Original Art Sundays No. 368: Sharp Invitations: Esther's Hands, p.10

 Time for the next page!

When we left, our heroine (me) was about to have The Talk with Mother.

Read on...

Well, isn't that the way we all hope it goes? Genuine unconditional acceptance.

To unpack (so to speak) the contents of this page: Coming out to family is one of the scariest things a trans person can do. Though I waited to (ostensible) adulthood and was at no risk of being expelled from my home, as happens to many of us, there's always the risk of losing family. I was lucky. I managed to hold onto much of my family. 

It's always a bit disturbing to draw my old self - "cosplaying male," as someone dear to me says. At this point, I'm beginning to transition, so it's not as unnerving. But it's part of the story and it needs to be told, so that's that.

These moments are so spartan that backgrounds disappear. I considered doing loose pencil backgrounds to give a sense of space, but elected to go sparse instead. This must be the 20th time I've drawn people on the phone, and the hands always give me fits! The thing to remember is that the hand is planar. The bulk of the palm is a big wedge. When you're holding something phone-ish, that plane follows that shape. I got a little carried away with inks on the last panel. That depth shadow on the cheek doesn't read quite right, but I can live with it. Might add it to the list- go back and change later. There were some artifact castes in the image capture- again with the gray tones from the paper! I chose to leave them in on that last panel.

The large black area in panel one is another approach to the challenge of drawing a phone call. I want to imply distance without overusing the old saw of the dividing phone cord- same problem as last week. This solution is new to me. While it gives the panel, and the page, good weight, I don't think it's a visual device I'll be using often. I do like what I've come to call the "Terry Moore arc"- an arc over two panels with a solid area or a texture. He has fallen away from it as a default device, but he used it reguarly in early Strangers in Paradise issues.

I chose to leave in some of the pencil lines. I like the rougher textures sometimes.

I enjoyed scumbling with a bit of dry brush on the hair. I find that technique shows up more and more in my work. I continually sense a potential breakthrough in my work. I'm most happy with my work when it's most flowing and fluid. If I could just have a breakthrough moment! Closer, closer...

Tool list:

• Papers: tracing paper, various sketchbooks, Canson Bristol board
  
• Pencils: Lyra 2B graphite stick, 4B lead and holder, 2B Ticonderoga classic, tech pencil and 4B lead
  
• Erasers: kneadable, vinyl eraser, Click eraser
• Hand Tools: 6" and 14" straightedge, triangle, T-square, French curves
• Inking tools: Dr.Martin's Black Magic ink, nib and holder, Princeton Deerfoot 1/4" mini detailer brush (love this brush!), Escoda Kolinsky no. 4 brush, Alpine Series 7 Onyx .000
  
• Markers: Micron 0.25, 0.5, 0.8, and Copic 0.25, Copic Brush and Micron small brush
  
• And of course, Photoshop

Next: support and a caution.
 

Original Art Sundays No. 357: Sharp Invitations: Curt, final pages

 Hi again.

Took an extra week to complete these pages. I hope you'll find the wait worthwhile!

When we left Diana and Jenny, they (we) were motoring back from Curt's trial in Madison. Please join us for the aftermath.

 

That concludes this chapter. 

It was such a humbling experience to have the people who survived all this with me, the women who put up with this nonsense, beside me at its culmination. Like Pete Townshend said in Somebody Saved Me, all I know is I've been making it- there have been times I didn't deserve to. I really don't know if I believe in ritual power or not. But whether we were invoking outside forces or giving me a healing moment of catharsis, it worked. And I'm sure his dying shortly after the ritual, 250 miles away and unknown to me for 10 years, was coincidence. Really, pure coincidence. You can't prove a thing. You got nothing on me, coppers!

I'm tempted to include a section on repercussions, to talk about how these effects scarred me in unexpected ways over the years. But I have other things to say before the book is done, and some of that will present itself in the coda.

