City Silent page 39. This one was kind of a pain, even though a simple set up. I did the figure, inked it, had it all set in the page and then realized I really wanted to draw the eye to the lower right corner more. So I flipped the inks and was glad the drawing worked just fine. That's really the test of an image; if it can work both ways it must be pretty solidly done. It's an old artists' trick to look at things upside down or in a mirror to see flaws. Glad there weren't any since the drawing was done. Then there was all those tags in the background. All separate layers, a few have some overlays to darken them. Think it works well enough. No to thumbnail the next song out. Should take time to do tweaks on all the pages in this song, too.
City Silent page 38. Had to work on this one a little. The lettering just wasn't fitting and I wasn't sure what I wanted for the background, but I liked the three figures I drew and inked for it. Did some fiddling around and everything finally came together in about a half hour. With the iPad's help. Procreate and the iPad are now indispensable for making this comic. Really. Also added a gradient overlay in hard light and loved what it did to the line work, especially in the lower right corner. When the song is done, one page to go, I'll have to tweak this and the last page to better work together. But that's ok.
Another work demo I didn't get to finish. Got pretty far, though. This is one of Van Gogh's better portraits, or my copy of it. Van Gogh is a perfect example of name and reputation = dollars, even if the work isn't top notch. I love a good chunk of his stuff, but there are some real dogs, in my opinion and there's not just a couple of them. His portraits involving babies, for example, are generally awful. Not everything is gold. But they're held up as if they are because of that signature. But I'm off topic. This is a good one and it was fun to try and copy.
Two pages in one day. That never happens! This particular page was a simple layout with no background, so I could knock it out this evening. Thought I'd try something a little different and leave out the extraneous details, keeping just with a simple outline. This is actually a look I had planned to use in the beginning but couldn't let go of my brush. That being said, I kind of like it better. It feels a little bit more modern and in line with the subject matter, at least to me. Also had an @duh moment tonight. Felt really stupid. The graffiti is something I've been doing either first or somewhere along the way. Tonight, it suddenly occurred to me that I could get the page nearly done, airdrop the image to my iPad and THEN do the graffiti in Procreate, making sure it was going to fit. Gah. Wonder why it took me so long to figure THAT out.
Page 36. Had to play with this a little. The spray cans and right hand stencil were not in the original background drawing. As a time saving measure, I decided to add the cans and stencil by using the iPad instead of drawing things on paper, inking then scanning them. Worked like a charm. To my eye, you can't tell that they're not a part of things. And, as props, I can move them around however I want after the fact. This is going to be more important as the comic goes on, I think. Getting close to the end of this song. Then on to the next.
Another work demo, this time something a bit more painterly. This is a copy of a painting by a British artist I'd never heard of called John Duncan Ferguson. I wanted to do something a little less linear and a little more painterly. It's MUCH harder to copy something so loose with brushstrokes so thick and obviously quick. Still allowed me to get something somewhat buttery, even on the iPad.
Did a quick Silas tonight after going to the gym. Red is a good color. I saw a report somewhere that said that paintings that had a lot of red in them sold for higher prices than those of any other predominant color. I'm also partial to yellow. Green... not so much. While I like Cezanne in general as a painter, he uses a LOT of green, and it's a green I don't much care for. Studio Ghibli films, too tend towards a spring green. Gah. Anyway, red. Silas.
Today's work demo. Sadly, I can't remember who painted this. I want to say Vlaminck but I don't think that's right. I really should know. Probably one of the Fauve. Was fun. Paint was nice and flowy, though strokes not as well defined as real paint. Only had about 30 minutes on this one but I got most of it done.
EDIT: It's Matisse.
I sort of lied; there was one more adjustment to do on page 34 but there was no way to know I'd need to do it until I'd fully made page 35. Now I have a transition as well as echoes of page 34 IN page 35. This will likely be the easiest page to do of the whole comic as it's purposefully sketchy and minimal. Maybe part of this section is happening inside Silas' head. Anyway, both pages shown here to underline the transition.
