Doing a bit of old school inking for part of a page yesterday.
Brush, india ink, bristol… brought tears to my eyes*.
-cvj
*Mostly been digital inking/pencilling these days, sadly… time is of the essence. Click to continue reading this post
I’m trying to make the characters somewhat expressive, since you, the book’s reader, will be spending a lot of time with them. This means constructing lots of hands doing things. Lots of hands. Hands take time, but are actually rather fun to construct from scratch. I start mine as two or three planes hinged together, and then go from there, subdividing until I’m done.
Still slowly getting back up to speed (literally) on page production. I’ve made some major tweaks in my desktop workflow (I mostly move back and forth between Photoshop and Illustrator at this stage), and finally have started keeping track of my colours in a more efficient way (using global process colours, etc), which will be useful if I have to do big colour changes later on. My workflow improvement also now includes […] Click to continue reading this post
When you realize mid-sketch that your character is wearing a watch, and so that means you should probably go back and add it to all the previous pages and panels… (click for larger view.)
…of the physics kind.
Ok, I’ll share a bit during my lunch break from spending too much time doing detail in a tiny panel few will linger on. (Perils of a detail-freak….) It’s a rough underdrawing I did this morning for a panel I’m now turning into final art (the black stuff is the start of final lines). That’s the character you saw a turnaround for earlier, busy at work in a cafe when… (To be continued…)
Here’s a character turnaround I finished today. It is a sign that I’m about to delve into finished art on one of the stories in the book. Finally. Been a long time since I’ve done that, but I’ve been building up to it. Only 3 months later than I’d planned.
What’s a turnaround? Sort of self-explanatory name I hope. Its purpose? It is […] Click to continue reading this post
I’m not going to lie. If you’re not in the mood, thumbnailing can be the most utterly tedious thing: (click for larger view)
Yet, as the key precursor to getting more detailed page layout right, and […] Click to continue reading this post
Here’s a piece by Michelle Boston of Dornsife News that might unpack my graphic book project for you, a least a little bit.
The link is here. She interviewed me about it a while ago, and this is the result…
Enjoy!
I found some time to do another practice digital sketch to get my skills back into shape. (Click for larger view.) I’ll admit I had fun with the three-color scheme for skin tones. For the three of you who recognize her, evidently there was another showbiz magazine article laying around for me to squint at. Yeah, her nose is too long. I’m not going to sweat it.
I figured the best way to stop me from further obsessing […] Click to continue reading this post
Due to a busy semester, I’m rusty as hell in the drawing department, and so have been trying to find time to practice some faces in a graphic style. (Click for larger view.) 
I’m forcing myself to do it all digitally from scratch, just to encourage myself to get used to being in full-on drawing mode (not just inking mode or painting mode) on screen. In view of a certain film release coming up, this gentleman’s face has started turning up on magazine covers, and so I used one as reference for a quick sketch (see rough on right), and then did some over-inking (digital) and colour finishing experiments here and there, with the result at the top. Title*: “Not Uncle Quentin”.
-cvj
(*Kind of a shout out to Enid Blyton, oddly…) Click to continue reading this post
Somewhere near you, some perfectly ordinary people are about to do something wonderful – start a conversation about science… turn their minds to how the world around them works. Isn’t that great? Here’s an iPad rough of an opening splash page of a story with one such conversation*. Listen! – It is about to begin. (Click for larger view.) Pick your city/street/people…
-cvj
As promised, on the right is the companion figure to the one I shared earlier (on the left). Click for a larger view. These were two jolly fellows I found in glass cases at Mexico City’s Museo Nacional de Antropologia, and sort of had to sketch them.
Continuing in the “tradition” of sharing a drawing from a visit to a city South of the border, let me introduce you to this character I met (to my delight) on the recent Mexico trip. I did a quick visit to the wonderful Museo Nacional Antropologia, and there he/she was. I neglected to get […] Click to continue reading this post
With the new semester and a return to the routine of campus life comes taking the subway train regularly in the morning again, which I’m pleased to return to. It means odd characters, snippets of all sort of conversations, and – if I get a seat and a good look – the opportunity to practice a bit of quick sketching of faces. I’m slow and rusty from no recent regular practice, so I imagine that it was mostly luck that helped me get a reasonable likeness […] Click to continue reading this post
Been a while since I shared a snippet from the graphic book in progress. And this time the dialogue is not redacted! A few remarks: […] Click to continue reading this post
