It’s Wednesday and I’m still behind…according to me. The comics are on time and that’s what matters. This issue now has Keri on board though so who knows where this is headed.
I’ve been doing sketches for people, avatars and the like, and I did one tonight of which I’m particularly proud. I took a drawing by one of my heroes, Humberto Ramos, of Nightcrawler and drew a free-hand copy with a likeness of my buddy’s face on it. It will be posted in the sketches section as soon as I figure out how to do that.
I’ve been having more and more fun mimicking other people’s styles and it is definitely giving me more confidence in my own drawings. The comic style of the strip stays though. I really enjoy practicing other styles but ultimately the comic strip is done in a way that I really enjoy, a looser, more unrefined way of depicting the world.
When I first started drawing the strip I was trying to get each line EXACTLY the way I wanted, but the more I watch other artists draw and take a closer look at their final product, the more I realize that what gives a comic its relaxed atmosphere is the practiced relaxation put into the artwork. Drawing the same characters repeatedly day in and day out definitely helps, but I do think that not worrying too much about every single line and focusing my attention on how that line melds with the rest of them is the most important thing. I’m having a hell of a lot of fun doing this strip though so there’s that.
Also, I just started reading The Red Wing and I gotta say I really love how the story is told both visually and with the dialogue. It’s been a while since I’ve been impressed by a relatively new printed comic book, but I feel that this one is worth mentioning.
Happy Wednesday and come back tomorrow for more!
–The Artist
I have no idea what is going on in this strip. Is there some problem on the westside? Are fields bad?
Yeah, I was afraid I would lose people on this one. There’s a proposal to lease a portion of the Garfield Elem baseball fields to the Boys and Girls club so they can build a headquarters and a parking lot. The neighborhood is up in arms about this to the point where I’m getting fliers on my door almost every day and until it rained there were signs up everywhere. Looking at the Olympian, no one else in town seems to care though.
Who exactly is in charge of this? Is it a city council thing?
It’s actually the Oly school district that’s dealing with the Boys and Girls Club. I’m sure that the city council wants as little to do with this as possible.