click to visit larger image Epic of Sally Robertson: page 55 From the Fenworks |
If you have not already, you might want to refresh your memory of the last couple of pages, starting here.
I rather enjoyed inking today’s comic. Even though there are a few things I would have liked to do better, as always, it was fun to relax and enjoy watching what my brush pen did as I scraped it across the page.
But I’m torn. I love the messy, expressive line. However, I’d also like to keep a more strict form. For some reason, no matter how precise I get my pencils, when I go to ink I lose proportion and and my lines stray. I can actually feel it happening. My whole arm wobbles. Part of it is due, I think, to my repetitive stress injuries. But part of it feels like a nervous issue. I have had similar experiences trying to keep a rhythm while clapping hands to a song, or especially while trying to learn drums. It’s like there’s this impulse that starts in my cerebral cortex that shoots down to my arm and causes it to jag. I think something I need to do is deliberately practice inking more. But unfortunately, my injured arm doesn’t really allow for that. But maybe, if I slow down, take deep breaths and listen to soothing music with tea beside me… I mean, really slow down. Not my hand, that needs to move just a tad faster. But my impulse. Think about the ink stroke three times before making it. That sort of thing.
Anyway, last weekend I got a real treat. At the Bellingham Comicon, I found one of the inkers for Archie Comics. I’m so bad with names… oh, wait, I can look this up. Oh, God, it was the Bob Smith! I met Bob Smith! Damn! — Bob, thank you. — I feel a little bit like a heel. Anyway. He had a bunch of his originals there for anyone to flip through. He’d used a light enough ink that you could easily see each brush stroke, and how it was applied. Very simple lines. Most of them fairly short and quick. I’ve never been a reader of Archie, and the expressions of the characters of that comic have always left me cold, but the cleanliness of the style has always been something I’ve appreciated. It often looks machine made, but it’s not. The whole thing is still done by hand, with traditional media, including the lettering. Well, the coloring is probably in Photoshop, but mass produced comics have long had kind of a mechanical coloring process, still done by hand really, just not necessarily with paint or marker.
In any case, I’m trying to remember what I saw there, to internalize it and visualize myself making similar marks on the page. But, not for every mark. It’s mostly the jaw lines, eyes and noses I’d like to improve that way. And maybe the architecture. Clothing and trees, I’m keeping the way I currently ink them. Because it’s awesome.
Epic of Sally Robertson: Dinner originally appeared on Drawing Contraption on 2013/10/17.