Here is the penultimate page of this crucial but comparatively short chapter!
Thoughts:
My body never looks better than when I draw it! I don't know if that's false advertising or wishful thinking.
Text is crucial on this page. Economy of words is vital here. As I tell my writing students, communicate more with less and trust your audience to fill in the blanks.
I don't have to worry about not having enough black on this page! The background is sparse by choice. Originally, I thought of doing a grayed back collage of previous moments from the story, but the more I played with the idea, the more it seemed both contrived and visually confusing. Dramatic collage in comics is very difficult to pull off. Jack Kirby's collages were ambitious but clumsy, at least to my eyes.
On the figure, I could have done more internal inks, shadows of body contours and such. I usually do such on draped figures more than on nudes. Now that circumstance are conducive to it, it might be time to get back to a figure drawing co-op. You learn so much from drawing the human figure!
Reversed lettering is a challenge. There are three basic approaches, and I've done all three. You either ink around the individual characters, use white ink after filling in your blacks, or just use the lettering tool in Photoshop. I opted for the third, using the Comic Craft typeface The Sculptor from the Scott McCloud book I so revere.
Not sure if there are one or two more pages to this chapter. It's set up for one, which will serve as prelude to the Curt chapter (already 19 pages posted on that one).
Overall, I'm pretty satisfied with this page!
Materials:
- Canson Bristol Board
- Lead holder with no. 3B leads
- Various erasers
- Tech markers: Micron numbers .01, .03, .05, .08 and 1.0
- Sumi-E black ink
- FW Acrylic White
- Crow quill nib and holder
- Brushes: Royal synthetic angle flat no. 8, Blick round synthetic no. 6, Sceptre Gold sable/synthetic no. 0, Tight Spot for corrections
Next: the conclusion and lead-in to the big chapter, already in progress!
Photoshop
