Month: February 2024

You know whats funny? Is when you have drive and inspiration for a completely different project that will probably never see the light of day. But you know you really, really should focus on the project at hand. But you can’t because your brain keeps playing the super cool pieces and juicy bits from the other unnamed project. So you just sit at your desk, quietly vibrating.

ANYWAY

So, I finish the inking with the micron pens. She’s gorgeous, a beautiful masterpiece- I wish it could be done right here but alas and alack, I made the GREAT decision not to have this comic be in black and white and instead IN COLOR. Because comic artists are notorious for punishing themselves needlessly.

However, even though coloring is the longest step (the step that isn’t pictured is me staring at the wall and sighing loudly) its still a whole lot easier on my wrist and hands then penciling and inking- Probably because there’s very little pressure applied to the paper. Watercolor is a very loose medium, its like the sketch pencil of the paint world.

While I’m erasing pencil lines SOMEONE, (LOKI) decides my empty lap space is an invitation to interrupt my work (because you know my brain doesn’t do that often enough naturally). He then leaves- utterly disillusioned and offended- when he realizes that the eraser is not, in fact, a treat. And my pens and pencils are not, in fact, his toys to toggle with.

I use Copics to make sure I’m giving the characters the same skin tone across the entire comic. I Like alcohol based markers because they work really well with watercolor and don’t bleed. My concern with doing the skin tones in watercolor is that that the skin tones would gradually change over the course of the comic without me noticing. Even if I did have a reference sheet. Which would have been kinda awkward.

Flat colors! With watercolor its all about the layering, waiting for it to dry, layering, waiting for it to dry, getting a cup of tea, layering, dipping my paintbrush in the tea by accident, swearing, getting a new cup of tea while waiting for the page to dry, then layering.

So here we have the original Pg. 200 on the left and the new one on the right. It looks a lot better, Whitney looks a little more concerned when she realizes Merman isn’t in the pool and she’s shielding herself from the onslaught of water in the final panel in a way that makes the water look more violent. Which is what I was going for. Hopefully.

While y’all are waiting and I am doing my best to distract myself from working. I thought I’d show you a little of my process- how a page is made and what not.

So I usually begin my day with a quick round of figure drawing. Its a great way to stretch and make sure your not clamping down with a fist when you draw. It also allows you to be messy and re-familiarize yourself with the human figure. I really feel like it helps when I’m drawing. Of course these are some that I did two days ago because most mornings I’m applying for part time jobs as art does not currently pay the bills.

(No one wants to work anymore my butt. Most recently I was notified that I “wasn’t wholefoods material” and I think if I rolled my eyes any harder they would have popped out of my skull and rolled down the sidewalk)

Then I start doing Thumbnails- basically there are two things I need to get done today -On the 5th, you get to join me on this lovely journey to the past. (Before I found out that I wasn’t “wholefoods material” truly, a devastating blow.) I need to sketch a “Title page” on the far left and make thumbnails of the rewrote pages on the right. What I really use thumbnails for is panel placement, but if there’s a line of dialogue or an important conversation I like to put that along the side to remind myself of how I want the pacing to go.

Thumbnails are- for all intense and purposes- the messy first draft, the scribbles, the beginning of your process. They do not need to look pretty- they just need to catch the spirit of that image you have in your brain to the paper. So, no pressure.

Because I need to get the revision pages done first, I’ll focus on those instead of the title page. Now that I know what I want my panels to look like from the thumbnails, I’ll go back and see what I originally did- on the left is the original pg.194 (Which is now going to be pg. 200). I keep what I liked and try to “add” more in. As you can see on the right- I’ve added one more panel that has Whitney looking around for Merman a little more to show the rising action of the scene (like wholefoods HR- looking around a cluttered desk for a definition of what “wholefoods material” really means). Since this is all by hand I use a 3.0MM chisel micron pen for the panels, its the same one I usually use to add sound effects (or SFX).

Alright, now lets just pretend that you didn’t notice that I already started inking the page. Because I am nothing if not easily distracted. But the next step is, in fact, inking the page. For the main focus of the panel, which is typically a character- I use a 1.0 Graphic micron pen, then use a 0.1 micron for details like the face- the smaller size gives me more control to accurately ink details like the eyes, nose and mouth. This is the step where I frequently check behind me to make sure Jeff isn’t in a meeting before I yell something along the lines of (to myself, not to Jeff. He does no wrong here) “SHITFUCK. DAMNIT.” when I make a easily correctable mistake. Or sometimes a mistake that is devastating, either way the reaction is disproportionate to the situation. Its all part of the process.

I’ll make another post about the coloring and lettering process, it’ll probably go up next week. However the good news is I am only four inked pages away from where my buffer was originally. My hope is I can start posting pages again by the beginning of March- from there I’ll be posting until the comic is complete!