I Got Something Fun from a Book Fair

I haven't seen some of this material. New (for me) Mike Mignola stuff is always great, his 80s and early 90s stuff especially. I'm only really familiar with his latter career. Seeing his shift from then to what he does now is just amazing. So much he dropped since those earlier days and so much that he retained and refined over the years.
Good mister Mignola used a lot more profile shots back then, a lot more empty shots too. The hatching he was doing a lot even in the latter parts of his pencilling career but it was done a lot more in these times. His art, last two pics, was real different too. It's too noodley and meticulous in the linework and detail. It's likely the inkers.

Hath not a Sketchbook drawings? III

Some character designs for a comic I'm working on between projects.

The robed fellow's design isn't his final. There are some (uncommitted to paper as of yet) other designs. The guy in the fancier looking clothing? His design is final. It's just an adaptation of another person's design unto paper but with my drawing sensibilities building it up than its original basis.

Below one can see the thumbs of the project. These are the preliminary thumbs. They're now covered with notes for the changes that should happen to them. I may post the changed thumbs in a week or two and keep doing that until it's all good. It'll be then a matter of working out the composition in the more complicated shots before final drawing.

Hath not a Sketchbook drawings? II

I haven't been able to draw much. University and all. Still, I made a few pieces of art and drew some stuff.

I was helping a friend out with her comic. It was standard and worked well enough but I just had to rip into the lettering. One of the characters were two people in one, or something to that effect, and when they talk they kinda speak at the same time and overlap over one another. How she pulled it off was.... less than optimal. So I quickly crapped these out to help her out and give her some direction. Hopefully they went to some use.

Not long after drawing this, after some time being dormant from drawing, I started craving it again.

A friend sent me this to try and draw, so I did. Bellow you'll see a tiny doodle in ink. It's from a Platinum CF-2000 (or something) Brush pen which I filled with Rotring Technical pen ink. The feed mechanism was almost marker like and I just had to test it out if it'll work. It's been a week, maybe less, and it seems to work well enough. Seems... Will update as time goes on.

The original picture. I didn't feel like trying to capture the thing 100%. Instead I focused on trying to be as clean with my lines as possible. As clean and mechanical. I THINK I did a good job.

That's all for now. Quick, little update.

Hath not a Sketchbook drawings? I

 These are some of the first things that I've drawn in the new sketchbook as well as some studies I've done. There are other drawings in that sketchbook, like a watercolors sketch of a lobby and an uninked and unfinished perspective shot of a department store, but I got lazy and didn't picture those. So have these. 

The drawing on the left is me inking my friend's stuff, the one on the right is her inking mine. It's directly tied to the other project I'm working on with my friend.

Couple pencils by me and her inking them.

I also did some studies.

Rather than trying to draw the entire figures I just focused on certain parts and drew those as detailed as I could in two minutes. There are more but I'm proud of a couple of these.

Hands!

The figure with the big chain of spikes all around him is me redrawing Mike Mignola's rendition of The Rocketeer. Right leg aside and my guy's body not bending forward a bit, I think I did a good job. The drawing in question below.

That's all for now.

Maletilla (comics)

You don't know how long it took me to make that establishing shot. Three or four hours maybe? It's not even a three-point perspective and the measurements were off so not everything lines up well.

Mooostly happy with this panel, the third to the last panel is a wonky.

Mostly happy with this page too.

I'm not happy with the transition between four to five. Panel six has  wonky perspective too.

I tried but I'm just not a corss hatching guy.

Unhappy. Eugh.

The hands aside, this isn't too bad.

Falling apart.

The bandana is supposed to be colored. I'll rectify that in the published issue.

Maletilla is finally done

I've decided to move to Grandluxe's Monologue's 200gsm sketchbooks, not the pads for the binding is a bit flimsy, on a permanent basis for sketching. Peter Pauper Press' excellent Premium Sketchbooks have served me well but I'll only use them for "work-related" drawings from now in. Mainly thumbails, character sketches, concept art, etc, and just random sketches at home. Monologue's stuff is for actual sketches for leisure and the like. The ability to use watercolors on them is the main reason for the switch to the things as the Peter Pauper can only handle dry media. It helps that the Monologue sketchbooks have a nicely textured cover.

