Original Art Sundays no. 364: Sharp Invitations: Esther's Hands, p. 6

 On to the next page of our story. I rather like this one.

When we left our family, Esther was starting to pull her life back together while she raised five children alone.

Now that the framework is solidly in place, we can get to the meat of Mother's story. 

Story notes: As Mother started to come into her own, so did the kids. We were finding our own voices, developing interests. Like many kids of the mid-late 60s, we bonded over TV. My sisters and I developed a fascination with The Monkees. I stuck with them more fervently than my sisters did. We often took the books, art and music that surrounded us for granted. That was soon to change. More on that on next week's page.

Art notes: The visual device of the brush stroke defining the left border of the panel will be repeated over the next two pages. I worked up a decent sketch of a hand doing a brush stroke, scaled it and printed a few copies. It will serve as a unifying narrative device. The first panel is from photo reference, with some liberties in perspective, intended to show that our lives were full but a bit off-kilter. For the middle panel, I tried 6 different layouts - Mother running out of the room, Mother looking back as she leaves, the closeup of a child's eye with Mother leaving in the eye, and so on. I finally resolved that even though this is her chapter, she doesn't need to appear in the panel at all. In fact, this page is unusual in that there are no face shots of anyone! This is almost like leaving myself out of a page. I've noted before that most graphic memoirs show the creator/subject on every page. Alison Bechdel broke this rule in her two most recent memoirs, but not in her first, Fun Home. I don't know if it's as much a rule as just the way things work out. At any rate, it's refreshing to shake up reader expectations as well as my own.

The astute viewer will note that the furniture and room layout are slightly different than previously represented. This is both artistic license and an acknowledgment that time has passed. 

For several years after Mother passed, I made small books reproducing her art and writing for the family. For the last panel, I scoured one of those books, and found a work that was period specific and had a good range of gray values. Rather than incorporating a photo of the actual painting, I opted to do a wash rendering of it. 

I'm happiest with my work when I let it flow. A solid layout is a tool, a means to an end, not an end in itself, to paraphrase Robert Fripp. I've been revising the master book, as mentioned last week. In noticing what works best, the most successful pages are those where I just explore visual ideas to advance the story. As an artist, I seem to be escaping the confines of my own expectations, whatever that means!

Finally, I re-titled this chapter from the outline. It's not about hands the same way songs like Bill Withers'  Grandma's Hands (which I love even though he sings flat) are about hands. It's not about specific things the hands are doing. I am spotlighting hands throughout this chapter. Their appearance and actions reinforce different parts of the story and character. I hope that's clear. I'm not sure how else to articulate it.

Next: the brush stroke continues.

Original Art Sundays No. 293: Sharp Invitations: Curt, p. 25

 You know, I didn't think I'd make it this week. It's a good page, but the content... well....

Remember all those times with Delia and Sara before our heroine moved in with Curt? Well, turns out these things are almost always revealed eventually. In the vernacular, I was busted. In most cases, that's the end of the relationship, or the beginning of counseling. In this event, it was the death of my 1972 Picador guitar and my first exile from my new home, with almost no money in my purse and only the clothes on my back.

This was a very difficult page to create from an emotional standpoint. We're starting to get to the really ugly stuff in the relationship. I'm not interested in painting myself a hero, but I do want to show what happened as clearly as I can.

The first layout for this was pure exposition, a talking heads page. Boring! I played with slicing it up in different ways, doing some work with jagged panel edges and lots of little slice panels, but that had no impact. 

This is a big dramatic moment, with lots of action. I realized that his actions had to dominate the page, so settled on the two-column full figure layout. I took some license with his stomping my guitar. It really happened, but it wasn't quite as destructive as shown. He just put his foot through the top and stood there leering shards of the guitar and broken strings tangled stupidly around his foot.

For background consideration, I opted for a simple gray on the panels with me in them, which is repeated in the last panel, to anchor me to the visual space. I referenced the TV, door and windows seen in previous pages showing this space. The gray value comes from ink wash and not a Photoshop solid or texture. I wanted it to look a bit uneven, to echo the emotional content. I like the word balloon effect in the second panel of the right column, the dotted line inside the solid line. I think it emphasizes the smallness of my voice in that moment. I went with a heavier border than usual, again for emphasis. Curt's cast shadow in the last panel was a last minute touch, possibly superfluous, but I don't think it hinders anything.

I still miss that guitar. I've looked into replacing it a few times, but they're very hard to find. I do have other guitars now- more on that in a subsequent page.

The emotional toll of these pages is heavy. The only way I can do it is by focusing on the craft and circling back to be sure the final result isn't too analytical, too cold. Even then, it takes a day after finishing the page to recuperate.

Tools are pretty much the usual with a couple interesting additions:

• Canson Bristol board
• Lead holder with 3B leads
• 3B Castell pencil (good old greenie!)
• Ames lettering guide
  
• Castell eraser
• Micron numbers .02, .05, .08, 1.0 and brush tip
• Dr. Martin's Black Star Ink
• FW Artist's Acrylic White
  
• Round 10 well paint palette (for ink washes)
• Crow Quill and nib
  
• Brushes: Blick No. 2 and No. 6 synthetic
• Tight Spot for corrections
• And our old friend Photoshop 2019

Next: aftermath

Original Art Sundays No. 174: Surrealist Cowgirls, pages 24 and 25

As promised, a double header this week. Only one page to go to wrap up this story.
The first of these pages is a bit adventurous in layout, and the second is much more straightforward. I had a great confidence and positive energy when creating the second page, and I hope it shows.
Not mad for the solution I've found for scanning, but it works. I will have to rescan every page before going to press anyway, and may decide to rework a couple.
When we left our party, they were trapped at the base of the Obsidian Crystal Ziggurat. Tolcanan's familiar Chiss had just been enlarged by an energy circle, from Tolcanan to Chiss to Kay Seurat-Suerat's wand and back to Chiss. He was about to engulf Master Pah.
Now read on.

Next: The Surrealist Cowgirls in It Does This When I Hurt, conclusion.

Original Art Sundays No. 166: Surrealist Cowgirls, p. 22

Writing this blog seems to not work at ALL with Firefox any more. Rather than struggle with it, I'll just work in Chrome.
Hm..."working in Chrome" is a good title for a robot story....
Ahem. Here's the long overdue next page!

Much I like about this page. The energy is good, the poses work, and the lights and darks are well balanced. I'm not convinced the space between Maggie and Kay in Panel Two is working well.

My work seems to be about bigger, splashier panels, more and more.

I've also been spending more time writing than drawing of late, although a new page of this story is already on the boards and moving along nicely. 

Next: page 23. The story has 4 or 5 pages to go, inlcuding the denouement!

Original Art Sundays (Wednesday) No. 164: Suurealist Cowgirls, p. 20

Only four or five pages to go of this story, the second major Surrealist Cowgirls story.
There have been two minor SC stories, and of course, the paper dolls and the lunchbox for fun.
The page at hand:

 

Some notes on this page:

Sparse backgrounds. I tried to shake it up a bit from the heavy black backgrounds of recent pages, and used some support graphic elements for diversity. Chief among these are the lined partial background of panel two, a device I freely stole from Terry Moore, and the connecting infinity symbol in panel three.

I'm trying for more dynamic poses as the action builds. To that end, the face in grief in panel two, Kay's fainting in panel four, and Master Pah coming to life in the final panel.

Narrative note: until the last panel of the previous page, Master Pah had not moved other than to speak. His anger and sense of betrayal at the presence of his former apprentice spur him to physical action.

Scanner access is greatly improved now. 

Next: the battle, page one.