So does the hand, apparently.
Field Notes of Rahgah 20260914-20260920 - Retrospective
The fifth spread of Field Notes of Rahgah.
Field Notes of Rahgah have been illustrated the same way since the start, until this week. Panel by panel, cycle by cycle, week in and week out, the style is evolving and so is the process to produce these illustrations. I am not consciously modifying or creating a style for this series, I am letting my own hand and process unfold, to drift into what it’s asking to become. I know, it all sounds pretentious, but I honestly don’t really know how else to describe it.
In the beginning
The first version of the process was nearly all traditional. Thumbnail sketch in notebook, final sketch on smooth Bristol, gouache, ink, scan and adjust levels in Photoshop, finish in Illustrator that involves the frame, colophon, texture, and a tad of lighting.
How it’s going
The second, or current, version of the process modifies one major step. Thumbnail sketch in notebook, final sketch on smooth Bristol, gouache, scan and adjust levels in Photoshop, ink and detail in Procreate, finish in Illustrator that involves the frame, colophon, texture, and a tad of lighting.
The philosophy behind the process remains the same: it’s all additive, each step iterates by addition. The thumbnail is to get my bearings straight, the concept of the composition, thinking it through. The final sketch on smooth Bristol locks in about 90% of the composition. Gouache stage defines overall mood and loosely states shadows and shades of forms. Ink and detail in Procreate bring the illustration to 99%; this is where I make the most decisions after the final sketch. Finish in Illustrator is mostly routine to package it all; the lighting corrections and texture finalize the entire arc, folding the illustration into the family of every panel that came before it.
I bring the process up because the week’s entries kept describing it. I seek the form appropriate for my concept, learn it by reproducing it, adjust, remix, repeat. It’s how I draw and paint, and it turns out it’s how I do this. The body is examined the same way a still life is observed: what it actually does, not what I wish it did.
The methods for astral projection are plentiful and the instructions are fine, they just read like a very specific manual for someone else’s body. A style picked on purpose would be the same thing, a manual for someone else’s hand. So I dropped easy and difficult as the measure and kept “natural”: what this vehicle takes to, versus what it tolerates for a while and then refuses.
The body has been reporting its preferences for years, and this week I read a few of them as reports. The phosphenes I took for a depth gauge track how relaxed the body is. A chakra walkthrough I haven’t finished in about a year ran root to crown in the float tank, started and finished. A bright green field of dots arranged itself into a grid, twisted into a tube, and concentrated into a single point on the way out of a 20-minute office meditation session where the prep was boring and predictable, good.
I chased none of it. The body doesn’t object to letting me roll out, it objects to being handled, and the float tank made the point for forty minutes straight: the body jerked the whole way through, nothing I did to settle it worked, so I stopped doing things and eventually it was just something happening in the water. Most of what showed up this week showed up after I quit managing it.
The way forward runs on the same philosophy as the illustrations, additive, one step at a time. The salt water tank is a bundle: full support, warmth, darkness, and sound. The mask and headphones are already on the daybed, so that leaves support and warmth, and each can be tested on its own. A bolster and a wedge go into the room the body already knows is for work. One ingredient, same room, same prep.
The steps are ordinary; their repetition is the signal. The ritual tells the body what’s coming, and it’s also the only reason a single change can be read. Thumbnail, Bristol, gouache, scan, week in and week out, and then the ink moves. Mask, headphones, daybed, since day one, and then a bolster and a wedge.
The series spread is one full day. He crossed the bridge, hung up the suit, washed, ate, dosed, and is now lying down with a console above his head reading him, seven sliders, each at its own position. Nobody goes anywhere on this page. That’s Chapter 2.2: after a chapter page about knowing who is doing the diving, a whole page on what his vehicle wants before it lets him go. Nothing leaves a body that has not agreed to be left.
The body gets what it asks for first, and so does the hand, apparently. I mean… it is part of the body after all.
Through The Week of 20260914-20260920
https://perceptindex.substack.com/p/the-body-has-stated-a-preference https://perceptindex.substack.com/p/boring-and-predictable-good https://perceptindex.substack.com/p/nothing-leaves-a-body-that-has-not