Today is the day! My deadline of having a completed comic written and drawn by me is here!

I’ll be honest, it is in no way done. I got a bit bogged down in the details. Work and side gigs got a bit time-consuming. Doubt in my ability to even make it in the first place slowed me down a good bit. So, I decided to take a little break. In order to keep benefiting the creative process, that break still included some type of art.

Recently, I was given a subscription to Skillshare on my birthday. ‘Thank you, again,’ to all those who helped get my first year’s subscription. There are so many classes available to learn just about anything. After a while of looking, I found “Making Your First Zine: From Idea to Illustration” by Kate Bingaman-Burt. It was a fun and short class that really stirred up my creative juices.

The result was a cute one-page zine about where I like my chocolate. Since I had previously completed the Doodle Magic Basic & Advanced Techniques by Yasmina Creates, it was easy to stick to the 1-hour limit for working on the project.

After making clean black lines in Adobe Illustrator, everything was put together using a template within Photoshop. All you have to do is print it out, fold, and cut to make a little booklet.

After doing this zine, I went to Minicon at Sewell Mill Library and had a great time. We didn’t even know about convention until about a week before. It was very well organized and had some great activities. One activity included making zines. So, you know I was all up for it.

I chose the topic of ‘making comics’ and after a bit, I flipped back to the front page to add ‘badly.’ This was a testament to how I have been working through my Summoned Mate project.

I’m planning on doing several more of these and will offer them as little gifts and/or $1-2 items at my tables in the future. At least these little projects are able to be completed quickly. It does take more time, depending on how much detail is added, but you are done when you want to be done.

This is not a paid promotion for Skillshare or anything like that. Just a recommendation to take some lessons and try something new when you get bogged down. I’ve found more information about making zines on YouTube.

What do you do to clear up the fog during your creative process?