Hi there Reader!

I hope you're having a great weekend! This week we're gonna go over my progress on the book, and I want to talk a bit about focus and balancing work that pays the bills and work that feeds the soul 🌸

Book 👏 Report! 👏

First of all, I just want to thank you all for checking out the book preview I sent out yesterday!

I appreciate all the feedback you gave me, and I’ll make sure to take it into consideration. If you also have some comments you’d like to share, feel free to reply!

And in case you missed it, check last week’s email! (or send me a message if it got lost)

But now let’s go back to the art!

This week was a rough one when it comes to energy and time, but I managed to ink 3 illustrations and color 2 1 of them (oops, didn't had as much time as I hoped).

I’ll try to maintain this rhythm going forward, depending on the complexity of each illustrations.

It means that the book will be ready at the beginning of next year; I was hoping to publish it before Christmas, but considering the amount of details I’m putting into each illustration, it’s really not feasible.

But I’m okay with that! I have a clear picture of what I need to do, and I now just need to execute it. But I’ll also definitely scale back if I want to do another book haha

You’ll notice that I haven’t tackled shadows and highlights yet, and that’s because my process for adding those is very simple and straightforward; so I’m not worried about keeping it for the end, where I’ll be able to do it in batch.

Quick info about the book’s publishing: I have slightly revised my plan for the publishing of the book, and I’m happy to say that there will be an option to get the book outside of Amazon as well! Not to bore you with the technical details, but I just wanted to share this in case you’d prefer not to shop there

How I (try) to balance my work and my art

I'm working a full-time job and I think you probably are in the same situation, where you're trying to balance your passions and hobbies with your main activity.

For that reason, I'm trying my best to get what I can out of my free time while still getting some proper rest.

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Escape the shadow realm

In that context, the shadow realm is the place during the day when you’re not quite working, but not quite relaxing either. It’s exactly the point where you try to do both.

For example, having a video in the background at work, having the work Slack open when you’re playing a game, or listening to a podcast while working on a project.

Your brain often feels more productive or more relaxed in the moment, but in the end you haven’t gotten much done, and you’re left feeling like you didn’t relax either. In fact it's costing you quite a lot of energy.

Here are my main goals to avoid this pitfall:

• Having a clear start/end for my day job
  ​I have both the immense benefit and the challenge of working from home, which makes the barrier between work and everyday life blurry to say the least. So having clear hours for myself, as well as different users on my computer for different kinds of work, has been really helpful.
• Using a timer and the Pomodoro technique 🍅​
  If you're not familiar with it, feel free to look up Pomodoro technique; but I’m personally convinced that the main benefit of this method is simply to have a timer running, no matter the duration, rhythm or the break time. I often just set a timer for 10 minutes to get myself to work on an illustration. It feels insignificant, but one after the other I have made it through a lot of blocks this way!

Those ideas are simple, but they could be useful for you if you’re on the same boat as me :)

Here we are for today! See you next week for more progress on my illustrated book 🌸

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Take care,
- Nighten