Original Art Sundays No. 301: Sharp Invitations: Curt, p. 41

 As promised, a little action!

When we left our hapless couple, Curt had just snapped - I mean really snapped - because the phone rang and somebody hung up. 

The story: this is where I finally accepted the truth, that the problem wasn't me, it was him. I'm taking slight liberties with the timeline and omitting some events that bog things down. It all happened, but over a full day and night, and briefly involved some out of town guests, awkward witnesses to some of this miasma. It will take two or three more pages to resolve these events and a few more to deal with the aftermath.

In most abuse narratives, there's a point where the victim finally accepts that they don't deserve to be treated that way. This was that moment for me. All that's left is survival.

Again, sparse backgrounds. The details fall away until nothing is left but the two of us, the crucible of the relationship's ugly truth. Gray values come from Ebony pencil and brush marker (a faded one giving a wispy edge), much more effective than wash or regular marker, I think. Using the old saw of having the panels touch on the top tier to slow time. Then things open up. Violation of the border on the 2/3 splash magnifies the figure and slows time again, despite this being an action driven panel. The distance between the tow of us is, of course, elongated for effect. I adapted the pose from one of my favorite books, Colleen Doran and Derek McCullough's Gone to Amerikay, a later page. There's been relatively little physical action in my story, and it feels good to break that. I recall an MCAD professor, Peter Gross, looking at someone else's page, a big action pose, and saying, "yeah, THAT'S comics!" Light whiteout here and there, mostly nib and Micron on this page. Photoshop used only for light correction on this one.

I noticed as the page evolved that this page was an ironic and bittersweet hint of an earlier page, where he came to visit me in Minneapolis and I ran to him. Here's a reprint of the earlier page for comparison.

More and more I find that my style is becoming itself. An elusive concept, which sounds much more high handed than it is. Every page, every image, is about discovering and rediscovering my natural artistic tendencies, ideally always in service to the story.

Tools:

• Canson Bristol board
• Ames Lettering guide
• Triangle, T-Square
• Tech pencil, Derwent 3B pencil, Ebony pencil
  
• Faber Castell Eraser, kneadable eraser
• Dr. Martin's Black Star Matte Ink
• FW Artist's Acrylic White
• Tight Spot
• Tech markers: Micron .02, .03, .05, .08 and Faber Castell Brush Tip
• Slip sheet

Next: the last fight continues. Something gets thrown.

Original Art Sundays (Friday) Nos. 216 - 217: Speedy Recovery, Centerfold

A pattern emerges.
I post some art, then I work too much. I have almost 40 hours of OVERTIME on the current check! Finally I can't stand putting it off any more, and I post again.
My schedule at work may become more uniform and manageable soon. Until then, we do our best by it.
Here are two more pages of Speedy Recovery. This is the center spread. Rather than continuing to wait until I can do scans on the BIG scanner, I opted for scanning on the dinky desktop one at home. I'll replace the scan with a better one ASAP. I have the corrected scan now, posted below.

Until then, here we go.

And the villain stands revealed!
This spread was great fun to create. The first panel is just a square of black construction paper! I went back to the old saw about the eyes being the most expressive part of the face for the rest of the top tier.
Drawing the half-music man, Toby Continued (!) was a treat. Simple design- leotard, angular face inspired partially by Bill Everett's classic version of Sub-Mariner, then fill the left side (reader's right when the character is facing the reader) with black. I found a rubber stamp of musical notes on a roller and used it to fill in the sound half.
I rendered each of the stones by hand. I considered using a texture fill in Photoshop, or some custom printed Zipatone, but for this page, I wanted that hand rendered look. I started texturing them (see the stones by Speedy's chest?), but decided against it- too distracting and too time-consuming for the results.
I had a two-page backstory of Toby and Speedy meeting in music college. It was the Doctor Doom origin, only in music school. I liked it, but Peter Gross talked me into leaving it out. He contended that multiple flashbacks in the same story confused the reader. I don't think that's always true, but in this case, I think he was right.
Next: the plot thickens.