2.5.648612875

Finally finished penciling* this. And I can show the whole thing because it's all mostly dialogue and doesn't show anything important. *Penciling being laying it out and drawing with light blue colored pencil.

Now on to the arduous task of drawing/tracing with a real pencil. Which will hopefully have just as much detail, but with more refinement and cleaner line work.

We'll see, I guess.



Here's the background for panel 1.
I started drawing backgrounds and gestures on transparencies then lightboxing them to save the paper's lifespan. I'm using super cheap comic boards and they don't take too kindly to erasing and erasing and erasing. This saves me from making holes and helps reduce clutter from panels so I can draw people and objects without worrying about accidentally erasing important lines of the background, or vice versa.

When I thumbnailed this many moons ago, I didn't want to resort to drawing shapes or outlines for a group people. Mostly because it's usually just to save time/work. But, unfortunately, I had to. The panels were just too distracting with 6 faces in the background. And even then, it could be take care of with different post-drawing effects. Like darkening or lightening the lines so they're not as prevalent, but photoshopping is against my set of rules for the second half of this.
I guess in short, is I probably would've/could've if this were going to be a finished drawing, but because this will forever be in "process limbo", it can't be done well enough, and this was a better option.

A common problem, well, more of an occurrence, is that when pages are drawn and printed, scanned and shrunk, a lot of the little detail is lost in the process. I was fighting this a lot in the beginning of the project- Something would look decent on the real page, then look like crap on screen or in print. Sort of like a "can't see the forest for the trees" kind of problem. And you either get better at it or at least used to it.
And I'm happy I'm not the only one to notice or be a little bothered by it.

Sean Phillips, one of the artists who's work I try to follow, has a an entire book with 400 pages dedicated to nothing but enlarged details of pages he drawn.

Anyway, that's it I guess. Back to work.

Popular posts from this blog

Cover

Image
I did this cover a while ago. I'm so behind on everything, I can't believe I'm just getting to this. Everyone in charge was flexible, so I pretty much did whatever I wanted. Its double sided ; the back cover is the other side's view of the front. There wasn't much behind it, other than I don't remember seeing a two sided cover like that and wanted to. (I'm sure it's not the first, I'm just saying I haven't seen one) I'm pretty happy with it, not because I think it's great, but that it looks as good as it does given the tiny bit of time I had to do it in. There wasn't much planning. This is all of the planning and prep work that took place before it was drawn-  Despite the stamp, this was not drawn on July 26. It's been long enough now that I can look with fresh eyes. I'm pretty happy with how the hands turned out. And from looking at the sketches, it's because I got them right in the sketches; the ha...
Read more

10 YEAR POST

Image
It's been 10 years since I made the first post on this blog. And it's been about 3 years since the last post. I guess I felt obligated to address 10 years passing. Feeling a little sullen, I suppose. So, I'm mustering through with this impromptu post. I'm preparing to change gears, mentally. I think up till now  over the last 10 years, my aim, even if just unconsciously, was to get better at drawing. Forwarding the skill, without giving much thought to marketing it.  In hindsight, not much thought to went to furthering a career in drawing, just honing the skill- which is the mindset I'm trying to change. I like to believe I succeeded in achieving the goal; I feel like I draw better than ten years ago. So, in that, I feel successful, but it feels ... dry . Flat. I've been wondering, have I been too obsessed with becoming better? Has that one goal blinded me to what could have been other, more significant gains? I don't know. Maybe. Mayb...
Read more

Drawing Table Tuesday

Image
I thought that was a nice effect--interrupting himself to blow smoke.  I've been getting behind on posting things regularly. I'll try better. I really tried to emphasize gestures when I could in this project. Almost any panel on this particular page is pretty good, I think. Also, I just noticed, I've long since stopped taking the blueline out of stuff like this. Not on purpose, I guess I've just gotten really good at not seeing it. I didn't notice that until I was typing this. About Drawing Table Tuesday .
Read more