I walked away from that last self portrait: couldn't make it work at this time. But I forgot I had started this one awhile back and never finished it. Did a little tweaking and finished it tonight. It came from the tools I used making all those flyers for City Silent. I wanted something vague, used, imperfect and this is all of those things. Done in warm greys, I think it works well enough. Not one of my best but an interesting experiment.

 

Took a little time to play with another self portrait. I got a gift certificate to Blick art supplies. I don't need many these days as I'm mostly digital. That being said, I was nearly at the end of my last sketchbook and could use a couple more. I decided at the same time to get a couple of boards to paint on, some gesso and a missing tube of paint. I'd like to do one or two paintings to see how my stuff translates to paint again. I didn't have anything to work on so stared this. While working as minimally as possible, I tried a three color palette, all in greys for now but something wasn't working. So I dropped out one of the greys and liked it a lot better. Doing these, it's really hard to figure out what should and what should not be there. I'm at a good point to set things aside and turn away for a bit. So far, I think it's working.

 This might seem to have come from nowhere. I supposed it sort of did. I managed to take photos, sketch and ink the figures last night then assembled the rest this morning before work. I'm channeling an old Bob Dylan video, believe it or not where he holds up cards with choice picked lyrics from the song that's being played. Through a simple mistake, I flipped which side the card's being held on but that's fine, too. This track, "Personal Best," gets one or two verses before the second, "Doubt" starts. I want the two Silas to be obviously different. "Doubt" is the more aggressive of the two tracks, so I'll likely try and draw him more active and in brighter colors, maybe even dulling the background. Here, I wanted a feeling of him fighting against visual 'noise,' trying to be heard, which is what most of the comic is about. So, page 148, last track of the Act. Haven't pulled out the curtains pages in a long while. :D

 Did some work on these today. Pretty happy with the way they turned out. I think they need to be made to look more like actual graffiti; some drips, spray, that kind of thing before I can use them in the comic. That being said, they're fun to do and will work. Might dull Tamino down a little. Otherwise, forward progress.

 Working on Angel today. He had only one appearance in Tamino though his suicide was what started Tamino on his quest to find out what the hell was going on. Angel was the ears of the City. I suppose making a rabbit 'The Ears' is a bit obvious but as he only appeared once, I didn't think it was such a big deal. Besides, it made one tiny part of the metaphor slightly more obvious. The top drawing was the original which I liked very much, channeling some Courbet and an artist I've only known about for a little while, Rick Barton. There was meant to be some Modigliani in there as well, but there just wasn't room. When I got the sketch done, I decided to see what it would look like warped and the pose pushed even further than Courbet. And I liked it better. There might even be a bit of Haring in there, too which is a good thing considering his background.

 Was kind of lazy today, mostly as my voice is shot and whatever's causing it is likely making me tired. That being said, I looked at some of the stuff I'd sketched for Silas and decided to push at least one of the drawings a little further. This is a portrait of Tamino by way of Modigliani. It will get a final bit of graffiti treatment but for the most part, I'm pretty happy with it and think I have Silas' style down pretty well. I'll probably do two or three of these, partially as they'll be needed for upcoming pages and then get going on the duet.

EDIT:

Did a little coloring. Think it might be too bland, though it fits the subject. A first pass:

 Some more work on Silas' style. At the very least, they're fun to do.

 Potential road block on the upcoming pages and in the comic in general: I know what Silas's style looked like when painting for the City, but on his own? Yah, I have to decide on that. And that's what this is an attempt at. I started with something more abstract, something based on an old painting of mine. But it ended up too different from the rest of the comic and I didn't feel I could use it. I want something that will fit but will also be not the usual graffiti thing. Damned hard to do.

That was the first go around. Probably should have posted these in reverse order. The one at the top has the three players from the previous comic: Tamino, Angel, who appeared in only one panel, and Silas. I'm going to play around with this some more but it appeals to me and, with some more mural like details, I think I can make this work for what Silas wants to say and how he wants to try and be heard. That's the whole point of the whole comic. So there has to be some elements that don't quite work. Otherwise, if he's too successful, I'll have to rewrite the whole thing.

 Possibly the quickest and 'cheapest' three pages in the whole comic. The idea was cemented in my head and came together quickly because of that. I did print out the last flyer and crumpled it, took a photo and used that as the direct drop into SuperVectorizer. It worked like a charm. The hands were mine, minus the finger. I'm kind of amazed no one's ever called me out on that; why three fingers? I like the colors as well. So yes, a cheap three pages, but three pages none the less. I also decided to take the last two tracks in this act and combine then as I didn't need both but couldn't decide which one to drop. Then I thought about Silas doing a duet with himself, and that, at least in my head, seemed to work. So that's how I'm moving ahead.

Well, I did it. I managed to get two pages done in one day, partially as the first page was mostly done the day before. Still, this means that track seven is complete. Looking ahead, there are two tracks to go before the mid point. At first, I was thinking of dropping one of them as they're both Silas' songs but they seem to come from two different sides of the same issue. Then I thought, what if I do it as a duet, him singing with himself to help underline the fact that he can't make up his mind? Why not, indeed.

The thumbnails of this track are thrown together from my Flickr page, which is why there are some artifacts in the top two rows. Oh, well, mostly I just wanted to see how the pages worked together and I'm pleased to see that they do. A nice, organized little mess. I'm pretty sure this is the shortest track of the comic and that's ok, too. It's an important track but the style change, I think, heightens its impact.

Off to play video games. I've earned it. (I also did two loads of laundry...)

 

 After a lot of finagling, I got page 143 done. The warping is still not my favorite but it fits the aesthetic of the track and I like the flyers. The one above, #4, is something I could see on a t-shirt. Zippa needs a slogan of some sort, but I might well work on that when the track is done. And it almost is. Going to work on the finish now. This track is going to stick out of the comic a bit and that's ok. There are stylistic differences all through the book just like there are in graffiti. That's my justification and I'm sticking to it.

Thursdays are busy days, what with the podcast, grocery shopping and laundry to be done. I also managed to get some time on a new video game I've been interested in. This means I didn't leave a lot of time for the comic, which is bad. Still, I might have got further if I hadn't had to struggle with the perspective of trying to make the flyers look as if they'd been folder over a mailbox. They're not perfect but I think they'll do considering the time I took to play with them. I wish there was a straight line warping tool instead of one that so wants to make things curve. Still, got a background, setup, warped flyers and a third flyer drawn and placed. So that's not nothing.