Man And Wife

As I work on redoing page 1 of The Course I have to take my steps forward delicately. Perhaps for the seasoned comic book artist they do not sweat the small stuff. However, there must be caution when using strictly black inks. If I were to color this my line quality, though it needs to be clean and pristine would not require the full volume of values that I am trying to accomplish. To see the level of value harmony I am referring to look up artists such as Franklin Booth, Bernie Wrightson, Bryan Bolland, Alex Raymond, and Howard Pyle. These men created art that shows the great range of possibility with just black ink. As I try to emulate their level of quality I have to do so with the mind that this will be a finished piece of art, not just a line drawing for a comic book page.


This week I am going to start showing you some of The Course's characters and talking about their motivations and roles in the story.

Feseleg the Hungarian word for wife is what Teleki refers to "Emily" as. She is as sweet as a strawberry on a Spring day and as graceful as a swan. To find out more about her attributes follow this link:  Teleki's Wife.

Child-like Curiosity

If only it were just that simple to revert back to the playful habits of being age 5 again. Both Picasso and Klee attempted with mixed results. Today I posted a some simple art under Experimental Art which is just plain fun. No worry about composition, the right color combinations, or rendering abilities. Enjoy.

Anticipation

With every new piece of art created there is anticipation as to whether the piece will turn out as expected. All artists plow through this emotional turmoil from time to time.

For me this is the third time that I have worked through page 1 of The Course. I always anticipate it being better, because I know that over time my skills do improve and I absorb what others do into my routine and make them my own. 

See if you can tell the differences between the image in this post and the one that I posted a couple of weeks ago. There are subtle differences, but I expect them to make the final inked page look stellar compared to the last one.

Also, check out Speckled Forest on my EXPERIMENTAL ART page on this blog. That is where I will posting some of my stress relieving art. Enjoy!

Value Composition

Part of the process of producing a comic page is laying it out. Almost all professional comic book artists use some method of figuring out where all of their dark and light areas go on the page before applying any ink or drawing it up.

After realizing that I had not planned my inking out very well a friend suggested this method of blocking in the dark and light values before going to ink. I have chosen the traditional inking method entailing brush and dip pens, because the blacks are much more potent, permanent, and versatile than using technical pens, ball point pens, and Adobe programs.

My method of blocking in value is to scan in the page in its penciled state, scale it down to the actual page size, print it on gray paper, then use black and white pastel to find the best possible scenario for the values of the page. I have to seriously consider the light source when I do this. Typically when you are working with just lines it is more difficult to consider some of these things ahead of time. Back tracking with this method has helped me think ahead on future pages.

Room For Improvement

It is my goal to now add art and a narrative surrounding my creative process at least once a week. As you can see these are the first two pages of The Course. Teleki must learn to run his race with the bitter disappointment of losing his mate to another.

As I learn the comic book process I am learning how to use the tools of the trade. At the time of the completion of these 2 pages in early 2010 I was rushing to complete this to have something to give out at SPACE (Small Press and Comics Expo). I was humbled, because I did a rush job on both penciling and inking it. I am happy with the core concept, but the execution does need improvement.

I learned very early on how volatile the comic medium is. It takes patience to learn even the basics.  Lighting with ink can be tricky, because you want to convince the viewer of depth and ink is a solid black medium. There are definitely shortcuts commonly used by even the masters of the field, but this time around I wanted to be aggressive in learning all the media and processes I could. There is nothing better than the feeling of accomplishing something that you were completely ignorant of just a little while prior.

Yes, in fact there is room for improvement on this year old piece, but if you stick with me, you will see a great deal of it.