Added 1 new A* page:There's a drawing I did back when I was working digitally that is still one of the best things I've drawn, I think--and this was way back in episode 12, page 22:
Just how I managed to create the realistic but hard shading of the face and the overall graceful proportions of the figure have remained something of a mystery to me. It's certainly something I'd like to be able to do more, but it's been something I haven't really managed to replicate, either digitally or traditionally.
Fortunately I stored previous working versions of my digital stuff, so I could dig up the original Photoshop file and make this process animation out of it:
It started with my usual (back then) quick thumbnail sketch with the Brush tool, then went--or tried to go--into doing the final art with the Lasso tool. You'll see though that there are three false Lasso starts on this one, then I finally gave up and just traced the thumbnail sketch with the Lasso, and then started refining that--because the original sketch had a life and angle and lighting to it that I just wasn't able to recapture. Hmph. So I'm not sure how much looking at this helps me, except that it tells me that I should start from something loose and energetic that really captures something true about the scene I'm trying to create.
In fact I had some trouble along those lines in today's page. My initial pencil sketch was--I thought--pretty good; I stayed loose, didn't get too detailed, but the proportions and so forth were there and there was something interesting about it. So I dutifully started inking it in...and then got bogged down in trying to reproduce the pencils. This is the very thing that led me to giving up penciling for a long time! Argh. Well I struggled with it for a while but parts started going all pear-shaped and eventually half the face had been obliterated and repainted--only I wanted to do a trick with ink wash shading over the face, so this wouldn't work at all because you can't do ink wash over white ink. So I had to give it up and start over--here's where I left that first try:
There are some aspects of it I like, like the eye on the left, some of the hair, the ship...and the mouth was interesting, but I think maybe the smile was too ambivalent. And there was the question of was she going owl on us and twisting her neck around a little more than should be possible to look over her shoulder. Anyway none of that mattered because I couldn't shade the face so it had to go. Flip the page over and try again.
The second try--the one that became the final page 75--got a little weird. But I got the main parts down, which is the important thing, I guess. It's supposed to hint at what we'll see in the next panel, and you can probably guess what it is anyway! But the struggle with this page got me thinking, and I think I should keep in mind that I'm not really an inker, I'm more of a painter. I have to work briskly and with that original inspiration--the image I see in my head--or else I lose it and I'm just trying to follow pencil lines and the whole thing ends up looking dead, at best (or probably incomprehensible because I'm trying to keep the pencils loose to avoid that very line-following temptation...but I forgot about that in today's first attempt).
Well that's more than enough from me on art process for one week. Another brush is past worn out, so I think I'll go to the art supply store tomorrow and play with things--like ooh their extensive mechanical pencil collection! And a fresh X-Acto knife. Oh and I should see if they sell transparent sheets I can use for tracing masks to shield from star spraying. But whee art supply shopping! That'll get my mind off these process conundrums for a bit.
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