:-(

Whatever Happened to…Tim Fish?

Compelled to draw Aggie's demise despite tears and snot. 

Hello!

Don’t be alarmed, it’s really me, posting to my nearly-defunct sketchblog to the delight of my 73 followers. It’s been Over a year since my last post, and perhaps you’ve wondered where I’ve been?

Exiting 2011, I wasn’t having fun doing comics or drawing, so I stopped. I was travelling a lot for my day job early 2012, and then in March, I had to put my poor dog Aggie to sleep. I was sad for some time, and as I emerged from this, my dad and I continued renovating my kitchen. This led to me refinishing furniture over the summer, and then designing & building furniture in the fall.

In that sense, I never stopped being productive or creative, and have emerged with some custom furniture commissions. Yay!  

I also didn't attend a single comic book convention or festival in 2012. First time I had a con-free year in over a decade! I finally began to miss drawing, and I tried drawing a page or two on my half-finished "baby" OGN. It was awful! My line quality had gone to shit. I stopped page-drawing in lieu of practicing in my sketchbook.

As I was getting back up to speed, I decided to brush up my websites a bit (also unedited in 2012). Done. More soon. So here we go, my sketchblog goal is to catch up the entire year one month. 

Let’s see how it plays out.

Poor Aggie—!

I just scanned this from Adam's sketchbook. I had drawn this in February to explain the horrific event of the morning.

Aggie, now 11, starting tripping and falling casually in the past year. However, in February, she took two nasty spills.

The first, I was taking her outside, and she was was a bit excited, and missed a step, ultimately "sliding" down the small flight of steps to my building. I felt really awful.

Later that week, she was bounding inside my apartment, eagerly seeking her toy, Person. Twisting awkwardly, she slipped and landed hard on her left hind hip. In the days that followed, she would yelp in pain if I touched her, or even at random moments.

Not sure if it was the first fall, second, or combination, but she ruptured a knee ligament. Fortunately, she did not need surgery, and recovered just by me making sure she stayed calm and not playful. That was a challenge as she started to feel better.

Kick ahead 6 months, and she'd basically fine...though less and less playful. She is having an increasingly difficult time getting up and laying down. If she's not laying on a rug, I have to help her up. And, I must limit moving about my loftspace too much: being a sheepdog, she's hard-wired to make sure she keeps close track of me. If I move too far from her, she compulsively follows. Sometimes, if I am not mindful and move around a lot, I catch her laying down only to struggle to get up less than a minute later. Repeat, repeat, repeat. Until I make her stay in a spot that she can monitor me without getting up.

When I saw this sketch hanging out with Adam this morning, I blurted out "Poor Aggie—!" before I was consciously aware that I had titled the sketch that.

A decade of vaccuuming and lint rolling

Happy Anniversary Aggie!—Ten years ago, my folks trudged up to Vermont after I saw an ad for a one-year old Old English Sheepdog. My family had owned several of the breed over the years, and is fond of their clown-like exuberance.

Turns out ol' Ags was coming from an abusive home, shy around most people, and terrified of children. She was 20 pounds underweight, and she had a number of infections, plus wood worms.

The first year was spent aclimitizing her to the leash, people, and putting weight on and her health stabilizing.

The second year was spent dealing with some puppy-like naughtiness. Nothing bad.

After about 5 years or so, she started coming out of her shell around new people more quickly. And now today, there's almost no hesitation indoors. Outdoors, she's still leery of people.

About a year ago, she started being a bit Ok around children. Last week, she let a two year old hug her even.

I don't draw her much, though she is a constant source of laughter and joy for me. This sketch I did after the poor girl was victim to static electricity. Adam Leveille inked it.



Pic 1 was about a month after I got her. She is rail thin, but her hair started to grow finally, and she looks a bit happy. Pic 2 is just after her grooming yesterday, enjoying a dog biscuit. Pic 3 is lounging on the shag rug she's taken a shine to.

It's bath weekend once every three weeks. It begins with clipping her nails, and trimming the hair between her pads and other places (30 minutes), then the bath itself (30 minutes), then towel drying her and cleaning up (30 minutes). After a break of some time, it's on to combing (1.5-2 hours). I estimate in the past decade 510 hours (or, 21 days) have been spent grooming her. Of her 170 baths, I've had assistance for about 15 of them.

She's a sweet girl though. Average life expectancy is 8, so she's doing alright for a dog with such a shakey start to life.

Annotated living room

I am part of "A Drawing Collective" that exists on Facebook. The latest assignment is to draw a room in our home. Thought it would be fun to annotate my drawing here. (1) my apartment is in fact this orderly... or at least my living room is... the kitchen is a mess. From upper left: (2) vintage mid-50s black-ocean globe, (3) Chynna Clugston page from Scooter Girl, (4) Peanuts books, (5) Bose iPod dock, (6) lava lamp, (7) another Scooter Girl page, (8) little TV and DVD player, (9) Corto Maltese book atop the trunk I bought to go away to college, (10) Bryan Lee O'Malley Scott Pilgrim page, (11) housewarming plant that Andy gave me 18 months ago—a miracle as I usually kill them within 3 months, (12) antique library card catalog drawers holding DVDs that my great-aunt found in the dump, (13) '30s Morris chair from my parents house, (14) barometer and hygrometer—gift from Rich since I always want to guage humidity, (15) large mirror covering large holes in the wall, (16) key rack with almost no keys on it, (17) '30s book case I had as a boy, (18) disposable rug available every fall at the grocery store for students moving in, (19) Aggie.

Pleasure bent again

I managed to get in lots of sketching while stuck in Paris, Dublin, and Shannon airports. On the left is a tree of knowledge, with the thoughts of a cute French librarian reading beneath a tree. Funny how when you have literally hours to kill in an uncomfortable chair, how many leaves you don't mind drawing. Almost immediately on arriving home, I turned around to get to NYC for the NY Comic Con and a week of MIT business, pleasure bent again. Here, poor Ags greets me after my alarm goes off at 4:30 AM in order for me to catch my train. I was intrigued by a week in NYC (while I've been many many times, I don't think for a whole week before!), but also completely not in the mood to be leaving home so soon. And ol' Ags was REALLY mad when I left! She's generally not a barker, but she was barking up a storm as I snuck out at 5:15 while she was eating her breakfast.