Arduous

in which our hero continues to fight the good fight

Dear Readers,

Two months later, and the creative process on The Blood of Seven Queens #6 continues to be arduous at best. The only bright side? It’s given me an excuse to use the word arduous in a sentence. And that’s just a fun word to say, ain’t it? Try saying it out loud. No, seriously. Try it. It doesn’t feel so arduous to say arduous now, does it?

After hitting another major impasse a couple of weeks ago and fighting through a nervous breakdown because of it, I pushed back my deadline on the issue again. And earlier this week, I feared I would have to do the same thing one more time. But I do seem to finally be making progress. And so, our target release date remains February 2026 for now.

The culprit this time was an establishing shot, which longtime readers will recall is the kind of illustration that makes me want to jump off a bridge nearly every time. I just don’t seem capable of getting down on paper the ideas that I have in my head, no matter how many YouTube videos I watch on the subject.

The trouble is that the creation of a good establishing shot takes time. Unless you’re willing to turn the process over to AI, you just need to prepare yourself for long, long haul. And if you try to skip or skimp on any stage of the process—research, thumbnailing, etc.—you will fail.

At least you will if you’re me.

I have at least four different versions of the latest establishing shot of my Emerald City. One was an attempt at the shot I’ve been trying to illustrate since I first started work on The Blood of Seven Queens over two years ago—a recreation of this fantastic image by Amogh Manjunath.

For a while I was actually making decent headway on it, feeling like this might finally be the moment I figured it out. But then, once I got past the foreground elements, I got so lost in trying to figure out perspective and/or work in 3D elements that I was ready to throw out the whole issue and delete the whole series from existence.

I wasn’t sure I was going to share this failed attempt, but you know what, what the hell? I want to illustrate just how far I got before I gave up and tried a different approach, if only to show others who might be struggling that sometimes you do just have to walk away and try something else.

In the end, I rewrote the script and the lore surrounding my version of the Emerald City to make things easier for myself. Then I started in on the approach that I’m just about finished with now. I won’t show that yet, since it’ll probably be in the issue and I’m kind of afraid of jinxing myself, but rest assured that I feel like I might finally be getting somewhere.

And once I get there, I’ll only have four pages left to go until I’m done with this veritable ordeal of an issue. Then, fingers crossed, I can move on to something far less arduous. Because, as fun as that word is to say, living through it sucks.

Yours,
Chris