Drawing is a first, and powerful love. It's tempered with storytelling though.... the challenge that I am finding, and for sure it is a difficult one, is that the two are somewhat mutually exclusive. "But," you say, "what about comics? They are by their very nature a shared experience of both drawing and storytelling. As is illustration!"
True, true, but I find that the direct narrative that comics require is often so time consuming that adequate attention to the drawings is, at best, delayed... often overlooked. I believe that is why we have seen the production pipeline we find in comic book production. It simply takes too long to conceive and idea, write a story, draw that story, lay it all out and publish it. Not just from a financial standpoint, but from the aspect of artistic interest. Miracles like Jeff Smith's Bone are certainly the exception and not the rule.
Personally, I find the wandering path to be the most enjoyable. I believe that narrative does exist in my books, though like a path through the woods that occasionally fades into a tall grass field or becomes overgrown with brambles and the traveler must look hard to find it again. And, I think that may be my next evolution... pursuing the spontaneity of page after page of sprawled images but maintaining a more legible continuity.
Life's a journey of discovery, and I love every minute of it.
