October 4, 2009
“bleed and feed”: hey, it works for me.
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As a working artist, I divide my day into two parts. “Bleed and Feed”.
The Bleed Part. Taking care of business. Doing work for my clients. Working on new Cube Grenade ideas etc. Trying to find new clients etc. Trying to get my bills paid etc etc.
The Feed Part. I go and make drawings for myself. Completely non-commercial. Often no more than doodling in my sketchbook. Just me and a pen, trying to feed my well. Often accompanied by a nice glass of red.
I try to do both every day. “Bleed” gets my morning and afternoons. “Feed” happens mostly after dinner, before bedtime.
Yeah, I guess this is a variation on The Sex & Cash Theory. It’s all good.
All successful artists “Bleed and Feed”, in their own way. The ones who don’t– who just try to do one or the other– tend to burn out rather quickly. That’s just Reality.
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Tags: Bleed And feed, Cube Grenades, Hugh's Work, Sex And The cash Theory
Love this. And sadly, I have had that thought sometimes in the cartoon. I can admit it. Thanks for drawing and for sharing the Bleed and Feed. I hope you keep doing both with great success.
Describes my time in China — thus far!!
That’s a truly wicked cartoon (as in wickedly funny and … hauntingly scary!) and it wickedly underscores the thematic dichotomy of your post?
The version I’m working is “Bleed, Feed, and Barf.” The “barf” would be the 40-hour job that (unfortunately) must happen before the bleed n’ feed.
It’s taking a nasty toll on my health.
That’s one of those hard problems (balancing work/fun) that seems to sort itself out by the time we retire
I’ve convinced myself I can make money doing what I love, inspiring other people to do what they love for a living. The dayjob keeps food on the table (engineer), but between writing/reading/blogging there’s a seductive web programming project beckoning to me. If only I could stop logging into World of Warcraft between 7-9pm. But it’s my down cycle time.
Have you gone through bursts of working more? My summer was super productive, was making progress 17 – 18 hours per day with little slack time.
[…] Sex and Cash. Sacred and Survival (Dance). Bleed and Feed. […]