2020 has been a hell of a year. Wherever you are, I hope you stay safe and stay healthy and find happiness wherever you can as we head into 2021.
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This is the first time in about twelve years that I’ve drawn an entire page digitally, from start to finish. I think, in the long run, it was faster than how I normally draw comics, but I think for this mini-comic––a story called “Call Me Home” (a piece of concept art was a previous Sketch Friday)––I’m also being less precious because it’s a black & white comic that takes place in the snow and is much more of a tone piece than the plot & continuity-driven story found in Long John. Overall, it’s been a fun muscle to stretch and may be a tool set I use for future comics, though Long John will remain pen and ink on paper through to the end.
Also, it’s really cool that Procreate records a playback of every file you draw, allowing me to continue producing process videos even though it’s all digital:
Chapter 4, Page 16 – “Dead Words”
This is a fairly simple page, but I really like how it captures the mundane: a busy bar on a rainy night. There’s a lot of importance to this page; it’s the title drop, of course, but it’s also the start of some of the deepest (implied) backstory we get to our title character so far in the series (the writing––and holding back––of which, I write about more on the notes for this page).
What I like most about it is that I feel the atmosphere of a warm, lively, but welcoming room is captured pretty well in the first two panels, something that needed to be nailed after the very menacing tone of the previous scene.
Fun fact: the two folks in the extreme foreground of the second panel are the same drunk buddies seen walking around Lundy at the beginning of chapter two.
