Back in the land of the living...

Managed to get myself really sick last week - my health is usually pretty good and I don't get ill all that often, but when I do catch a bug it seems to strike with a vengeance! Whatever it was, it came bundled with a fairly fiery fever and it knocked the stuffing out of me. I knew I was really sick when I couldn't be bothered turning on the computer to check my email and... horrors!... I couldn't even sit at the drawing table. About all I was good for was lying in bed and sleeping or (with a marginal improvement in my condition) lying in front of the TV watching DVDs (Batman Begins, Spidermans 1 & 2 and the Fantastic Four - and, as an aside, I'm glad I gave the FF movie a second chance... I've decided it wasn't a dire as Catwoman, it could've been a lot better but at least they were pitching in the light direction - unlike Catwoman. Yes, I am a geek!)

So I'm actually on a planned break from work now - all of February. My intention all along was to get into some serious writing, drawing and sorting out of my cartooning business model. I will be taking some time to go away as well... I'm not a total workaholic!

To date I've managed to get quite a bit done already although, as usual, I've probably planned to do way too much as well.
My drawing skills and speed seem to have passed through a bit of a barrier since January - depending on the complexity of the art required I can draw and colour a whole page in a day - a few Sundays ago I actually managed two whole pages. That's rather wonderful and somewhat astounding, especially considering it used to take me several days to do a page about five years ago. Ten years ago I guess I'd be lucky to even finish a page, let alone a story. The discipline required by the self-imposed deadlines of (too many) webcomics has certainly been a good taskmaster!