D. Bethel Draws… In Perspective

Jun10
by on 10 June 2022

At the very last minute I decided to add three more pages to the beginning of the upcoming Chapter 5. I was hesitant because I knew that they would be a lot of work, but I realized it was work that needed to be done. They’re all pages establishing the scene, so it’s all about conveying a sense of scale and scope for where the chapter opens up.

These were so last minute because there had always been a nagging sense in the back of my brain that the chapter would be bolstered by some solid establishing shots. I knew it, but I didn’t want to draw it. When making comics––especially if you’re writing your own comics––you want to, obviously, draw what you enjoy drawing. For me, I enjoy drawing people. I try to do that as much as possible. I don’t enjoy drawing large cityscapes, complex machinery. Cars. Cars are hard.

But, then I went to the Eastern Sierra Nevadas last weekend for a research trip, and took the opportunity to visit the town of Bridgeport––a town briefly introduced in the middle of Chapter 4 (where we met The Rook)––where Chapter 5 opens. In Chapter 4, we visit Bridgeport at night, in the rain (a nice way to make drawing things you don’t enjoy drawing go faster), but this was going to be in the morning in broad daylight. So, the only way to avoid drawing it was to simply not draw a large establishing shot of the town. Maybe find a way to fake it, which is what I had done.

But while in Bridgeport, standing on the street I had Long John ride down, I realized that cutting corners was not only artistically cowardly, it harms the power of the story. The story of Chapter 5 deserves a big establishing shot. So, being there in the place motivated me to confront my artistic weakness and give it my best shot.

Of the three new pages, this page was the most complicated, but it turned out pretty well. It’s nice to know I can do a drawing on this scale and complexity and not have it turn into a complete mess. Furthermore, doing a drawing like this is much less scary than it was before (but not a cakewalk, either––let’s be clear about that). As I say at the end of the video (sorry for no HD quality there; I don’t know what happened), doing this made me a much stronger artist than I was at the start of this chapter, a reward that I am always striving for, even in my lazier moments.

Here is the fully inked page:

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Sketch Fridays #90 – Frontispiece

May27
by on 27 May 2022
Sketch Fridays #90 – Frontispiece (click image for a larger version)

Tradition is only created when people choose to carry over qualities or behaviors they feel are beneficial. I’m at the designing stage for the book of Long John Volume 5 and I’ve noticed that design traditions have carried over from book to book, making them expected and necessary even if they go unnoticed.

There are more obvious elements, of course, like font choice and the logo. However, there are more subtle choices––the back cover and the inside back cover are always the same; the “Looking Back” at the bottom of the inside front cover is always a terse and abstract recap of the previous volume (an idea stolen from Cormac McCarthy’s chapter descriptions in his horrifying book, Blood Meridian); of course, there’s what I call the “white page” at the end of the story content of each book (something I started doing with my previous comic series). Then there is the frontispiece.

Although I’m being a bit liberal with terminology here, a “frontispiece” is what I’ve come to call these drawings. Technically, a frontispiece is an illustration on the facing page to the title page of a book. It’s on its own standalone page and is not printed on the inside front cover of the book. Also, since the title of the book is also on this page, that would technically make my inside front cover the title page, but that does not excite my snooty tastes.

The frontispieces for the previous four volumes. (Click image for larger version).

The frontispiece for every Long John book has been unique (some of them have even been featured Sketch Friday drawings), though only the frontispiece for volume 1 was explicitly created for the book. The illustrations featured in volumes 2-4 were all sketchbook drawings––ball point pen drawings made either to 1. come up with ideas for the cover or 2. find a “tone” for the upcoming chapter to be written and drawn.

Volume 5’s frontispiece brings it back to the first volume and was created solely for the purpose of being a light illustration behind book information. However, like those that came before, it is emblematic of the themes and tone of the story it precedes. One could even view it as an “after” drawing for the cover’s “before.”

It’s a tradition I look forward to, whether created in a moment of inspiration long before I’ve started the book or drawn in a fit toward the end of a book––it’s a fun chance to be poetic with a character who runs around in his underwear.

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Interview with The State Hornet

May20
by on 20 May 2022
Man, I am bad at getting pictures taken.
Photo by Jack Freeman

With the news about Long John‘s development as an animated series at FX dropping last month, I since have had the pleasure of being interviewed by the State Hornet, the student-run newspaper at Sac State, the university where I teach.

Being interviewed in a journalistic context like this is a fascinating process. Most of my interviews are captured conversations, reproduced in full in the form of podcasts or YouTube interviews. Interviews for newspapers or published pieces are unique because they’re a distillation rather than a reproduction of the long conversation you had with a reporter. It’s interesting to see what pieces they grab onto and run with, taking information that came from a back-and-forth question-and-answer session and crafting a narrative from it.

This is a fun piece overall, though it was weird to talk about the comic while on campus, having just come from teaching a class, as well. I do my best to keep my comics world separate from my teaching world––other than mentioning at the beginning of the semester that I make comics, I don’t bring that into the classroom at all. I think it’s because––and I don’t mean to sound pretentious––my comics are an expression of me and my thoughts while the time I spend on campus is completely about my students and what they think and feel. It’s not my job to get in the way of that. It’s like trying to talk about your favorite heavy metal band with your grandmother––two worlds you are a part of and love, but never should they meet (at least, not in my head).

I hope you enjoy the article and expect another Chapter 5 update soon (as soon as I finish grading, that is).

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