can't do it for you.  I'm willing to do anything (portraits, sketch work, design, voice acting, ANYTHING), just need to know what you would like.

So, along with the fretting over how to afford a baby, I'm super psyched about it.  Our 12 week appointment is in a week.  At our last appointment, I heard it's heart beating.  It was only 8.5 weeks old, and it has a heartbeat of 178 bpm.  It doesn't even have discernible gender, but it has a heart beat.  That is wild!  Having seen and heard it, made it real.  My wife makes fun of me for that.  She says, "What?  The stick that said I was pregnant and the morning sickness weren't real enough?"  They were.  Don't get me wrong.  It's just that up to the point when I got to see that mass of cells with a head and arms for the first time on the ultra sound screen, it was all abstract.  I knew Amy was pregnant in an intellectual sense, but that was the first time that I got to see what's growing into my child.  Every so often, I look at the picture that they sent home with us, and I stare in complete disbelief that I'm going to be a father.  I see it clear as a bell, and I'm elated and horrified all at once.

Anyway, this has gone on long enough.  Thanks for listening to me ramble.  Remember, you might need art and I definitely need to make money, so let's put those together and make everyone happy!

Commissions are open.

In thinking about latest despair over the growing inability to be creative, I think a jam partner might help me; someone to force me into productivity.  Anyone know of a "jam group" or interested in taking on this charity case?