Sketch Fridays #94 – The Swank

Jul14
by on 14 July 2023
Sketch Friday #94 – Hilary Swank (click for larger version)

I never really pushed my skills with digital art. Generally, the art I’ve made digitally––to me at least––looks like it was drawn digitally. However, the digital art I’ve seen on the various corners of the internet that I frequent tends to look quite tangible, fooling me to think it was created with traditional media. In these moments, an inner art snob I keep hidden in the back of my brain always pops out to let me know what a fraud I am as an artist. For years, I just quietly agreed.

My digital skills are atrophied for a few reasons. First, I don’t draw very often and, when I do, it’s for the comic which is pencil and ink on paper. Second, the majority of work I use digital art programs for is coloring, and with the comic I currently create it’s a very focused and limited use of these tools. Third, I’m not much of an experimental artist in general. The most adventurous I got was when I was a student, but even then it was mostly trial and error practice pieces. Only rarely do I get the nerve to try new things now on paper. To be fair, when I do it has been rewarding and additive (such as introducing more brush work to my toolset).

I have had the itch to stretch some artistic limbs recently, however. And I wanted to try my hand at working from reference to, first, see if I still could (I still use reference a lot while drawing comics, but it’s mostly small, focused details or posing the body) and, second, to branch out and see what I could do with some the very powerful tools at my disposal with things like the iPad Pro.

An experiment in actual ink wash of my dog. (click for larger version)

So, I decided to do some portraits. I tried thinking of some great faces that would be fun to draw. Out of sheer happenstance, one of the television shows our household was watching recently was Alaska Daily, a wonderful (now cancelled) show starring Hilary Swank who, I must say, has a very expressive face, which is something I’m drawn to, artistically (pardon the pun). Specifically, her eyes are large and wide and, especially with her character in Alaska Daily, stab out at you from beneath her long dark hair and stone cold countenance.

So, through a Google image search, I found a thumbnail image that captured what I liked about her character and put that off to the side and, in Procreate (ugh; I still hate that name) on the iPad, I roughed out general shapes, shadows, and highlights over the course of a few nights until I felt satisfied enough to call it done.

Again, this kind of drawing is something I haven’t really done with any seriousness in a long while, so I wondered how soon I would get frustrated and call it quits. While it was a process, it was ultimately rewarding to see, bit by bit, a drawing that resembled an actual person emerge. And she emerged not through my usual tools; in fact, I felt that the resemblance really started to pop when I brought in brushes and textures that I either had never used before or rarely so––things like (digital) charcoal and (digital) watercolor for ink wash. It fascinated me to see that I still have a bit of those traditional art skills deep in me somewhere. It is also rewarding on a more superficial level to create a piece of digital art that, to me, doesn’t look like it was necessarily drawn on a tablet. Finally, I appealed to that inner art snob I keep somewhere deep down inside of my brain who, to my surprise, encouraged me to keep going.

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Sketch Fridays #93 – Chapter 6 Thumbnail

Jul07
by on 7 July 2023
Sketch Friday #93 – Chapter 6 Thumbnail

Production is moving forward on the sixth and final chapter of Long John. While I feel I’m already behind on my own, perhaps arbitrary, schedule at this point, I’m deep in the thumbnailing stage as we speak.

There has been a bit of discourse lately––specifically on the great comic-creating podcast, Comic Lab––about thumbnails; specifically the observation that, apparently, many people don’t do them at all. What that means is that instead of working out page and panel layouts as small rough drawings to use as a guide for the actual drawing of their pages, many artists just work everything out on the page as they go.

It’s a complicated conversation because there’s no wrong way to make comics (unless, of course, you steal them or hurt someone)––as long as they get done and are the best you can do then it’s all good. Also, I don’t want to go so far as to be prescriptive about process––find the process that actually gets comics made for you, whatever that may be. Just get them done). Prescribing a process would not only be hypocritical of me as a comicker but also as a composition professor. However, especially for narrative comics like comic books and graphic novels (as opposed to classic newspaper style comic strips), thumbnails can be a crucial step to actually get things done, which is the number one issue many people who want to make comics face. In my eyes, thumbnails are as (or more) important than scripting simply due to the visual nature of the medium, and I rely on them heavily.

Typical thumbnails I do for my comics, laying out four pages at a time. I usually thumbnail based on the outline I make for the chapter instead of relying on a script first, though it depends on the scene. They are normally pretty loose and sketchy. Click for a larger image of this set from Chapter 5.

Process in academic composition (and just writing in general) has been heavily researched and forms the basis of my pedagogy and my own comicking process. No matter what your process is––and no matter how many steps it takes––it all tends to sort out into four basic (and recursive) stages: prewriting, drafting, revising, editing. To that end, I see thumbnails as distinct from penciling. The act of pencils is where you’re actually laying down guiding lines on what will ultimately become the final page itself. It’s the equivalent of what we call the “drafting” stage of the academic writing process. Drafting is when you’re actively creating what will be the final product.

I view thumbnailing as part of the “prewriting” stage of the process. In prewriting you’re doing everything that gets you ready to start drafting (what composition teacher and theorist, Donald Murray, calls a “signal” to start writing), which includes research, jotting down ideas, and, in the case of making comics, scripting and thumbnailing. This stage isn’t about the final product itself, it’s about getting you to the point where you can honestly say, “I’m ready to make the thing.”

Sometimes my thumbnails can be more detailed. For a few of these panels I even worked out the perspective a bit so I could have gone through the process before needing to do it again on the actual page. Thumbnails can be about practice as much as capturing ideas. Click for a larger version of this set from Chapter 5.

