I had a setback in my personal life this week. However, it only slowed down my comic work for a day or two.
I'm grateful for that, as I feel like I'm hitting a stride. I tossed that bottle of gummy ink! I may get ambitious and rework last week's page. I'd also like to go back a couple weeks and redo the first panel of the page set in Loring Park. Looking at it now, that's pretty bad and would not be that hard to fix.
Reading over these last few pages, I notice there's not a lot of transgender stuff in this part of the story. It's an overarching theme, to be sure. But if every page were about that, it would be boring. I went to the symphony with a pal on Friday, another trans woman. She asked me outright, "can we not talk about trans stuff tonight?" I was fine with that. It's part of who we are, not all of it.
In last week's episode, we saw our heroines comforting each other, taking solace from their respective pain. Of course, it didn't hurt that we were both horny as hoot owls.
And we drifted away to sleep.
Read on.
I like the way this page came together visually. Clean lines, good energy. There's almost no variation of panel position relative to the viewer on this page. We zoom in and out slightly, but it's pretty much the same shot in every panel. I'm using the old trick of leaving a white outline around figures and backgrounds/environments surrounded by large areas of heavy black.
The faces are a bit looser/ more cartoony than I usually like to use for more serious work. I tried not to overthink it, to just draw it as seemed natural.
I love detailed art, but my work lends itself to simpler lines most of the time. I have a lot of similar paradoxes in my life. My hair looks better short, but I like it better long, for example. Play the cards you're dealt, baby.
By accident, I started using a scumbling brush for filling, and found it perfect for the "slap lines" on panel three- turns it out it was ideal for dry brush, which I already knew but had forgotten.
Not using word balloons on panel four was a conscious choice. I wanted her (my) questions to be floating in the air, as ambiguous as the situation. Again, hand lettering here.
It was a hell of a thing to sit up in bed like that, shaken and worried, as she quickly and easily fell back asleep.
In terms of environments on this page, I let the bed and the dresser (with its omnipresent lamp) do the job. The dresser is present in the first and last panels, to anchor the page visually in the so-called "real world". These are also the only panels in which Delia is sleeping.
The real Delia later spend some time volunteering for the Center for Victims of Torture. Rather brave and quite healing, I think.
Materials this page:
Canson Recycled Bristol
Soft lead and lead holder
.05 and .08 tech markers
Ames Lettering guide
Faber Castell Brush Tip Markers, large and small
Dr. Martin's Hi-Carbon Waterproof Black Star India Ink (yay, love this stuff!)
#0, 2, 4, and 10 Richeson Synthetic brushes
Crow Quill Pen
Magic Rub Eraser
Next: last page of the Delia sequence, though she shows up again at the end of the Curt story.