My original outline, based on the ten chapters in my 64 page draft edition, was to deal with this as a small part of my life. This chapter comprised 10 pages of the outline. Turns out I had more to say about it than about some other parts. Ultimately, the book is about three things: trans stuff, class issues (to a small degree), and surviving in general, with surviving abuse as a specific aspect of that.  One of the original ten chapters is gone. It's a good story, but not for this book. The remaining chapters will cover my mother (6 - 10 pages), my father (about the same), sex and sexuality coupled with gender concerns (another 12 pages as now planned), and the coda, which ran 12 pages in a recent rewrite. About 50 pages, give or take.

Then it's done, aside from edits (assuming I get a publisher).

My big concern about the book is that it not be too grim, sad, or unrelenting. I've known plenty of joy along the way, and I want that to come across too.

Art notes: 

Getting a handle on these pages was a challenge, the second page more than the first. These are fairly static, minimal action pages. On the ritual page, there was one big action that served as the focal point. I'm not a big fan of sound effects in my work. I played with adding something here, but it didn't really gel. Technique is pretty straightforward on these, with minimal Photoshop corrections. I'm developing my own set of tools as the work evolves: sparse backgrounds, use of gray value from pencil to weight the visuals of more airy pages and panels, and a deliberate sense of framing. That last drawn panel on the second page turned out okay- everyone sitting around the table celebrating quietly. The final page is lifted verbatim from the draft edition. What can I say? Sometimes it's right the first time. I just took a traditional 35mm photograph from back in the day, scanned it and added text.

The tools used here are much the same as on the previous posted pages, so no updates necessary. I did get a porcelain escargot dish to use for inking, based on the recommendation of Terry Moore, and it's pretty cool.

Next: the chapter on Mother begins. I will need to find a better title for that one! In the draft the title was Esther and Gandalf, and I don't care for that at all now!

Original Art Sundays No. 309: Sharp Invitations: Curt, pp. 49 (rework) and 50

 Back at it, folks!

I corrected the first panel of the last page and am reposting the page to start, followed by the next page. I am very close to completion of the following page, but not quite there. Here are pages 49 and 50.

In the current narrative, we're talking about rebuilding a life. These pages continue that theme.

Not much new to say about the first page after last week's discussion. This is mainly a correction, after all. That first panel is an improvement over last week's posting, using a more direct angle and a tighter shot (and better drawing). Keep it simple! Just rendered on a different piece of Bristol and patched it in with Photoshop. My facial expression in he new version of Panel One is what I was hoping to convey- just barely holding on, but trying to smile anyway.

Page 50 of this chapter is most of what I'm saying about Jennifer in this book. Our relationship had its challenges, as they all do, but she's living her own life now and I want to respect her privacy. We saw each other through some rough times, and I am grateful to her. She had such intense joy! Jenny was also trans, which will be discussed a bit in a future page. After I wrote this page, I realized that I had lifted the last line from my man Micheal Nesmith. But the sentiment was so right, I decided to let it go. I drew the portrait of us on Coquille board instead of Bristol, using classic pen and ink with China marker (AKA grease pencil). The stuff is really pricey, but I love the look and would like to use it more often! I became attached to it in the 90s when I found out you could get a halftone from it without a stat camera. I do so love old school production art. For this page, I wanted a simple border, vaguely reminiscent of Art Noveau, around the illustration, and floating text above and beneath. It's been a while since I did a decorative border, and it felt nice to flex that particular muscle again. I was, in my small way, emulating the master of the Noveau border in comics, Terry Moore. But it needed to be fairly simple, so I opted for just some nice flowing overlapping curves. The border and text were done on a separate sheet of Canson Bristol board and merged in Photoshop.

I keep saying I'm almost done with this chapter. Yet on it goes. Much like what Alan Moore said about his groundbreaking run on Miracleman, it was a simple idea, but it grew in the telling. The bulk of it is complete. There are three significant events yet to document, and an afterword. Then a brief chapter on each of my parents and a final word. I'm so charged to do the work right now. I'm trying new techniques, revisiting old ones, and embracing the work. If I can manage two pages a week, the bulk of the book could be complete by year end. That's a realistic goal, I think. Of course, I also plan to do Inktober again this year... possibly more Coquille pieces... and I need to grade and teach and... 

