I’m on a cusp of some kind, folks. A creative discombobblement of uncertain duration has me thrown off-stride. Once I’ve completed cover art for a print version of my webcomic series "Mark the Art Guy," that Adobe-commissioned venture will begin receding into the past. It’s been a challenging commercial endeavor, and Adobe has deep enough pockets to have made it rewarding. But it’s been a real time hog as well, commandeering the lion’s share of my working hours ever since I was invited by a charmer in the software giant’s marketing branch to undertake it back in March of 2006.

That was roughly a month after this blog went online. Since then, as fate would have it, I’ve enjoyed an uptick in freelance opportunities on top of the long-running Adobe gig. That’s been a welcome change from the previous several years of comparative drought, so don’t take anything I say about its ramifications as a complaint. Between the payments from Adobe and the fees from other clients, I’ve been able to take comfort in better bank balances for a while. That’s been an unfamiliar sensation.

There’s been a downside to that income boomlet, though. I’ve had frustratingly little control over my own time, which means that the "real" part of being an artist—"following my muse," to use a term that has a grandiose ring but nevertheless cuts to the bone of my tender psyche—has gotten short shrift.

And now summer approaches. That almost always means a slowdown in freelance assignments, so unless something unexpected crops up the way Adobe’s proposal did last year, I’ll have at least a temporary increase in thinking time accompanied by a rise in anxieties over (a) money, and (b) my future.

Some of my time is already booked, of course. I will be leading a two-week comics-creation workshop at BArT, a charter school in Adams, beginning next Tuesday, and there are a couple of other personal projects-in-progress await completion. But hovering over everything is my need to find fresh ways to earn a living even as I toy with freeing my beleaguered muse from her cage—a cage I’ve been forced by circumstance to leave her pacing back andf forth in in for so long it hurts.

Freeing one’s muse! That sounds like a Good Thing, right! Artists should do that kind of thing.

But that muse of mine is one flakey dame when it comes to helping me earn a living. Allowing her to roam about my battered brain, free as a bird, can be emotionally harrowing unless I go whole hog and truly give her free reign. Then she gets spoiled by freedom (don’t we all?) and throws a tantrum if I show any sign that I have more cage-living in mind for her. The bond between her soul and mine runs deep, and I know from experience that forcing her back into hibernation after allowing her some time outdoors will be torture of a high order for both of us.

The ideal situation, of course, is to be paid sufficiently by some publisher, sponsor, or patron (dream on about that last one!) while taking whatever path my muse wants me to take for however long is required. That actually happened in 1990, when DC Comics contracted me to write and draw Stuck Rubber Baby. It had happened before that in 1983, when The Advocate signed me up for what became a nearly six-year stint drawing the Wendel comic strip series.

But it hasn’t happened often during my decades of professional cartooning, and there’s no particular reason to think that it’s going to happen this summer.

Which leaves me wondering: should I be spending what time I do have available at this juncture composing blog entries for free?

It’s hard to know. Color me uncertain.

I will be doing black and white line art, no cross hatching. Color graduated tones. I’m basically going to draw and ink the motion lines with the rest of the artwork, yet my confusion comes in how to transform the color of the motion lines to another color in Photoshop and fade it to make it look like motion lines. Ultimately I’m trying to achieve smooth free and loose motion lines rather than if I would use the mouse and draw it directly on the computer, which would cause "nervous looking motion lines."

HOWARD TO GREG: Nothing beats the pen tool for creating "smooth" motion lines. Just create the path you want, convert the path to a selection, and fill the selection (on a separate layer) with black, gray, or whatever color you like.

Since you’re shading and coloring digitally, you automatically have at least one special tool available: partial transparency for layers. Coupled with broad brush effects or the eraser tool set on its brush rather than pencil mode, you can create a streak through the "air" that is strong near the sword (or whatever) and fainter as you approach the opposite end of the trail.

If you like you can use the blur filter to soften the edges of your actual speed lines.

STEVE TO HOWARD: Enjoyed your comic [For those who came in late, Steve’s referring to my Mark the Art Guy webcomic—H.C.] for Adobe. It has that animated Wolverton/Crumb look I like. But I have to ask: did you ink all, much or any or it with Illustrator (and a Wacom?). I’ve just discovered how smooth the brush tool in it works with my graphire and I’m using it to ink some drawings for a flash animation. Never thought my shaky hand would be able to ink with the computer.

