Inking will begin!

Last week and also this week I've had a look at the pages to see if they needed more work, and I've decided that they are ready to get inked!

It's funny that sometimes you hear someone say something and it lingers on, and you remember it. Many years ago, well not that many - just a few, a friend of mine said something about pencil mileage. That to be better at drawing you need to draw, and draw, and draw and do some more drawing. I don't remember what I thought about that, back then I drew when I had to, I didn't have a plan. Maybe two or three years later, I decided to have a plan. I think I've written about this in an earlier post.

With this plan, I actually got some drawing done! But I didn't see any progress... Sure some drawings stood out, but I didn't see giant leaps of improvement. So that talk about pencil mileage, ah phooey! Two or three years ago I could leave my plan behind me, because now I'd gotten the "drawing" in me, it was something that I did without being asked to do or needed to do, whenever I had spare time I drew, or I planned my life so that I could have days of drawing instead of hours, here and there. When I was coloring chapter 4 of Pilgrim, I noticed that one panel actually looked good, maybe even great... and when I did the sketching in red for chapter 5 I kind of realized that I've gotten better, so maybe those words about pencil mileage wasn't just phooey!

It sounds easy when you say it, but if you want to get good at something, you need to do it over, and over, and over again. Practice makes perfect!

Take care!

Sketches in Blue

Wow, that sounds kind of poetic...

Today I wanted to share with you some sketches of the project. Previously I've been quite hesitant to put early sketches on the blog because I only wanted to show good stuff. Eventually though I've been thinking that it can't really hurt to show them, it's a piece of the process!

Here is the thumbnail for the first page!

As you see here, I've been working really loose and my main goal has been to get the pacing and the composition right, so the reader will be able to follow the story, that has been key in these sketches.

When I was satisfied with the composition I have enlarged the sketch on two sheets of paper, this because it's easier when I'm going to scan them, and its easier in handling the sheets, instead of having a big ass sheet of paper! When publishing it will also get easier (I think) because I can then choose to publish it in half pages or in full pages.
As you can see here I've been working very loose at first, just to get the pacing and the composition right (yet again). When I'm (again) satisfied with it, I've worked more with getting the characters in there.
For this I've used a blue pencil, why you ask? Well, me and my blue pencil don't go that far back, actually! When you open a book about comics or animation, you will soon see beautiful sketches done in either blue or red pencil. When I went to animation school I tried the blue pencil for some sketches, but it kind of went south... I was working on my thesis project, and I was using a blue pencil on some drawings. At that time my sketching was very fast and very... inaccurate, I could end up with lots and lots of lines, and think for yourself having lots of lines in blue, it felt like I'd used a blue crayon! And when I scanned it, it was even worse! So that use of the blue pencil meant more work, so I put that pencil in the pencil jar and there it has been laying around until now... kind of. When I have animated a walk cycle or something like that I've used the blue and red pencil to distinguish the right or left arms and/or legs. Lately I've seen some comics artists using blue pencil and I thought that I should give that a go, and thus far I like it, the lines get kind of loose and you can easily correct them. So maybe I'm a blue pencil guy after all!

Take care!