Wow, what a rough page!
Every panel went through a dozen permutations. I tried collage, reversing, visual metaphors, tons of dialogue. Nothing was working. So it was back to the basics.
This page also has a strong emotional resonance. Or so I hope.
Well then.
Here's our heroine (me) taking a handful of prescription meds, washing them down with hard liquor, grabbing a sharp object and heading for the bathtub.
In terms of storytelling, I opted for pure image. Sometimes I think I rely too much on text. Let the pictures tell the story!
There's only two full face shot on this page, and even those are obscured partially. The intent here is to convey story and emotion through action.
Top tier is white on black. I used China marker for the background texture. Still finding balance between detail and solid fields of tone for backgrounds, as I go. Note that the second tier is black on white, again popping some of my reliable silhouettes. The bottom splash tier is pretty straightforward. I had some fun playing with textures on the tiling. I also took a few liberties. Our bathroom was nowhere near that big or nice! I hope the little floating icons in panel 6 convey the effect of being slightly buzzed, as we used to say. I didn't want to overdo it, to drag the page into the realm of silliness.
I went through a lot of old, painful stuff preparing this page. I also debated its merits in larger terms. Self-harm is a real concern in trans and nonbinary communities, and deserves to treated as such. But there are a couple cautions associated with that. The first is the issue of "violence porn". I don't want to create a page where adrenaline junkies are getting their fix off my work. At the same time, I don't want to soft-pedal what's going on.
The other issue is that although it's true, although it's a real concern, self-harm is in so many trans narratives that it's almost a cliche. I don't mean in any moral or empathetic sense, but just from a standpoint of storytelling. It feels like lazy storytelling, and it feeds into the uninformed cliches about who we are and how our lives work. It's also a common side effect of domestic abuse, both in trans and cis worlds.
So I think the answer is to just tell what happened, without aggrandizing or diminishing it, and trust that a discerning reader will see it for what it is- a rough moment in a bad part of my life, that should have been much better.
The usual tools:
- Canson Bristol board
- 2B, 3B and Ebony pencils
- Lead holder with 3B lead
- Kneadable eraser and Canson eraser
- Ames lettering guide
- Micron .02, .03, .05, 1.0 and brush tip
- Dr. Martin's flat black ink
- FW Artist's acrylic white
- Brushes: Richeson no. 6 synthetic, Kingart no. 4 sable/synthetic hybrid, Tight Spot for corrections
- Minimal Photoshop
Next: making the cuts.
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