Done, Done, Done at Last!

At 12:52 p.m. on February 25th, 2013, I finished coloring the last of the 112 expressions flashcards I was commissioned to make for a kindergarten in Shimo-kitazawa.

With the completion of "Do you have any pets?" I had one final task to undertake: break out my blueline pencil and markers one last time and draw a backing for each of the three remaining sets of cards.

It's always a struggle to go back to drawing after a time away, frustrating to find your hands unaccustomed to shaping characters you were once able to form by instinct—even if "once" was just two months ago.

Once I finally got them pieced together, I had to remember how I colored them (the knights used a completely different technique that I simply took for granted I would remember), and finally how I processed and layered them to make the tinted card backing. When I'd done it for the first set I completed almost exactly a year ago, the process was so simple I hadn't bothered to make note of it. It took me an hour of fiddling to figure it out again.

At 1:23 p.m. this afternoon, I completed the final backing, bringing to a close the single largest project I have completed in my life. About an hour later I shipped it to the client. 

There's more to be done, of course. I have to figure out how to make these things into proper cards (I know at least one possible printer), and I'd like to put them together into a series of coloring books. But the base material is finished. Now I just need to take a few days to catch up on the things I've let slide for far too long—like cleaning my apartment and exercising.

That said, I've already started putting resources together to produce my first play, No Time to Wait. Hard for me to sit still.

Some day it'll actually be productive...

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