This is Your Brain on Chronic Illness

The Silver Metal Struggle

I wasn’t sure I should ever make something like this public, but I have often blogged about chronic illness and it’s effect on my energy. When I try to explain to people how it manifests itself re: my precious spatial reasoning skills, they just give me a blank look.

So some years ago when working on this cover for a Trina Robbins’ adaptation of Tanith Lee’s The Silver Metal Lover, I scanned each stage of the process so people could see the struggle is real.

The Silver Metal Lover is one of my favorite books of all time. And as most of my readers know, I rarely use reference when I draw. Most of the people I create are entirely from imagination.

Not always, but mostly.

I have had a very strong image of the main character Silver in my mind for many years, and I feel a great obligation to do right by this book. But without a live model, it can be extra rough. Also, I got a start on this drawing about 9 PM when I was tired, and as the evening dragged on, I struggled more and more with it, finally calling it quits at 4 AM, and then getting up at 11 AM the next day to nail it.

I thought this looked pretty good, but on closer examination, I could see how the features are crooked and the eyes don't fit in the skull.

A lot of rendering went into this, but the drawing is still way off. The more I run out of steam, the worse it gets.

Once again, I move things around, render a lot, and still get failure. I simply could not make it work. My poor brain is just not processing.

I also realized that the art was set on the drawing board at too steep an angle. This distorts your field of vision. I have poor eyesight, and larger pieces are hard to see. I have to keep moving the art up and down to tell what I am doing. I have made the face too long and so I move the eyes down.

This probably sounds weird, but looking at the art backwards or scanning it and looking at it on the computer screen helps me to see properly.

Moving the eyes down a bit further and shortening the chin fixes most of the issues with the head. I've also strengthened his arm.

There are days I nail it right away, and days I just can't seem to manage it.

It is vitally important that your art be set at the right angle while you draw. If it is too flat, everything you do will be distorted. And if you have compromised eyesight like me, everything just a few inches out of the ideal range of your glasses will also be distorted.

If I’m not feeling well that day, it’s not a good day to pencil. I try to switch to some other task which doesn’t require as much mental energy. No one will appreciate my saying that things like inking or coloring require less energy, but they do require less of my…um…processor. I’m not having the same spatial issues as I have when trying to pencil. When inking, I stick to tasks like panel borders and clouds and spotting blacks. When coloring, I stick to things like doing large areas of flat color that I render when I’m feeling better.

If you have long term health issues, planning art tasks around bad days can help you maintain some level of progress. Otherwise, you waste energy like I did on this cover.

It’s one reason (among many) why I often do pages out of order on a big project: I pick easy things to do on bad days.

Here’s the final drawing.

And the final digital painting.