WIP

Stands for Work in Progress and Water Is Pouring*.

Sometimes I have trouble drawing my own characters, which absolutely drives me nuts. I've drawn Bill Dickey hundreds of times. SO why am I unable to nail down his face and head for this cover? I've erased enough attempts that I took him off the board and worked on tracing paper, so I can make all the mistakes without adding a gray mess to the cover. I only have Pete settled and hopefully I'll have Bill on there (or at least sketched in decently) tonight. Then I have to work out Josh and Jerry and the background elements. And a logo. Doing a cover first and not having a great idea of the logo/title going in isn't ideal. I half--assed the title placement and will draw it on a separate sheet for Sarah to drop in, or someone at Dark Horse if necessary. This thing needed to get done a while ago, like too many things. Oy vey.

Anyway, the positive angle is that I 'm pretty happy with this rough take on Bill, and can move forward. It's going slowly but I think the end result will be really solid.

*Our toilet broke and we had a small flood. Couldn't get any of the 24-hour emergency plumbers to come over, so we're making do. Or, uh, not. Ha ha. I actually kind of dislike actual toilet humor.

I'm staying up until we hear back from Richmond Heating and Plumbing to set things up, supposedly I'll get a call around 8-9 am. Then Sarah will be up in time for them to show up. The plumber I talked to was out on a job and dealing with a bad water heater emergency while he was on the phone, he was very cool. and advised us to wait until morning for a non-emergency call to save $100 an hour. Fingers crossed it isn't a horribly big job. Oy gevalt. I love older houses but not the way this one is aging. Then again, better the house falls apart than us.

Since I'll be up for another five or six hours, I'm sitting with my board at the computer desk, doing an AMA on Bluesky (it's late so no one's actually Asking Me Anything) and working on the cover and a few endlessly WIP commissions.

The b&w version of the rough is what I'll be using to trace Bill onto the cover. I only learned a few months ago that I could change a drawing to b&w. I'm ridiculous.