Project: New Man 4 Pg 11 Pencils
The work on the new pages continue. I thought I would let you in on the process a bit by showing you pencils from the pages this week and then next week we’ll get back to our regular story line.
I appreciate your patience in all this. I just have had far too much going on and I did not prepare enough ahead of time to get the new pages done by the deadline. I’m still new to this web comics gig.
One thing that caught me a little off guard was how rusty at drawing comic pages I was. I have been drawing clip art and art for t-shirt designs for the past 23 years so I did not anticipate having a problem getting back into the comic book groove, but I did. It was not your typical artist block because I knew what to draw but it was the “how to draw it” that was throwing me for a loop. I wanted to continue in the same style I drew pages 7-10, but that was work I had done 16 years previously! As with most artists my style had evolved and going back, it seems, is not so easy. Page 11 may not be exactly as it would have been had I continued the pencils after page 10 back in 1992 but I think I came close. Actually by page 13 I became a lot more comfortable with it.
As I did with the October 17th Update, I’ll give you a little background on how this process works. I penciled rough thumbnail sketches of each page first and then sent these to Freazie for scripting with my story notes. While he was scripting, and he has most of the script on the remainder of this issue complete now, I started the full size pencil pages. I have a Comics Page Set-up Template in my computer I can open up in Adobe Illustrator which I print out on 11 x 17 copy paper. This is just a regular sheet of 20 lb bond copy paper, something I started drawing clip art and t-shirt art on 10-15 years ago instead of using bristol or some heavier more expensive paper stock. It has my borders and panel guides indicated. I print out my thumbnail sketch enlarged to 11 x 17 and put this on a light box. With my comic page blank over it I trace off in non-photo blue pencil the outline of the sketch I did previously. Then I take my blue line tracing to the drawing board and with a regular #2 graphite pencil go to work filling in the panels. I can pencil 2-3 pages a day in an 8 hour period if uninterrupted. I have done as many as 6 in one day but I really have to be on a creative roll to do that! It’s not something I’ve done very often. Usually I start out slow and the first page does not come together as fast as the next two. I seem to speed up the more I do on a given day.
Here’s a little penciling side tip: When penciling pages for comics in graphite it’s nearly impossible not to smudge the pencils while working over them. What happens is is the graphite gets on the side of your hand and is transferred back to the paper. To cut down on this I keep a box of Wet Ones handy so I can wipe my hand periodically always being careful to dry my hand with a Kleenex or paper towel before starting back on the next panel.
Tomorrow and the rest of this week I’ll share a pencil page with you and maybe have some comments as we go. Any questions of comments? All are welcome.
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