Sketches of: Bookseller looks up

At the counter, in color and expanded with more details

I think I've learned something here. I usually scan as a color document at 75 dpi, the image's colors are always too saturated. I tried lightening the image and also tried black and white both as b&w photo and b&w doc. I think the best image, closest to the true color, is the color photo scan at 100 dpi. I can't do more dpis because dial up can't handle them.

At the counter

This is a begnning sketch/drawing for the sercond image-.. so far... the girl is standing at the counter of the bookstore, waiting for the bookseller to look up... now, I'm writing a day later-- I've posted, here, several iterations of the drawing, as it evolves it's was to being finished. These aren't all of the trials and errors, but just the ones I was able to fish out of the recycleing. Guy's head too small, girl's position changed, there were several versions of ther cat's tail and the books and window were changed, and on and on.

draft of almost first page

Here I have a grey and white and a partially colored (watercolor-- on inappropriate paper) version of the , possible first page or panel of the story about the girl going into the bookstore. The iterations of this drawing litter my desk and floor, and now that I've had time to "sleep on it' I see more things that bother me. The girl's head is too small. Her legs are fatish and oddly shaped. And I don't know if the drawing (divided up into 3 parts) suggests or conveys what I want it to convey. And at this point I'm a little uncertain what that is, too.

Almost finished

Almost finished refers to the book the girl is reading in the BooksandI story line. This picture should/will/might in some form, appear towards the very end of the comic.

My drawings for these comics, I'm trying to make, are scattered. Somehow, I imagined myself starting from "A" and proceeding on to "B" and ending at "Z" in a straight line (and zooming down the line fast fast to the finish) , but now I see I'm taking a zig-zag route and the process is much slower than I anticipated.

A possible start on a story..

I just finished reading First Love by Turgenev and I thought I'd try to make it into a comic.

I have a lot of snooty disdain for the Disneifying of beautiful fairy tales, so i want to be true to the story. My first picture, I posted it yesterday, was, to my surprise, not at all true to the story. How surprised I was at how easily I could go the route I despised. So what will I do with that drawing? Remains to be seen.

However, I did draw the first drawing of the story and a few other miscellaneous images, all of which are posted here. The first drawing is Kittykat Face standing on a box in a garden, she is hitting the foreheads of her admirers with a flower, while Silverboy looks on through a fence.

My new pen and some thoughts.

I recently bought this great new pen, it's a 0.05 or an .oo5 , whatever the point is, it's superfine and I absolutely love using it. The combination of ease of use and with that the freedom to put ideas on paper as they come, helps me to keep my pledge to myself to draw every day. Yesterday, as with all things one likes, I named the pen Silverboy. Then, because I've been thinking, and trying the non-thinking approach to thinking, I, perhaps, solved my problem of drawing people, by using pens and pencils as characters, along with a kittycat. I think, hope, I can find appropriate characters for my book story.

The following drawing is kind of the first picture of another story, that may or may not be written.

What I realize, as much as I want to conceive, write and illustrate a story in one sitting, I know, now, after several false starts, loved at first, then viewed with a more critical eye, I know this is going to be a very long process, full of missteps, and I hope leaps forward. Trying to create a comic, sequential story, or (my favorite disclaimer phrase) whatever, is very different from the art I've been used to practice. Whatever.

This drawing is closer

This drawing is closer to what I want to be the tone? mood? thickness of lin? of the comic. Still not happy, uncertain and not sure where, or what image to use to begin.

I love to use shading, and to shade with a fine, fine pen, but objects and furniture seem ok to shade, whereas people will be muih harder, somehow, I see the people clean. unshaded line drawings, and the objects and world around them finely shaded drawings. Hmmm. maybe I'll try to try it.

Lighter application of line-- could be lighter

I was going to draw a stack of books with a hand-- but somehow, Iended up drawing this-- there is a book in it.

First draft of second image

This second image, also, doesn't feel to be what I want. Although I really love heavy black lines, I don't think it works, for me, in this story, I guess, in my imagination, the feeling is ligher, less defined.

Anyway, the hands, are too small for the head. If I put one of my hands on my face, it covers half my face, both hands cover my whole face. These hands are out of proportion.

However, one must start somewhere, and here is where I've started. Starting, for me, at this point, is the important thing. I'll have to refine and learn as I go.

First image

This blog is going to be about my creative process. I want to record how I arrive at the finished product, which in this case, is hopefully, going to be a comic about first encounters with books that change ones outlook.

Yesterday I wrote a short, short, short story, which is the basis for the comic's story. I also tried to story board it. and this image is the first draft of the first image in the story.

I want to record my thoughts and criticisms about my work as I go along.
This image is rough and I realize that as I go along I will either have to learn to draw bodies in motion and hands that look like hands, or find a stylised way to represent them. For this image I think the hand looks like a claw, but a little on the fat side. My shading (colored pencil) was smeary and ended up looking like dirt. I also thought, after I finiashed this drawing, that I could also have drawn a hand picking up a book from a stack of books, or off a couch or a chair, or off a table, these ideas now seem more interesting. The image is to represent :


"Where she found it she couldn't remember, but the paperback looked just right, the size, the softness,and the thinness, she really didn't want to invest very much of her time or herself in reading anything. But she always needed a book."