Close enough?

I wonder if the Fanboy Comics people even read this blog.

Got to work

Got to work early this morning (on a Saturday no less!) and no one was here to let me in. I just sat in my car and did a bit of painting. I'm not sure if I won or lost this one.

Something Animal WIP, watercolor:

No sleep last night and a splitting headache this morning. I've got a serious nap on serious couch planned for when I get home.

My goal

My goal was to have page 50 done by the end of this month. That apparently meant that I have to do endless revisions of this page until the very last day of the month. At least that's how I'm taking it.

Here's the sketched out page 50 version 3:

Definitely getting closer to the mood I'm going for here. I will probably use bits and pieces from the other layout as well assembled in some nightmarish Photoshop, mixed media style abortion. Joy.

This is also likely going to end up as two individual pages. What can I say, I need space!

Page 50 progress

Bit of ink and some washes. Will do some white paint detail at lunch.

The lovely Meaghan and I return to Meltdown tonight. This time we intend to laugh, not cry and gnash teeth.

The real page 50:

And the fake page 50 that tried to ruin my day earlier:

Oh yeah redos, you know how we do.

Something Animal WIP, ink and watercolor.

Lunch

Sometimes it takes me 45 minutes just to do one panel. If only there was some way to use computers to slightly alter someone else's art (or a photo) to make this whole process go a lot faster.

Oh that's right, we don't do that.

I'd also like to say that when my hard drive crashes the art won't all be lost.

Now a fire? That's different.

It didn't

It didn't really feel like I got anything done this week/weekend but apparently I got a couple of panels done for a page. Not too bad honestly all things considered.

We had a pretty demoralizing trip to Meltdown Comics this weekend. Everything seems to be Corel Painter/Photoshop/tracing these days. Meg even spotted one guy getting credited with "grey toning" or some such rubbish. "Spider Woman" is literally just a bunch of porn actress stills with costumes and texture painted on in Painter.

My attitude is that computers are just tools like paint brushes, pencils, pens etc. and they can be used to great effect to make great art. I'm really no luddite in this regard. I use Photoshop, photos, textures and I can and do use a tablet on occasion when it's needed. The problem is that most people *aren't* using them to make great art. Everything looks too similar, too anatomically correct, gradient fills, outlines, photo-tracing (lol Greg Land...) and there's too obvious of a reliance on ctrl-z.

So what's new? Shit sucks and you gotta be good to stand out? No change there then. Hey, they're making money doing comics and I'm not, so what the fuck do I know?

Page 48 (ish)

I hate these ones where it's like 3 pages worth of painting all cut up and comped down and crammed onto one page. I think it works okay.

I think it's still page 48.

Something Animal WIP, ink and watercolor.

DING

Bit of paint.

Spaghetti-oh..?

When I go off script things get a little surreal. This also happens when I work on art. I was talking to Meaghan on the phone when I did this so I was probably channeling some of that cool artsy stuff she does. Anyways, I like it, I don't care what Sam thinks of it.

Ink, on ink ink-in-progress.

Thursday.

Close-up of a Something Animal panel in progress.

Some progress

and something new.

Oh, and I think I managed to skip a page in here somehow. I'm going to do some cool photo collage, mixed media, abstract thing there instead don't tell the Fanboy Comics people shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

Page 45:

There was another page 46 but the way I ended up doing page 45 kinda made it unnecessary so I skipped to page 47:

My kind of page

As fun as it was I think I ruined this one by starting with so much red. Shit's going to get pink.

Something Animal WIP, ink and watercolor.

Ah yes

Ah yes, that feels good. Productivity, who would've thought?

Something Animal WIP, ink and watercolor.

Taking a couple

Taking a couple of days off of drawing might as well be taking a hundred days off of drawing from the way it feels.

Stuck at work while the final third of the graphic novel I'm working on sits there in my car, a pile of 20-some-odd perfect blank pages waiting to be sullied by my inconsistent hand.

I regret that I don't have anything of mine to show today other than a photograph of someone very talented and productive working on something awesome (and highly toxic!) in a cool blue light and a mask.

Sometimes that's enough to go on.

There should

There should be enough here to carve out page 43 with. If not, well that's just going to be too bad. I'll add it to the long list of pages I'm not entirely happy with and plan to redo. For now though, I'm sick of looking at it and moving on.

Ice skating tonight with the lovely Meaghan and friends, can't wait!

Something Animal work in progress, ink and watercolor on paper.

That feeling

That feeling of realizing that the page I'm working on just isn't going in the right direction, I've wasted the day and a lot of paint and paper?

I just had it.

Ergh, need some Meaghan.

Maybe 25

Maybe 25-30 more pages and a cover, some arty mixed media stuff for the inside/liner, the requisite redos of the first 15 pages or so that are complete shit, then I have to scan and photograph it all and do the lay out/typesetting all inside of a couple of months.
Oh, there's also some top secret other art required for a related project that the Fanboy Comics people have yet to get in touch with me about the details, so pile that on as well.
My most (only) productive times are the 10 minutes before work and the 40 minutes in my car at lunchtime. So you know, maybe there will be enough time...

I love the project and deadlines and have days where I'd like to pile on more but sometimes I can't help but feel like this cat hiding under the bed. Fortunately for both of us I think it all turns out alright in the end.

Something Animal WIP, ink and watercolor on paper.

Here. Kitty. Kitty.

Real comic book paper? These Fanboy Comic people must really be paying me well! Actually they aren't but they do host fantastic movie night parties with delicious food and great company, so I thought the least I could do was start taking their comic seriously. It's only page 42 after all.

Lunchtime:

Something Animal WIP ink and watercolor on paper.

Kitteh!

I tried to do this one in a slightly cleaner style and it was a miserable failure. I guess throwing ink all over paper in a frenzied manner is my thing while controlled deliberate outlines are not. I can live with that.

Got to work 10 minutes early and sat in my car and started these couple of panels. It was really hard for me to not just sit there all day and paint. Oh life, you crack me up.