The name of the new sketchbook. I name all of mine to help differentiate them from each other, dates used besides.

I always do some lettering to grant the sketchbook its name to start it off. For this one, I used the Hebrew alphabet as my basis. I played Shylock for an activity in class back in highschool, which is, of course, in reference to William Shakespear's The Merchant of Venice. Basically, we were given a character from one of Shakespear's stories and were tasked to dress up like them as well as memorize one of their monologues (haha). Obviously, the hath not a Jew eyes was what I had to memorize and perform. I have fond memories of that experience and it always stuck with me. Not the words I used in front of the class though. I was never a man of words. Maybe I can change that.

Those last few pages just flew by. I've been working on these on and off , the actual drawing phase anyway, over the course of a few weeks. When I finally reached the action bits where I can drop the backgrounds off.

Failed sound effect lettering.

 

A good draft of what finally appeared on the finished art.

Proper scan of the first page.

I'll post the rest soon.

Updates on some things

I made a few other things. A lot of character sketches, both for projects I'm dealing with and just to help out other creators.

I don't know why, but I felt the Mignola flowing through me when I drew this.

Also, some comics pages.

More stuff (my titles are pretty much useless, aren't they?)

I've decided to scale back my output. I won't try to push for a page a day, but I will go for at least two panels a day. The quantity suffers but the quality might be raised since I'm doing less in one sitting.

The nature of Maletilla, with its gray inks, tells me to ink as soon as I finish the entire panel itself since it'll be a pain to discern what is inked what what is just a line of graphite. Noodler's Lexington gray has a reputation for its closeness to the appearance of graphite itself. Mix that with my messy pencil work and you have a recipe for confusion. Of course this means I'll be hamstrung in terms of speed since I'm used to drawing the panels in graphite and inking it a good while later after I'm done with all the other pages. Black ink standing out from the sea of gray really contributes to that, y'know.

Realistically, I CAN pencil and ink a single page in one day, buuuut I have a certain sickness. It's called laziness. That and I don't have an economic incentive to really push myself to finish it. There's that abstract incentive to push myself to making better art buuuuut pride and the compliments of the few people that would see the final output isn't the most convincing thing to make me go further than what I can for now. Maybe it'll be different if I'm getting paid. I don't know. At least I'm trying. With that said, here are the latest outputs that I've pushed out of my metaphorical loins for Maletilla.

I was still fatigued from drawing all that crazy perspective crap from the other day when I was drawing this. I had to fake it just to get myself to finish this. It may or may not be too obvious, but I had to replace panels three and four, with four being replaced twice. I might go back to this later on when it's all done and replace them again with better art.

Saving the third panel for last since it's one of the most complicated shots in the entire comic. It's also the fourth panel in the actual script since I combined two and three into one panel. I might just crap the first two panels of this page altogether and slap the last three panels into another piece.

Testing out the overall composition of the panels with perspective. I wanted to go two-point with it but it's at the very edge of the page in the final piece but I don't know how to get past that. Not yet anyway. Also it's on a block so it's not easy to rip off unless I feel like ripping it off. I don't right now, honestly.

Have some art for my other project. You, whoever is reading this lonely little blog, have seen some other concept art in the last post. It's a little alt. history thing where them Nazers won WW2 and they live in a giant enclosed bubble. Lots of drama and scifi crap. Drawing Nazers in alt. history scenarios is always fun. Man in the High Castle, Dead Snow, big market.

I tried to me maximalist here. I just can't do it. It's also the proper version of the guy I was drawing the other day. Got back with my collaborator and she drew me the way she imagined him. Clearly, he isn't supposed to look like his 17th century namesake.

Cat