UPDATE: Looking at the next page's thumbnails, I noted that the transition from this page to the next was going to be more complex than I wanted it to be. I had to get Silas out of the subway an to the walls he'd be painting. That meant more images per page than I was comfortable doing. I don't believe I have to show every moment for people to follow my comics (even if they can) but going from drawing in the train to painting on an alley wall was too much of a jump. A solution popped into my head as I looked back at some Tamino pages; change what he's drawing and then drop him into the drawing. The page after will have the painting done more in the style of the rest of the comic and that will finish the transition. No need to show him walking out of the train, up the stairs and down the street; I think the audience will get it. If they get anything at all.
So I went back to the original drawing for the bottom of page 34, put a new piece of paper atop it, sketched a rough 'city,' which is what he'll be painting and used PS to merge the new sketch and old drawing together. Then, back to SV to make a new set of lines. Finally, had to refit the new lines over the old ones so I didn't have to redo the color layer. About 40 minutes of editing which will save me hours of work. For once, I was actually retroactively efficient.
Page 34. This one came together pretty quickly, though I had to transpose two of the stanzas because I'd misread my thumbnails. This is easy because they're so messy. That being said, I think the song works better this way anyway. The last page was only supposed to have the first half of the verse printed and this page the second. Things don't need to go that slowly. With the next page, we get some echoes from Tamino which is also reflected in the text. In my head, it makes sense.
This was an experiment. I was talking to a customer at the end of my day at work and she was an artist, too. She had never heard of vectors or a lot of what I use to make my stuff. She was buying an iPad and new iMac and so I was sharing some of my work while looking at hers. Also shared some of my process. Which got me to thinking tonight about vectorizing my work. I generally just do black and white or, for the graffiti, about 15 levels of grey. I've never tried to do something close to full color. So tonight, I took one of my recent self portraits in Procreate, upped the color slider in SV all the way to 32 and let it do its thing. Then I opened the following file in AD and exported it again as a jpg. This is the result. Top version; from AD. Bottom version; original Procreate. I'm kind of impressed.
Edit: Found out there's a new version of SV that can export in up to 64 colors which is three times the what the version I have could do. So I bought it. I included its output on the bottom. It's a little softer, but obviously has a greater color range. This has a lot of possibilities and is 20 bucks well spent, I think.
City Silent page 33. This one seemed solidly laid out until I tried to put things together. And then it wasn't working for me initially. I think I had the right idea, but the graffiti had to be redone a couple of times to really fit. And that made me think about how to do it a bit more. I really should get the composition down before writing it. The only thing I worry about with this page is that I darkened it too much, that it's too much a visual leap from the page before. We'll see when the song is done and I do final tweaks. The color of the graffiti changed many times. In the end, I used the orange to visually link this page to the previous one, since the color palette changed. Ended up happier with this page than I thought I would. Sometimes you never know til the end.
Store demo I did yesterday on the iPad. Tried to copy a Picasso self portrait as best I could in the time allotted. The brushes I had were just the basic ones and I wish I had some of the ones I bought for my personal pad. That being said, I'm not unhappy with this. It could still use some work, but I think it worked ok.
Biograph. Haven't added too much to this lately, but there are more pages than have been posted. They're more raw, plain, blunt. I kept them to myself. This is the second one where I blank out obvious text. Last time I posted one of those, people didn't even notice there was something blanked out, I think they thought it was just part of the design. Whatever. After I thought to do this, I did it, then went to the gym for the first time in a year and a half. Turns out I missed it. So I feel better.
Another page down, this one a quiet moment between verses. I was thinking of that moment when you pause from singing out loud because someone comes close enough to hear you. Once the train starts, the verse will start up. Silas is mute, but it's the same idea. Pushed the Procreate part a little further this time as I took a photo of the finished line work so I could try to fit the graffiti to the open doored subway. It mostly worked, but I had to fudge things a bit. It made me really wish I had the eraser tool missing from Affinity Designer. Otherwise, I think this is one of the more successful pages. I'm putting more time into the backgrounds than I expected to, but I think it's paying off. I still want things to go wacky later on, I just want to ease into it.
Haven't touched "Ghiroy" in a couple months, and I kind of feel bad about that. City Silent requires more time to complete a page and, of the two projects is the one that has more potential, or is more 'important,' whatever that means. So until a bunch of time frees up, that comic is on the back burner. Which is too bad because I do enjoy it, it is fun.