HOWARD TO STEVE: I’m glad you’ve enjoyed my Mark strips. As for the tools I’ve used for that project: Adobe Illustrator has been extensively used for special effects (for simulating elements that have precision aspects like, for example, the grids that appear in my Mark strips when Vanishing Point is used).

But no, the Wacom tablet I bought years ago (but never mastered) has not been involved in my Mark drawings. I really should have another go at getting comfortable with that device; I know a lot of artists who really like it, as you do. Looking at a screen instead of my hand while I was drawing spooked me! I’ve gotta get over that—but finding time to learn new skills has been hard of late.

There’s a lot of digital-to-pen-&-ink-and-back-to-digital back-and-forth action in my way of working (some of which I’ve touched on in earlier blog entries), but my initial drawing still happens on paper. Sketches are scanned for fine-tuning compositions and finished art is scanned for clean-ups, corrections, and coloring. But thanks for reminding me that I really shouldn’t be letting that Wacom tablet gather dust on a shelf!

HOWARD to BLOG READERS: If you visit Steve’s web site, Caricatures Etc., you’ll discover that he can whip out a mean caricature from a submitted photo. Got a friend who deserves a unique gift sometime soon?

That’s me: not just one in a million, but one in twelve million!

(What took Howard so long? I’m sure you were asking before I finally jumped into the swim last February. The 11,999,999 weblogs already available for perusal could hardly have been leaving you sated, after all. Only the addition to the mix of my own inimitable ruminations could possibly fill the gaping online vacuum that remained.)

So here I am, and a few people seem to be reading what I write. Some dedicated blog-readers even leave comments responding to my posts. God bless them every one, since each such instance of individual feedback helps reassure me that I am not performing for an empty house.

Usable data remains scarce, though, about what’s being most or least enjoyed by the larger (if not necessarily large) pool of silent visitors who may or may not find find old drawing from my files amusing or care to learn from me that my dog is cute.

Still, each bit of data is useful, so I took note when a friend told me recently that he resists posting feedback about my entries because to do so he would first be required to register his email address with an online service called TypeKey.

His unease is understandable, since giving one’s name and email address to any online entity brings with it fears that a fresh flood of spam will follow.

But for what it’s worth: the TypeKey authentication process comes recommended by Jason Bergman, the trusted friend who’s been my full-service web enabler for years. Indeed, not only is a registree’s confidentiality respected by TypeKey but the service also functions as a deterrent to twisted souls who might be inclined to maliciously undermine the blog itself.

"Spam became a major problem for me when I had free-for-all comment posting," Jason explains with regard to his own blogging experiences, "and I just got sick of it. With TypeKey, that’s not much of a problem. … Plus you can ban people this way if they post anything offensive. Again it’s rare, but it’s nice to have that power."

I give weight to Jason’s opinions in general, and there’s no denying that some blogs have been seriously — in some cases even fatally — overwhelmed by malicious flamers eager to dump truckloads of negativity into a weblog’s comment bin unless someone is checking IDs at the door. And openly gay bloggers like me can be especially tempting targets.

Hence my mild little TypeKey shield. But really, no one should mistake its presence for an unwelcome mat.

One thing that may have been confusing to my friend is that, since he was reading my post on its primary home page rather than on the page provided to RSS subscribers, clicking the link would itself produce no effect, since the point of that link was to make sure that the act of resubscribing was being untaken from the correct starting point. If you want to see what I mean, click here.

Y’see? If you’re not already accessing this page via an RSS feed, nothing will change, because you’re already standing where I need you to stand.

But beyond that curiosity, my friend may be encountering a speed bump that was discussed here back in March, which seemed to be related to platform and browser issues. Specifically, readers who have used Microsoft Explorer to arrive at this blog may encounter resistance if they try to subscribe.

This can be overcome! Or at least, I assume it can, since I’ve received no further complaints since the following two entries were posted.

First read the post from March 24.

Then read the followup from March 27.

If neither of these proves helpful, please let me know. I want my loyal readers to be able to subscribe to my timeless ramblings if they wish to.

