Taking a break from Comics History class prep to post this week's page.
This one came together pretty quickly and went pretty well.
As you recall, Curt reluctantly agreed to therapy, provided he get tapes of the sessions to review afterwards for "inaccuracies and lies". Needless to say, this arrangement wasn't conducive to good therapy and led to this.
This is common in an abusive situation. Abusers take perverse joy in manipulating someone's thoughts, making them doubt themselves. Why are people so shocked after the fact to learn that it worked?
Again, aside from being a trans woman's story, no overt trans content on this page.
Lots to like about this page. Sometimes I really struggle with pages, but this one just fell together. The layout device is inspired by several things. I thought the story was getting a little claustrophobic, with all the interiors (physical and mental), and I wanted to break it up a little. It's also important to remind the reader that even in this confining situation, the rest of the world is still out there waiting. It makes the denial of the world to the abused all the more poignant.
I wanted to play with rendering parks in gray scale after reading Alison Bechdel's Secret of Superhuman Strength (which I'm teaching in Graphic Novel class this semester). And I'm not sure where I encountered the idea of slice panels inside a larger panel to imply a motion path, but I like it. The borders of the primary panel were rendered in pencil and drawn freehand with a brush tip marker, a device I used on A Private Myth about a hundred years ago.
The bottom tier is all about expression and pose. I always want more heavy blacks than I end up using in such situations, but it's working. Minimal Photoshop corrections on this one.
More and more, I'm coming to think of my poses and characters as Hitchcock actors. Hitchcock is famous for saying he trusted his actors would know to move and act like their characters. So it is with my art. I trust that as long as I give them my best, my characters will look and pose the way they should. A bit disingenuous, but useful. Trusting your own art is vital.
Tools used:red
- Canson Bristol Board
- Lead holder, tech pencil, solid lead #3B and Ticonderoga pencil #2
- Kneaded eraser and Faber Castell dust free eraser
- 10 well inking/watercolor dish
- Dr. Martin's Dark Star Matte black ink
- FW Artist's Acrylic White
- Brushes: Princeton #10 Round Synthetic, Blick #6 round synthetic, Renaissace Silver Sable #2 Cat's Tail
- Tight Spot Detailer for corrections
- Photoshop 2019
Next: closer to the main event.