I thumbnail every page of each book and when I’m done, I print them out and hang them above my board and use them as a guide for the actual penciling and inking of the pages. “Guide” is an important word here because what ends up on the page can be different from what was thumbnailed, but the point of thumbnails is working out the general ideas be they detailed or really sketchy (I’ve done both). For example, the panel posted for this post is a bit more detailed than other thumbnails I’ve done because I also used it as an opportunity to work on character design. Other times, I’ve used the thumbnail as an opportunity to work out the perspective of a shot so that I had the memory and practice of that when I later sat down to draw the actual page. Most of the time, though, they are very loose and sketchy because I know how to draw Long John, I just need ot know what he’s doing in the panel and where to put him. The point is that you should look at a thumbnail and not say “THAT is the page” or “I’m going to do EXACTLY that”––instead, you look at a completed thumbnail and, with hope, have the confidence to say, “Okay, I can do that” and use it as a launching point for working.

A process is only about getting you to the point where you can get something done. It’s not strict and it’s not a rule––it’s about being kind to yourself and building toward something that you can show the world and be proud of instead of taking a running leap off the edge and hoping you land on the other side. While you can sometimes––even often––reach the other side that way, it’s never a guarantee. That’s where preparation can come in handy and be there as a tool for when you need it.

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SKAB

May30
by on 30 May 2023

An artist I’ve been following for awhile is Jon Berg, a Canadian comicker who is currently working on his creator-owned comic, SKAB, a post-apocalyptic fantasy adventure. Aside from the gorgeous art in his unique style, what drew my attention is the creative spirit we both share––SKAB is a the result of a singular voice. In other words, he does everything on the book (writing, art, coloring/shading, lettering, and publishing), just as I do with Long John. That alone made me pay closer attention to his craft and his approach to publication.

The first issue of SKAB has been in development for awhile and Berg has been really open with his process on Instagram, sharing pages and panels in progress through every stage of creation, something that regular readers of Long John (or those who follow me on Instagram) know is something that I love to talk about (especially since focusing on process is literally my day job). While most of what I love about it is to see how other people create, the automatic addendum to that is to compare what he does against what I do––not to compete, but to learn.

Berg is another artist who draws everything on the page but is more bold with his art in every way. While I rely on non-photo blue pencils for my penciling stage, Jon goes all in with messy, thick graphite pencils. While my primary inking tools are thin-tipped technical pens made by Sakura Pigma Micron, he goes all in on brushes. His linework is bold and tactile and painterly, which carries with it a cohesive, unified quality that is best summarized in this most amazing page (the first slide):

This page captivated me, causing me to scrutinize and study it in a way I actually don’t often do with comics. Mostly, when I’m looking at pages critically it’s a matter of narrative clarity––can I tell what is going on? However, that is not even a question I had to ask seeing that page (and, honestly, every other page in the book). Everything in the page above is about storytelling. From the panel arrangement (page composition) to the drawings of the panels themselves (the panel composition) to the organic, living lines of his brushwork to the incredible acting he’s done with the characters really shows me––in a single page––everything I try to do with my comics. There’s clear narrative, dynamic visuals, effective world-building, and believable character all in six panels and focused, naturalistic dialogue (which you can read on the website––the comic is an active webcomic as well). It’s a masterclass while still being frayed at the edges and imperfect, which honestly makes it perfect.

I’ve never been a technical artist by any means, but for years––especially with the art in my first comic, Eben07––I tried to be a clean artist. Part of that was because it made it easier to color, but the truth is that I thought a comic made by me would be “better” if it were closer to being technically “perfect” (despite never being a very technical artist, but the brain is a mysterious creature). That, of course, is not true. This last March, I had the pleasure of once again being a guest speaker in an upper division graphic literature class at the local university (for which, the first two volumes of Long John were part of the reading list, which was awesome), and part of my talk was built around the dissonance between the realistic and the believable. The slide I used to start this part of the discussion was a side-by-side of a shot from The Polar Express animated film and a shot from The Incredibles. While The Incredibles isn’t anywhere close to realistic, even in a single frozen frame those characters are instantly more believable because of the artistic intent, creativity, and consideration put into every aspect of their presentation. We get a sense of who each of these characters is just by looking at them. While the characters in The Polar Express image are more realistic, they look like posed mannequins with no real sense of individuality or life. What I mean by this is that leaning into the technical side of things doesn’t mean it’s going to be a world that people will want to fall into and explore. You have to make it feel alive and that doesn’t necessarily come with perfectly straight lines and having every window drawn in a skyscraper.

Source: Warner Bros. (left)/ Disney/Pixar (right)

When I started making Long John, the ethos I had going into it was to make it “look like a comic” instead of what I had tried for Eben07, which was to make each panel look like a frame of animation. What I am unconsciously aiming for is to make a comic that feels as cohesive and alive as possible––to make the world and characters of Long John as believable as possible. It’s that sense of “believability” that Berg has on full display in this page (while also clearly exhibiting incredible technical and artistic acuity) and it shook me. It’s present on every page in this book, making it one I’ll be scouring and studying for a long while I try and make that even more present in my work.

Berg made it known a few months ago that he was printing the first issue and would be available for purchase shortly. I’m not going to sanitize the truth––I kind of stalked his store page and couldn’t click the purchase button faster when I saw listing. Imagine my surprise when the book arrived with a delightful and unexpected sketch from Jon.

It was a fun, quiet nod of recognition, an acknowledgement of effort and ethos that, with hope, motivates and inspires and challenges each other as we push forward with our worlds and stories and characters that people can believe in.

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