Drawing Table Tuesday
Lately, (the last few days), I've been researching color. I won't get into it, I'll probably get around to it eventually thought, but I really don't like contemporary comic book coloring. Not to say I don't like it all, there are some people that make amazing stuff, but I think a lot of it looks like crap. So it never really interested me much except that I should at least be able to put some sort of color on things and be halfway satisfied.
Lately, the more satisfied I am with a drawing, the more I'm like, "Hmm... I should at least be able to color this if I had to, and still like it." So, I sort of cleared away everything everyone else does, started fresh, and decide how I want to color things. There's a long rant/essay on style (that I've been thinking about a lot recently because of some reprints I've gotten a while back) that I'm skipping that'll I'll probably get to eventually, but I decided that the coloring I like best, was traditional, cheap coloring that comics used for about five decades that didn't change until the 90's (and for the worse, I think).
So, about two days ago, I started fresh, and with some deliberate thought (and research), came up with a system for coloring stuff and not hating it. I looked at how old comics were colored, the actual process of either people cutting shapes out, or, colorists/separators painting layers of different percentages. All of the shortcomings of that process were what made it. I think keeping in mind those limitations is the secret. I think that's key to authenticity; the errors are the hard thing to reproduce. A lot of people that try to 'have a retro, vintage look' just slap the color halftone photoshop filter on it at the end (myself, until recently, included), but miss a lot of the details that are hard to pinpoint. I think I've gotten it down pretty well, well enough to be comfortable with it at least. I mean, I want to keep getting better at it, keep pushing, but I can at least get something I'm okay with at the end. I redrew this and used it on that. The black tones with color are tricky though, I haven't gotten those down yet as well as I'd like.
Anyway, the system I came up with is way more complicated than I'd have thought, but I think it works. And it's still faster than the way I was coloring stuff before. I wanted something else to try it on, something small, then I found a sheet of nice paper I'd apparently used as squiggle paper and thought it was a shame. And, well, there you go. I took the picture of it on the desk from last night and thought "Well, ten more minutes and I'd have the drawing." So I took another one ten minutes later. Not meant to be a masterpiece, but something quick and small to throw color onto.
Also kinda related, I'm leaving out another rant about the b in b-movie meant budget, not bad. I've been trying recently to be able to exactly pinpoint why I absolutely love b-movies, but why I will never watch Sharknado, just on principle. Kind of the same reason I think all this bikini cosplay comic con crap is detrimental to comics in the long run. Liking superhero movies isn't liking comic books. I wish all these idiots were reading comic books. Kind of like why no real nerd/comic book fan/person with brain (okay, that last one was mean) would ever watch Big Bang Theory. Again, another rant entirely.
Might post the finished colors later today. If I get around to coloring it after I get some real drawing done today.
About Drawing Table Tuesday.
