SON OF MAN continues….
I have not progressed too much further into my new comic story SON OF MAN due to the circumstances of summer: the heat, the humidity and its unpredictable effect on my art supplies - i’m just not drawing too much. the paper gets warpy, my paint pens glob up and explode, acrylic becomes too liquid and takes longer to dry. In the past, I may have just fought through it in a completely bad mood, but these days I take the hint and just go outside to see friends, play guitar, go to the beach with my wife. Summer is both extremely bad, but also extremely good.
As we move into fall, I would like to find a better work schedule to make sure that I actually finish this book and not just talk about it for the rest of my life. My creative energy has a momentum that needs to gather, and this project has been a little uneven and slow to get that going. How do you balance having a normal healthy life, healthy relationships, and still make a big art project where 99% of it is in a lonely, private, quagmire and you need to bring it out one rock at a time. The answer lies somewhere within the notion of making a schedule of some kind.
“Mood is a thing for cattle and loveplay”
Schedules are not exactly sexy or fun, but of course they’re extremely useful. I’m going to attempt to apply one to this project in order to complete it in a timely manner. Haven’t quite figured out what that will look like, but i’ll let you know. I think I’m going to be a big dork and get a whiteboard. My goal is 5 pencilled pages, 3 inked pages, and at least 2 fully colored pages coming out of the chute a week. I can thumbnail a lot better than I used to now, and I’ve gotten really attached to my sketchbook as a part of my writing process - so the pencils shouldn’t be too bad and mine are always super rough and quick. Inks are fast too, I’m very fast in that stage of things.
The tough part for me is the finished colors - those have been taking longer than they used to due to the fact that after the preliminary inks are done, it then turns into a proprietary process of layering some markers, then some inks again to bring the lines out, then a layer of acrylics which cover some of the lines, more ink again to bring them back out, then a final round of color. Layering, layering, whiting out, re-layering. It makes the prospect of starting the color stage a little “ehh i don’t want to do this right now, this is going to be a whole thing” if you know what I mean. I love making art- I hope that’s clear- but even I need to wait until I’m in the mood to make something complicated. I’ve done it to myself, after all!
This idea of scheduling is probably not going to completely work. Some pages simpler than others, some ideas easier to convey, and as I’m wont to do sometimes I have completely drawn myself into a corner with a half-baked idea and need to fight my way out. The schedule will just be a guideline, to keep me on the tracks, but of course I will fall off the tracks. How many metaphors do i need to describe this lol!!!!?
The nature of this book is that is will have a lot of double-page spreads, several I have made - one took about two weeks - can’t have that happen too much, but they look great. I’m very excited to show you all these doublepagers. I’m really trying to make them grand but not grandiose. Big, detailed, establishing shots to show scale, or extreme closeups where one spread basically conveys a split second of action but at a much bigger size. These are looking great so far, but in between them are the pages that set up the energy of these double-pagers and those are the pages that I can make quickly and truly need to keep making them quickly. Your average reader will just be flipping past after all - the pace of this comic will be a like an action suspense movie. It needs to keep moving.
Books That I’m Lookin At
BLOODSTAR / 1976 Edgar Rice Burroughs and Richard Corben - thanks to Greg Petre (of Greg & Fake/Santos Sisters) for loaning me this incredible piece of work by a young Corben competely boiling with creative energy. Very out of print - but you can read online it here
The Art of The Brothers Hildebrandt / 1989 Greg & Tim Hildebrandt - two of the best genre painters to ever do it. Fleshy, earthy, realistic but fantastical, hints of NC Wyeth and Howard Pyle, warmth, glow, weight. We lost Tim in 2006, Greg has been in and out of the hospital recently and I wish him well. There is a lot to learn by inspecting their paintings. Also out of print, but look at this collectors card set on the Internet Archive for free.
The Art of Brian Stelfreeze / not a book, just seek this mans work out. Crazy beautiful comics, and his pen and marker convention commissions are perfect. Would love to meet Brian some day! follow him on IG here.
Come Home, Indio / 2020 Jim Terry - Sad and beautiful - amazing b/w art. Autobio comics of the highest order. Thoughtful, soulful, and it tells an important story about growing up in this country from a perspective that some people should learn about. I bought mine at Howling Pages in Chicago, but you can order a copy here.