scarygoround

A quick one

Added 2021-04-15 20:21:17 +0000 UTC

I'm trying to improve my traditional inking and to use my lightbox. It's proving hard but there are signs of improvement coming with practice. The most important thing I have to remember is not to trace my pencils, but to draw anew, with purpose, the way I do on the computer. Here's a rare example of a drawing where I think I actually managed that.

One of the best pieces of advice I ever read, as regards comic art, was from Mark Oakley, the creator of 90s indie comic series "Thieves And Kings". It was "get good, then get fast, then get good and fast". My penmanship is stuck stubbornly on the first of those three rungs but I've found that there has always been a route from one to the next, eventually.

I've not read Thieves and Kings beyond a few sample pages but I remember with some clarity a long message board thread where Mr Oakley had set an even then, long-obsolete Windows tablet PC (a Toshiba Tecra M4, I believe) into a wooden drawing table to fully enjoy its charms. I think about this creation often. I do not know what he would have thought of my efforts to re-connect with old-fashioned pen and ink. I think he'd think me a luddite.

[A Toshiba Tecra M4, sadly not set into a wooden drawing table.]

My eventual hope is to do a whole, short, comic book in pen and ink, just for the Patreon, once I've served up the final four pages of "Here Comes Gothy" (they're coming, I promise!)

I'd say the odds of this happening are long, but but not insurmountable. Send me some psychic energy.