I'm back to the drawing board! After a few months of not finding the right frame of mind to draw in a satisfying way, just doodles here and there. I have two projects that I want to get done, both short stories. If you follow this blog there has been samples here and there but they remain largely on the planing stages.
First of "
13" inspired by a song same as
"El Oso" it's a surreal western about anger, violence and a troubled existence. Sharing the first place in importance and focus it's
"The Middle Finger" a super-hero parody. Both have the potential to continue or at least to plague my sketchbooks with glimpses of future adventures but the main objective it's to do that first chapter and show what they are all about. Under this two big projects there is a potpourri of equally promising premises both new and old:
"Wicker and Thorn" have been dusted off to a very promising first page on
Writer's Night.
"Outlaw Pizza" yells at me every morning asking for a conclusion to the first chapter,
"The Caerulean Dream" slowly slumbers it's way in, while
"Black Fuska" floats aimlessly in limbo. I slowly chip away at this "less" important projects (not because their lack of quality, more of a dragging by weight of importance). And buried under all this clutter of creative noise it's
"Walixce" and umbrella of sorts not unlike "
Moody Toones" in which to explore folk tales and/or (depending on your definition of each) legends from the country I was born in, Uruguay. "Walicxe" it's the word for spell or curse, a word of Charrua origin, the lost natives of the west of river of birds land.
In the picture above drawn on a 11x14 sheet of Bristol Paper (Borden and Riley #120p Bristol Plate to be more precise) drawn on pencil and inked with a pair of Princeton round brushes (#2 and #6) on Calli ink (Jet Black India 010) represents the three stories that I am most excited to render on comic book form:
"La Mano Negra", "El Lobizon" and
"La Luz Mala", don't worry there will be translations for this titles in one way or another.
My other objective with this piece was to streamline my page process, a warm up of sorts in to getting back in to the groove. While preparing I tried a couple of different ideas on pencil (using a 2B thick graphite stick on a led holder) to loosely work the composition and get a piece interesting enough to keep my interest during the inking process. It did not needed to be perfect but to be a piece worth of the ink I used. After a couple of aborted attempts (a
Middle Finger #1 possible cover and a
Punisher: River of Blood trade cover idea that is badly needed) I decided that an idea that was fully mature in my head will be the best choice to complete this personal challenge.
Deviating for my usual process and following
Jesse's advice I decided to redraw the image on the Bristol board as opposed to tracing it or transferring it. The results I think are very competent, far from perfect it was smooth sailing the redrawing helped me not to transfer initial errors to the final image and work out better options in composition. The paper was great to take a light (4h) pencil with out too much denting and very pleasing to the inking with brush, the brushes behave great, precise but loose, the ink however while flowing correctly lacks the covering I wanted, all fixable in post the lack of solidity made it a thing to figure out next time, hopefully soon.