P.S. When I’m reading RSS-enabled blogs on my Mac using Safari, there’s a little blue RSS icon at the top of the page (see my illustrations yesterday and today) that will start the subscription ball rolling if you click on it. If you’re a Windows user and you don’t spot such an icon, scroll down the page and look for a sidebar link that reads something along the lines of "Subscribe to this weblog."

(A) Hearty thanks. Your loyalty warms my hearts; and

(B) Now please pay attention!!! I am re-routing my RSS feeds today so that I will have a better way of monitoring my blog’s popularity.

Now I know that you could care less whether I feel popular or not, but bear with me. I have deep emotional scars going back to my junior high school social-inadequacy traumas that make me disgustingly needy when it comes to knowing if anybody is bothering to read my little Cruseland chronicle. (ARE YOU STILL PAYING ATTENTION???)

Good. Here’s what I need for you to do so that your RSS subscription will not abruptly vanish and leave you stranded in a Cruse-deprived wasteland.

(1) Please return to my weblog’s home page by clicking on this link.

(2) Subscribe all over again as if you hadn’t done so before. (Remember: subscribing doesn’t cost you anything!)

That’s it! That’s all you need to do. If you follow these simple instructions your new RSS subscription will take over where your old one left off.

But if you don’t do as I ask, you’ll never hear from my blog again and will mistakenly believe that I am no longer adding new entries. Others will continue to bask in my amusing words and pictures regularly while your life becomes sadder, emptier, and more isolated by the day. Eventually you’ll have to increase your daily dosage of anti-depressants just to fend off thoughts of suicide. That could be costly.

So don’t let such a sad fate befall you.

Re-subscribe!

TODAY!!!

ME TO BRUCE: …I was interrupted just now by Eddie, who is having trouble subscribing to my blog’s RSS feed. Eddie’s a PC guy working with Windows XP and Internet Explorer 6. My web-enabler says that RSS feeds are a cross-platform program. But when Eddie clicks on my blog’s "Subscribe to this blog" link, he just gets the blog’s source code.

I know that your own blog is now RSS enabled. On my Mac (using Safari on MacOSX 4.0) when I click on your RSS link I get the trimmed down version of your blog, but Eddie gets source code. Do you have any insights of what may be going on?

Two responses from Bruce arrived on successive days.

BRUCE TO ME: You asked about why Eddie is getting only source code while you’re getting the posts off the RSS link on my blog and I’ve been trying to understand how that might be happening, and to do that I’ve had to dive into the mechanics of the whole RSS thing because I really don’t understand it.  I just asked my new web host to enable RSS when we moved my blog to WordPress and he did it.  That’s how I got mine set up.

So I’m still digging, which is why I haven’t answered yet.  This is why I’m making a pretty good living doing computer work.  I had an employer once who complemented me on my "stick to it-ness" and I didn’t have the heart to tell him it wasn’t work ethic, but more like Obsessive Compulsive Disorder when it comes to computers.  My thoughts just get sucked into the algorithms and I have to understand what the f*** is going on here…  A shrink could probably help me with it, but it’s paying my bills.

Then, the next day:

BRUCE TO ME AGAIN: What’s happening is the stylesheet isn’t being picked up by the Windows browsers for some reason.  I get the same result with FireFox on Windows.  What Eddie is seeing is the xml, without the style sheet applied.  Not sure why that’s happening at this point.

I suppose I could just give in and ask my web host to fix it.  He’s a Mac guy too and so he probably didn’t notice.  The reason I didn’t notice at first was that I don’t use the RSS feed.  But I just got into trying to figure this thing out. 

I’ve been doing this to myself for years with Cricket.  We have students here at Johns Hopkins who play it during the warmer months.  I’ve been watching them for years, trying to determine what the rules are, from how they’re playing.  Not much luck so far, except I think it has something do to with knocking that twig off those three upright wooden posts behind the batter.  I still haven’t got a clue how they score the damn thing.  I could just ask, but I’m determined to figure it out for myself.  Some days I’m watching them, and I catch myself thinking that Cricket is one of those dry jokes the British like playing on people.

Some of you who are reading this may have thoughts of your own to offer — whether on RSS feeds or Cricket.