Being a production artist isn’t always fun. Working with deadlines is a challenge, especially when you live in 2020.

Today…I woke up and got to work right away, but knew that my family would be heading to the nearest COVID rapid testing center as soon as my wife was awake.

So we hit the road bright and early, then spent the next six hours in the car with kids, waiting our turn to get tested, trying to keep the children sane (and maintain our own sanity) in the process.

That dramatically cut into ALL of my time today, and I was exhausted by the time I got to actually work on a design for a client who is coming in TOMORROW.

My warmup page was definitely forced. And I wasn’t able to use my drawing glove on the tablet today, so my palm kept sticking to the screen.

I started off my gestures with a good one! Then I kept getting more and more frustrated about the friction of my hand on the screen as each gesture passed. I think you can tell when I “gave up.”

And last, but not least, the rough sketch / lay in for the Beetlejuice tattoo I’m doing tomorrow.

I’m out of steam right now, so I’m going to call it a night, try to get some rest, then wake up early to work on finishing this design to the point that it’ll make a good stencil.

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What went well?

• My family doesn’t have COVID!
• I just purchased a HUGE model pack for my figure studies. I’m excited about that. 🙂

What needs work?

• I need to work further ahead on my designs, and I need to slow down my large-scale work so I’m not crushed my deadlines.

What did I learn?

Rapid testing centers aren’t very rapid. It was an hour driving there, 4 hours of waiting, and an hour driving back. That sucked out every ounce of energy I had.

Also, drawing on my tablet monitor without a glove sucks.