in progress

sooooo...hello there.

I have been drawing, I just have not been posting at all.  Lots of legitimate and illegitimate reasons why.  At any rate, I'm trying to get back into the swing of things again here, and with the next Visions comic book art group meeting on the 23rd, I figured now was a good time.

So here's a sneak peek at my process:

Here is a look at my drawing table.  See? I've been working.

Since I've never drawn comics before, I'm trying to work out my process a bit here, with a couple sample pages we're supposed to have ready for the meeting on Saturday.  I really don't exactly know what I'm doing except -- take a story, then make it look like comics.  This is pretty much my rule of thumb.  I have been "studying" the medium over the last couple years, which is to say instead of just breezing through pages, I am actually paying attention to what the artists and writers are doing.

My other rule of thumb is to try to incorporate interesting angles and poses where I can.  It just catches my own eye better, and if there's one thing I know I dislike in comics, it's when an artist overuses really static "blocking" and unvaried "camera" angles.  I don't mean decompression -- which I actually enjoy as a technique.  But one thing I've come to learn from reading some amateur comics in my ComiXology app is that my eyes will give up on artwork that isn't trying.  Maybe "trying" is the wrong word.  Let's say, instead, the work of artists who are content simply to display renderings of muscles and boobs in panel after panel.

I've been chipping away at a retro-style title page for "The Damned," featuring Mothman and Indrid Cold, which I've posted elsewhere, and which you can probably see in the Twitter bar to the right.  98% of the inks are done for that, and I'll finish it with some lettering, and scan it, and probably color it at some point in the future as well.  I am mostly happy with that, and feel like, after a couple years of drawing Mothman, I've just begun to comfortable grasp how to draw his fur.  I looked at the lions in the first part of Hellboy: the Third Wish, by Mike Mignola to see what he did to represent fur in his genius, streamlined style and it helped quite a bit.  I'm not completely happy with what I've done, but I'm happy that I feel like I now have something to reference, and help me "get there."

The rough artwork above is for two pages of a sample script written by my friend Carl Doody for his "Dreamweaver" character, a mystical female adventurer/superheroine.  I have one page of pencil roughs done, and have to have finished pencils by Saturday.  I have been slacking, and need to jump on it.  I am hoping to get the second page of roughs done tonight, and then we'll go from there.

Working in panels is awkward for me, I am discovering.  Which is why you see that every panel on that page in the middle was razored off of another piece of paper and then taped down to the original rough pencil attempt.  It is not a very expeditious way to work, but for the moment it is a method I can wrap my skills around until I grow.

More art soon, I promise.
Back to work.