Sunday, June 21, 2020

Original Art Sundays No. 279: Third Sharp Invitation, p.2

Hi, all.
This is another one of those pages that took forever. When I find it, I'll come back and post the original version of this. It sat on my board 3/4 complete for more than a month, until I realized what I was doing wrong and moved to this version.
This turned out rather well, I think. A meditative page, a nice balance between text and image, between realism and symbolism, even if the symbolism is a bit on the nose (or closer to home than that, if you like).
Like this whole chapter, this is deeply intimate. As discussed in the past, some members of our community wrongly use surgical status as bragging rights. My intent here is just to tell it as it happened, as best I remember.
The narrative challenge is that some of the chapters overlap. When the book is done, a chapter will end, and the next chapter will begin at an earlier time, covering a different aspect of the story.
From a design standpoint, there were some challenges here, but they worked themselves out fairly easily, once I realized what the approach had to be. The big challenge was getting some weight into each panel. Each panel is a bit more sparse than its predecessor, as the extraneous is stripped away and she is (I am) left with the central question of her life - or so I thought at the time.
The lyric quoted is from a Monkees song, Sometime in the Morning. Not what Goffin and King had in mind, I suspect, yet somehow apropos.
The last panel is a reiteration of the original cover art, which may be the final cover art. I'm happy with it, but other ideas tease my mind....
Ahem.
The supply list.
Canson Recycled Bristol
Solid #4 lead
Lead holder with #4 fill
Magic Rub eraser
Yasutomo Sumi-E ink
Crowquill pen
Synthetic brushes, No. 0, 2 and 4
Tight Spot correction brush
Tech markers, Nos. 3, 5, 6, 7
Copic multi-liner brush, small and medium
And just a hint of Photoshop for cleanup.
Next: the surgery page.