Yet the book gets done. I will have faith, and welcome you to do the same.

Next: Things are finally going well for our heroine, and that's unlikely to change, right? Right? Well....

Original Art Sundays No. 284: The Third Sharp Invitation, last page

 Concluding this short but important chapter.

This is the aftermath and the prelude to the next chapter. If you were reading along in the actual book, this page would be a teaser. But if you've been following for a while, you've already read 19 pages of the next chapter, making the teaser somewhat anticlimactic.

Anyway, here we go.

When we left our heroine (me), she was contemplating the aftermath of her surgery. The naming of that procedure is constantly shifting. It used to be called sex change. Then it was gender reassignment. Then it was gender confirmation. I haven't kept up, but I think we're still using that term, so we'll go with that for now. It's also a term that makes sense, which I think overrides squabbles about nomenclature.

In any event, she was eager to set the world afire now that she wasn't constrained by body/mind incongruity.

And of course, it didn't go that way.

Notes:

I had done this page about a year ago, just before the move to my first owned home (hooray!). It had different text and was intended as the end of the next chapter. That page is still somewhere in the storage bin. I opted to redo it, rather than dig through everything looking for the older one. I like this version better than that one. It's very simple. 

It's far from mechanically accurate, but that wasn't what I wanted. Technical drawing is not right for this page. This was one of those times when the world goes out of focus and you feel somewhat lost. I wanted to convey sparseness and a slight sense of disorientation.

The sky textures and the bus texture are Photoshop. Simple filters and the Fade command. I rather like the way the sky turned out. I had intended that what are perceived as stars be snowflakes, but rather than dink around with minutiae, I just went with it. Terry Moore draws such great snowflakes! Context from the surrounding pages will also clarify that it's winter. The ground texture is the joy of hand work. I do love the meditative quality of rendering random patterns.

Equipment and tools:

• Canson Bristol Board
• Lead Holder with 3B lead
• Various erasers
  
• Sumi-E ink
• Windsor & Newton 680 1/4", Dick Blick #6 round synthetic, Princeyon #10 Round, Royal #8 flat angled brushes
• Tight Spot correction brush
• FW Acrylic white
• Micron #.1, .2, .3, .5, .8, 1.0
• Trusty Ames lettering guide
• Photoshop

Next: a recap of the next chapter to date, then some concluding pages to that one. Four or five chapters of varying length to go before this book is done.

Original Art Sundays: Sharp Invitations: Curt, p. 16

Finally back.
I won't waste time saying why it took me so long to get this page done. It's unprofessional to kvetch, and nobody wants to hear it (and I don't blame them). Suffice to say it's been a tough couple months, with some days of bliss in the mix. I've been spending creative energy on music and writing, plus a whole slew of sketchbook stuff. I'll post some of that soon. For now, it feels so good to get back to The Work, my graphic memoir, Sharp Invitations.
As always, please keep clicking the "older posts" button at  the bottom of the page for more work, or just hit the "Sharp Invitations" label if you want to check out more of The Work.
When we left our heroine (moi), she was in bed with Curt, who had begun choking her as part of their lovemaking. This came directly on the heels of her meeting a trans lesbian, Sara, with whom she developed an immediate fascination. So much to sort out, and being a meat and potatoes guy, Curt's response was...
Read on.

