With summer about to begin, that means that I’ll be diving into getting Chapter 5 drawn full-time. Below is a video telling you about where I’m at and the process of getting from idea to the page.
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While work on this short story has been slow going in some ways, it persists in the back of my mind every minute of every day. It’s not a matter of if it will get finished, it’s more a matter of when. With my day job taking up so much time and wanting to keep the fifth chapter of Long John on track, I’ve had to put “Call Me Home” on the back burner for a bit as I prepare to jump headfirst into Long John once school lets out for the summer.
As I piece this story together, I’m learning a lot about drawing comics digitally––becoming much more familiar and comfortable with it along the way. To the point that making comics on the iPad seems less an exercise and more a possibility. This has grown to the point now that I’m inspired to come up with new stories, other stories that I want to tell. As with any person hit with the euphoria of inspiration, it can be hard to not drop everything you’re currently working on to play with the new ideas.
In the process video for this page, I discuss the fun challenge of drawing these pages, though. They are the things that keep me coming back to it because the art here is more about suggestion and implication than detail and accuracy. It’s an even more extreme version of the limits I gave myself with Long John‘s limited color palette; it’s like I’ve imposed a limit on visuals as well––how much story and scene be implied with few lines and shapes of color. Whether it’s a success or not depends on when it gets finished and in the hands or screens of readers.
Even though the academic year comes to a close and I’m busier than ever making sure everything hits its goal, I’m actually finding that I’m able to carve out time here and there for a lot of developmental stuff. In addition to getting layouts on Chapter 5 done, I also have three other projects at various stages of development, all of which I’m very excited about.
One of them is still very nascent, but I have a scene that involves an older gentleman that goes through a range of emotions. Though I’m not necessarily thinking about drawing this project myself, the idea of the comic has been so energizing I just wanted to throw some faces onto the page (the iPad) and come up with an expressive face to take through those emotions.
My most favorite things to draw are faces, so this ended up actually being a nice catharsis for the stress my day job is giving me––something I need to remember when I feel like I must sit down to draw but can’t think of anything to draw (I’m not a natural “sit around and sketch” kind of guy). The challenge is coming up with a base face (the face that’s to the left of the middle drawing was the first one I did) and then trying to draw that face in a range of angles and emotions while also staying “on model” (meaning it looks like the same face from drawing to drawing). It was an exercise, so it’s not perfect, but it is actually something I find fun to draw.
I guess that’s a difference with me as an artist from a lot of other comic artists; I don’t really tend toward making finished drawings aside from comic pages, it’s more the action of drawing and problem-solving that keeps me coming back.