I've been working too much, having too much to do these days and as such, haven't been able to draw much at all. But I want to. So I went through some old sketches and found one that I thought I'd finished but hadn't. This is me, posing for one of Smatt's panels, I think. Makes for an odd but kind of fun self portrait? Playing with colors, I went a little on the wild side. This came together in less than an hour as I trusted the sketch and didn't really edit it  much. I think it's fun and left me satisfied. Wish I had more time these days.

 As I knew would happen, I went back to this page, my least favorite of that song and expanded it. It was meant to be a stop in the song, a hold, and was meant to show the guys reacting to someone else's graffiti. It's what the following verse is about. When we see the final, it's a 2 page spread, obviously covering what was there but before, it was too squashed in. So now there are two 2 page spreads. Who else would make that much noise but the mice?

 Another try. I'd left the shadows out of the first one which did change the mood quite a lot. It fit better with the style I was working with, but not with the subject, at least when it comes to the more melancholy images Rembrandt made of himself. While I liked my drawing, it wasn't "accurate," which I decided to work on for this version. Using a grid, I made my sketch from a gridded, zoomed-in version of the original painting with a similar cropping to the one I did. Once I got the sketch done, I worked it the way I'd done the other; making a new layer for each color then exporting them to the Mac. Once there, each is vectorized and reassembled in AD. I liked the palette of the previous one, so just used that. The final stages always take the least amount of time as, if I've done everything right, it's just a few clicks. There's a lot more emotion in this one and it's much more representational of the original. I still think I'd use a more simplified style for doing a portrait of an actual sitter.

 I added a line. One line. My partner thought the face looked flat and even caved in towards the center. I can't see it myself, but I appreciate his view. I will likely go back to this and try it again. I don't think of it as a failure, I actually love this. But if I can make it better, more appealing to other viewers, I should try to.

 I really wanted to listen to records and draw today, but as is often the case, I didn't know what I wanted to draw. When that happens, I usually either go to a self portrait or Rembrandt. Today was the latter. This style, which is still sort of the "cut paper" thing in that I try and boil the image down to the bare essentials. I also try to keep the color palette very limited as well. When I worked this out in Procreate, there were a lot more levels of gray but that was mostly just to help me keep the layers apart until I'd sent them through SuperVectorizer. Once I got them into AD, the color reassignment came pretty quickly. A last minute overlay brought the whole thing together. I'm pretty happy with it and think this is a very sustainable style, possibly even commercial. We can only see.

 And one more because I wasn't satisfied. I wanted something loose and brush stroke-y. I've done this style before but hadn't done one in awhile. Did it all in Procreate, working in greyscale and then, when I brought it into AD, I got rid of a lot of the color variance which flattens it out but which also brought it better together. Now, I'm done.

 A new version from the same drawing as the last one. I was playing with some ink brushes in Procreate. I do really like thick, textured brushes and simplistic portraits. I seem to be alone in this. More and more, my art is for me alone. So be it. This is another variation and I'll likely do more. Because I like them. And thanks, Vince.

 Had a long day of chores and podcasting but I haven't been able to draw anything all week. I wasn't up to starting on the next page of City Silent, which sucks. Just wanted to do something. So, another self portrait. The text is from one of the last songs of City Silent and isn't meant to be legible, more like tantalizing or something. Played a lot with filtering; the whole image is done in blue with a blue filter of grey writing in the background and then an orange filter over the whole thing. It had unexpected results which I liked and kept.

 So this is the kind of thing that happens when all is "said and done." I woke up before the alarm this morning and had the idea in my head to gently fade the lines out of the mice in this page which transitions not only them to their line-less versions at the bottom of the page but helps transition to the general line-less style for the next song. Well, there you go. That's how this shit works when you don't plan ahead.

 Page 110 finally came together, though I managed one last big mistake before I could call it done: the text originally said "track seven," even thought "end track five" is RIGHT THERE. Twice. Easy enough fix, if annoying. Then again, working with elements makes things tons easier. I just edited the original pencil sketch for the lower figure on the iPad without having to redraw it and then, with that, was able to "re-clothe' Digby without having to make him all over again. The final result is kind of a jumble that still leads the eye down to the lower right and, to me, has a feeling of a graffitied wall as well as a comic. And that's the point. Moving on.

 Already re-drew the main figure as I really just didn't like the old one. Once details are in and a few things are re-arranged, this will work better. And hey, why the HELL didn't I notice that the lower, dropped in figure was wearing TOTALLY DIFFERENT CLOTHES?!! So that will have to be redrawn as well. So will the track text. No big deal, really. This is why I like working with elements and layers.

It was podcast and grocery shopping day but I managed to get some work done on the next page of City Silent as well. I started with what I'd done before, knowing that I wanted it in the upper left hand corner. Then I did some photo ref and drawing. When trying to place the new, multi-limbed figure, I realized it wasn't going to fit, so exported it back to Procreate, warped it, sent it through Supervectorizer again and got more or less what I wanted. From there, it was placement, moving around, text and fudging. I think it's mostly done but I'm not sold on the colors. It needs....something. I think there's some nice movement in it and it fits very well with the previous page. Best to sleep on it and look at it with fresh eyes tomorrow.
 

 Just getting started with page 110. This is the first 'panel,' whatever those are. Turns out I had another shot of that storefront from a different angle, so why not use it? I want to introduce a lot more color, the way I did with the mice but I think I want Digby to paint over the "End Track Five" part first and then write over that with the track 6 information. I also think that he's going to be doing something more than just painting as that's dull. It's all the other characters do. The next song is more about dreaming, in a way; dreaming of 'making it,' whatever that is. I have to be careful as there's a track coming up that is all about branding and I don't want to overlap with it. Maybe I can juxtapose Digby's actual designs over the shapes of his body, have him living in his own art somehow. If I'm careful, I can show two sides of the art world coin; Digby who's more sincere and whoever comes next being a lot more cynical, in it just for the fame and money. They are two real sides of the graffiti world, just like the art world, especially in these days of the ridiculous NFT. I can't even conceive of what stupid thing will come next.

 Not quite ready to start track six, or seven if you count the overture. So I was playing around with Digby some more. The style of the top image is the one I've been using but I like to experiment. The bottom one is cool but too cartoony in comparison with the rest of the comic. But I learned some stuff. The background on the bottom is made from text samples I was making for word balloons piled atop each other and a window from a random photo I took. This means I can make up backgrounds as I was hoping and they should work. The top image's background was just a photo I took with the colors turned way down and shoved through supervectorizer. In general, I like where this is going.