Biography for today. Must not have inked anything in a long time because when I went to ink the Silas drawing from the last entries, I really couldn't tell how close the nib was to the board. The light bouncing off the paper pretty much blinds my right eye so things are tricky to say the least. My partner, whose brain just ignores one of his eyes, is a vet who performs surgery all the time and he says I'll get used to this, which I will to some extent. Then again, PS is there when I need it. I use it all the time anyway because smudging is pretty much the norm for me.

I'm including yesterday's image just for contrast. Yesterday's had an orange layer that was originally blended in multiply mode in AD but which wouldn't export properly for some reason. I think I figured out the reason and was able to do exactly what I wanted today. I also learned how one erases content in AD which is bit more crude than AI but it works. Really, you don't erase vector content as much as you create a kind of mask over a selected item so you don't see that part. But it's still there. Seems rather workaround to me, but there you go.

I learned a lot in just the differences between these two. One of the things I was worrying about with the graffiti depiction in this comic was, frankly how to do it. Graffiti is messy stuff and while I could just DO it, plaster it against the walls of my backgrounds, something felt dull about that. So today, I imported some stuff I did for an earlier image and just stuck it under the limited line work I did for the background here and suddenly I had a depth I really liked. This means me getting to go wild with part of the images, which is something I was struggling with, while laying framework on top which should allow the casual reader, if any, to have something to grab onto while allowing me the ability to go kind of nuts at the same time. It also means a lot of work as I'll have to have a sort of library of graffiti that I slap down where I need it. Some I can repeat as the setting will be the same. These are all mental notes, really. As long as I'm beginning to see what I want, I'm happy.

So this started happening today. Amazing what happens when you beat Ganon, save Zelda and become the hero you forgot you were. There are problems with this, sure, but overall I'm happy with the direction this thing is going on. The drawing came fairly easily, which is never assured. Because of my cataract, inking has become... interesting. I basically have no depth perception at the drawing table, so setting my pen nib back down to complete a line is hit and miss. This is going to be a problem but I'll get around it somehow. The colors are still something of a problem with AD as images exported don't seem to have their multiply elements exported in that mode. That being said, the weird coloring and alternate outline shade worked for me in this. It's not an actual page, but it helps. Little steps.

Things have been REALLY quiet around here lately. The year got off to a good start and then Zelda showed up. That and I really haven't been motivated to draw much. I'm pretty passionate about this comic, otherwise I wouldn't have been able to write 24 songs for it. Thing is, I know that there will be pretty much NO audience for it. The few people that have seen any of the lyrics have said nothing back to me about them at all, which leads me to believe that they're not very good. This sucks as I'm pretty happy with them. Before when I made comics and I expected few if any to read them, I still got them done. Perhaps that's all just piling up on my shoulders and it's making it harder for me to get to the drawing. I don't know. I'm damning myself ahead of time with this one; still doing the funny animal thing AND the whole thing is going to be told in verse. Well, too bad. It's what I want to do. Opera (sort of) and graffiti. Who wouldn't like that combination?

I can't say that Paul Pope has influenced my art, though I really admire his painterly way of inking. That being said, I remember reading this whole comic at the end of my shift at the Picnic. There were few customers and I was able to get through the whole thing fairly quickly. Initially, I put it back on the shelf (in the Adult Section) but I couldn't stop thinking about it. Eventually, I bought it and I still have it. It's a somber tale and I don't remember it having much of an ending, which was just fine. THAT, I think might have influenced me. Anyway, a quick thought between bouts of Zelda and working on Silas lyrics.