mastodon 4.7.3I'm Jan — writer, painter, comic maker, musician.
Literary fiction in Swedish, everything else in English. I document the practice at jansandstorm.com
If you make things without agenda, we'll probably get along.
#AmWriting #AmReading #MastoArt #MastoMusic #IndieComics #IndieWeb #guitar
I'm Jan — writer, painter, comic maker, musician.
Literary fiction in Swedish, everything else in English. I document the practice at jansandstorm.com
If you make things without agenda, we'll probably get along.
#Introduction #AmWriting #AmReading #MastoArt #MastoMusic #IndieComics #IndieWeb #guitar
A comic finished in a month — and what that revealed: constraint as method, the handlettering question, and why each creative discipline feels less like a variation and more like a different species entirely.
https://jansandstorm.com/36-newsletter-6.html
#amwriting #indiecomics #mastoart
Three months after leaving a long career, I wrote this first newsletter. A camper van, two university courses, a studio built, and a first attempt at a website no algorithm will ever find.
Finishing a first comic taught me that writing comics and making a comic are two different disciplines. The gap between them is where most projects quietly die.
@thibaultamartin@mamot.fr This is interesting — I run a hand-written HTML site and search is one of the things I've accepted living without. Pagefind sounds like it might actually work. Thanks for sharing
The thing that actually drives me isn’t finishing a piece. It’s the moment when something that seemed impossible last month quietly becomes possible. Any finished work is a byproduct of that. This can be hard to explain to people who are oriented around delivery.
#writing #comics #creativity #art #process
I built my website https://jansandstorm.com
to escape “like-for-like” culture.
It’s now a slow space on the web.
I guess that made me part of the IndieWeb: personal, passion-driven sites for readers ( vs corporate platforms for user-accounts controlled by algorithms)?
Woman and umbrella.
I started out with a pretty good pencil under-drawing but once that disappeared under paint things started to shift and float in different directions.
The main #learning was to not focuse on a separate part at the time (like the hand, umrella or face), and instead keep moving around all over the painting, always looking at the whole thing.
Two years into working full-time with writing, comics, painting and music. Newsletter #5 is about what happened when the transition finally settled — productivity without to-do lists, music moving from paper to recording, and a manuscript waiting for a decision.
I finished my first comic! Sixteen traditionally made and hand-lettered black and white pages, plus covers.
The story is about wild-life photography couple who find themselves trapped in the wilderness when their mobile home breaks down.
Gradually it becomes clear that the engine problem was no accident and that the beautiful surroundings are hiding a deadly threat.
https://jansandstorm.com/34-Little_Eagle_Down_Comic_by_Jan_Sandstrom.html
@lrt_writes@mstdn.party Hi Lisa — thanks for the welcome!
Comic art panel: Working on finishing my first ever #comic as part of a course I am taking. (Making comics is a lot more work than I thought🥴)
I dropped the to-do list. Instead I use marbles: each one represents about fifteen minutes of focused work. When I run out, I can stop with a clear conscience. It’s like a done-list, but without specified items — the opposite logic of most productivity systems, which tell you what to do before you start.
A professional artist once described his process: he starts painting, puts some color on the canvas, and explores what the painting ‘wants to become.’
At that point I dismissed it as almost cheating.
It took Marguerite Duras, Haruki Murakami and Stephen King saying essentially the same thing before I started listening.
https://jansandstorm.com/31-what_the_painting_wants_to_become.html
I just upgraded my home grown website https:/jansandstorm.com with some new functionality.
A section from a recent acrylic painting, based on a photo I took in a bar in Reykjavík. I think the background turned out best this time.
I share more about the process behind it in my newsletter/website, welcome to subscribe!
Close up of a dried artichoke in a recent acrylic painting.
The full painting didn’t quite come together they way I wished, but if you’re into slow art journeys and imperfect learning curves, you’re welcome to my newsletter/website to see more.
Before Little Eagle Down: Comic storyboarding and planning phase — building the scene structure before a single finished page was drawn.
https://jansandstorm.com/20-Comics_pre-production_assignment.html
The summer I left my career, I read fifteen books in a few months — Woolf, Kafka, Munro, Dostoevsky, Bulgakov, Strindberg. Not a plan, just hunger. The list is on my site.
https://jansandstorm.com/2-summer_books_2024.html
#amreading #writing
Hergé needed about a year for a 60-page Tintin album. Glyn Dillon took four years for the 200 pages of The Nao of Brown.
Almost a week per page — for both, across very different eras and styles.
Short story in swedish.
Tjugonde november. Novell på hemsidan.
Hösten 1700 — Narva är omringat. Kommendant Horn vet att ammunitionen håller på att ta slut och att undsättning förmodligen inte hinner fram.
The hardest shift in my working process was giving up the idea that I should know what something will become before I start making it.
"Planning" felt efficient and responsible. "Discovering" felt like cheating. It took time to see it the other way around.
https://jansandstorm.com/31-what_the_painting_wants_to_become.html
A second comic: The Seed of Light. Eight black and white pages. A journalist, a vanished researcher, and a diamond with a void at its core.
https://jansandstorm.com/35-The_Seed_of_Light_Comic_by_Jan_Sandstrom.html
#indiecomics #mastoart #comics