The usual notes, personal and craft.
Personal: Curt had no clue I was afraid after his hands found my throat. He also had no idea about Sara. For my part, I was running blind, still desperately afraid of my own truth, even after surgery, for reasons I'll spell out in greater detail towards the end of this chapter (anticipated in another 7 pages, but it could run a bit longer in a 4th rewrite).
Craft notes: Minor scanning issues per usual. I will rescan everything upon completion of the book and those issues will be resolved.
Let's speak to timing. The part that hung me up was the first panel of the last tier. I toyed with going all silhouette on its ass, but I don't want to overuse that trick. There are some pages in this book that are nothing but silhouette. My mantra from The Wizard of Oz applies. These things must be done delicately or you hurt the spell.
I'm constantly torn between doing something innovative and ornate and just nuts and bolts layouts. I love ornate layouts, but I'm reminded of a favorite comic book history student who loathed J.H. Williams' work on Batwoman. He said it was so decorated that he couldn't see the story. He had a point. I think this page is a good balance between the two, and advances the story reasonably well. I kept the figures lighter and concentrated the blacks and grays in backgrounds and textures. The linear background on the second tier is a trick I picked from Terry Moore's Strangers In Paradise. I was re-watching Terry's DVD last night, trying to garner some fresh insight, or rekindle old insights. My "big takeaway": just keep doing the work.
Well, duh.
For spotting blacks on the bottom tier, I'm rekindling my fascination with dry brush, something American comic artists have underused historically. I do love the way it shows up in British work, especially from the late 80s. The challenge in dry brush is to get all the texture you want before your meager ink supply dries up.
Tools and supplies on this page:
Canson Recycled Bristol Board, rough finish side used.
Lead holder with #4B lead
#4B solid lead pencil
Miscellaneous straightedges, templates and triangles
Crow Quill and nib
#4 Richeson Snapi round synthetic brush
Tight Spot angled brush for corrections
Dr. Martin's Black Star Walnut Ink
FW Acrylic White
Magic Rub eraser
pretty much the stuff I usually use.
I have a HUGE bottle of Yasumoto Sumi Ink. Perhaps I'll give that a go on a page soon, but I do so love the Walnut Ink.
Next: sketchbook pages, then more memoir.

Original Art Sundays (Wednesday) No. 164: Suurealist Cowgirls, p. 20

Only four or five pages to go of this story, the second major Surrealist Cowgirls story.
There have been two minor SC stories, and of course, the paper dolls and the lunchbox for fun.
The page at hand:

 

Some notes on this page:

Sparse backgrounds. I tried to shake it up a bit from the heavy black backgrounds of recent pages, and used some support graphic elements for diversity. Chief among these are the lined partial background of panel two, a device I freely stole from Terry Moore, and the connecting infinity symbol in panel three.

I'm trying for more dynamic poses as the action builds. To that end, the face in grief in panel two, Kay's fainting in panel four, and Master Pah coming to life in the final panel.

Narrative note: until the last panel of the previous page, Master Pah had not moved other than to speak. His anger and sense of betrayal at the presence of his former apprentice spur him to physical action.

Scanner access is greatly improved now. 

Next: the battle, page one.

Best Comics of 2011: No. 11: Terry Moore's work

A day late, due to illness, both my own and that of the home Net connection. Now at work and trudging ahead.
The next entry is in two parts. First up is Terry Moore's new book, Rachel Rising.

Like his past works, ECHO and Strangers in Paradise, this work has a female lead.
Unlike those works, this is a horror story.
For a while it seemed like Moore's work, good as it's been, might all be variations on a theme. After all, Both Strangers and ECHO are about two women who pair with varying degrees of reluctance, albeit in very different circumstances and with very different goals.
However, in both books, there's always been an unrelenting tension that drives the plot, as much as the strong characters. Moore's understanding of motivation may be the strongest aspect of his work. And anyone who's read all of either of his previous works knows that Moore is not adverse to blood letting in the furtherance of his plot at times.
So when he announced his next book would be a horror story, I envisioned a smart Mario Bava outing with lesbian overtones.
I was so wrong.

 Rachel Rising is tense and involving, with an uneasy creepiness, owing more to Nicholas Roeg than Bava.
This is not to say the story of Rachel trying to find out if she's dead or not, and who buried her, is bloodless, as this spread from issue 2 demonstrates.

And Moore hasn't lost his trademark wit, although the term "gallows humor" was never more spot on.

I'm a couple issues behind, but despite Moore's annoying tendency to put out truly spiffy collections of his stories on their completion, I'll keep picking up Rachel Rising.
This year, Moore also began his sporadic How to Draw... series.

