comic | episodes & e-books | store | about
< previous post | next post > | all news from Oct. 2013 News archive | News search | RSS
 
  Maybe I just need a lot of White OutOct 17, 2013 8:02 AM PDT | url
 
Added 1 new A* page:While doing the pencil drawing for today's page I was stuck as to whether I should have a dark or light background, so I took a photo of both versions (as sketched in pencil, anyway)
 
Image
 
and posted it on my Twitter/Facebook/Google+, asking "dark background or light background"? The responses were all for the light version--although later at least one clarified that this was because the darker pencil background was less organized. I'd been leaning toward dark, but I tried light, in ink, and it didn't really seem to come off. So, following the rule of desperate amateur gamblers as seen in movies everywhere--"always bet on black"--I added a lot of ink, and voila.
 
More or less, anyway. I'm still trying to get a certain bold, high-contrast look in ink, and to do that I have to force myself to cover up most of the cross hatching I do with big solid brush strokes, and to obliterate complicating details like the edge lines on the dark sides of Selenis' arms and body here--counter-reflections of that sort in general are generally out. So you end up with a simple looking drawing that took a lot longer to draw than a more complicated-looking drawing that more directly copied the pencil lines would have taken.
 
That sort of rendering philosophy was largely inspired by Frank Miller's work in his "Sin City" comics, but it's taken me years to realize that it's pointless for me to try to draw like him--and actually until today to realize how he probably actually drew that stuff, because I thought to search for "Frank Miller drawing" on YouTube, which led me to this video of someone else imitating one of his Sin City drawings--again, it isn't Miller drawing that, but it's a convincing enough copy that that's probably how he does a lot of it: drawing the contours of the shadow areas ("spotting blacks") in pencil, then just being really precise in tracing and filling them in; the artist in the video is using what looks like a Pitt marker, and a Pentel Pocket Brush Pen, whereas I would guess Miller probably usually uses nib pens and regular brushes, although I could be wrong about that.
 
I think he probably also uses a lot of white ink to get some of his white on black lines down in certain places, and that's reminded me that one thing I want to try out (Miller does a lot of this in his more recent, post-freakout "Holy Terror" graphic novel, from what I could tell from online images of it today) is a big "white out" type correction pen for white line effects, like Bill Sienkiewicz can be seen using in this video, although I can't tell what brand that is. I've tried a few smaller white ink pens but they just haven't had good ink flow. So I'm going to try to hit the local office supply superstore tomorrow and see if they have anything like that, because the white ink I use with brushes can't really be applied in long narrow lines like that.
 
Anyway though as I was saying I've learned I can't really draw like Miller did in his Sin City method--I just don't have the patience for deliberately shaping loads of little fill-in areas; probably not the eye for it either, because I still haven't really learned the trick of being able to see what that will look like inked in when it's just at the stage of pencil lines--and in fact I don't think I really want to; that approach sort of forces a certain sharp, angular, inorganic line quality, whereas I find when I draw that a looser, brushier, curvier, more organic style comes much more easily and naturally to me.
 
Oh yeah and this bold contrast style is again handy for iconography, like so:
 
Image
 
 
 
 
·····
 
 
 
 
 
< previous post | next post > | all news from Oct. 2013 News archive | News search | RSS
 
© Copyright 2024 Ben Chamberlain. All rights reserved. | Privacy Policy