These are more pragmatic than many drawing books. Moore covers the basics, but in the same tone as McCloud's books on comics. They're more about WHY to draw something or someone in a certain way than HOW to do it.
In my mind, this approach is much more useful than "the leg bone's connected to the thigh bone". You can always expand your understanding of the mechanics. Understanding the psychology and philosophy of your art is vital!

Now that I'm well enough to leave the house, the iffy Net connection will not stop me from continuing my 2011 review.
Next: more lesbians. What, again? Wait for it....

Original Art Sundays # 45: A Private Myth, p. 13

No time for a long post today, but I did want to get this up. Pretty happy with the layout and the poses.

Stipple is such fun! And I love that Terry Moore trick of a background black to isolate and unify panels!
More and more chatty stuff next week or sooner.

Top 10 Comics of 2009: # 10: ECHO

I'll post one of these a day until I've reached #1. That will give me a bit of time to think about my choices. I have them chosen, but I do want to review, since I can read a lot of comics in a year!
#10 is the most recent issue of Terry Moore's ECHO.
For those not in the know, ECHO is the story of a broke photographer who happens onto a weapon test site, and is deluged with refuse from said weapon. This refuse attaches itself to her skin, seemingly irrevocably. The material also contains some of the consciousness of its inventor. Many people are trying to kill our photographer. Alliances are formed and a chase ensues. Pieces of the puzzle are doled out to our heroine (and her reluctant partner, the boyfriend of the late inventor) on the run. That's a very stripped down version of the plot.
The current issue, #17, takes the storyline into uncharted territory as this smart, soulful adventure book delves into areas of physics, human evolution, philosophy, and tells us the connection between the hydrogen bomb and art forgery. All this happens in a cafe conversation over a salad and a glass of water.

I was so disappointed when I saw this cover. This has been an intriguing read, but I was starting to feel like  I did around the middle of Strangers in Paradise- great story, but get on with it already. And this cover looked to me like a good Marvel cover- lots of pyrotechnics, but not about anything, really. Boy, was I wrong! It's been a while since a comic was so good that I was frustrated to not be able to read the next issue right away. So it was with this one. So many ideas and emotions crammed into a scant 24 or so pages, and let's add, a backstory that pulls previous events together in a way that, while not completely unexpected, is at least unorthodox and so heartfelt.

I don't know if Terry Moore lost his steam for a while or I just got frustrated. Whichever it was, he's back in full force with this issue, and this book is a high point for the year.

Tomorrow, #9, with a silver bullet!

The Terror of The Magnum Opus!

As I break from working on my book/grant proposal, my thoughts turn to creators who have inspired me in different ways.
Today's venture takes two turns, beyond the already posted notes on the human tornado called Ellison.
Next up is Jeff Smith, creator of Bone, the much neglected Shazam and the Monster Society of Evil, and the sporadic but worthwhile RASL. All Jeff's work deals in themes of common beings surviving their roles in large, mythic battles a la Tolkien or Eddison.
Well, turns out there's a documentary on Jeff.


Then there's Terry Moore.
His Strangers in Paradise is now collected in an Omnibus edition. How he managed to do this and keep on schedule with his new book, ECHO, is beyond me, but he did it.
This invites the next issue.
A Magnum Opus can kill you if you let it.
The idea of creating a single work of such weight and import can be such a heavy burden that it renders the work insurmountable. If you let it be that.
I suspect the way through this is twofold.
First, don't try to create something big. Create pieces of the big thing. Just say what you have to say, using the time you have to say it as well as you can. The 2200 pages of Strangers and the 1400 pages of Bone were all done page by page, the only way it can be done.
It took me 6 months to do a page once, and I did 12 pages in 14 hours another time. It takes the time it takes.
Second, while you must keep at it (or in my case, all the various "it"s), you can't punish yourself if you lose pace. Self-recrimination takes time too, and burns up, wastes, energy that could go into the work.