Chapter Five Pencils are Finished!

I drew the last page for Chapter Five on October 12th! Which means if I started mid-August, it took two months to pencil roughly 60 pages. I think that's good! That's, like, pre-Kiddo speed. I'm happy, especially because the pages look really good.

Speaking of which, this week I have:

• a quick update on some recommendations,

• thoughts on the ol' Ira Glass balance of taste versus skill, the "Taste Gap,"

• a little emotional note,

• and of course a handful of very spoiler-y images.

Literally no one has commented with regard to their preferences vis-a-vis spoilers, so I'm going to assume everyone's happy with how things have been going; that the people who don't care are cruising blithely through the image carousel and the people who do care are just waiting for the printed book anyway. I salute all of you and the ships on which you sail.

RECOMMENDATIONS

I mentioned that the audiobook versions of Patrick O'Brian's Master and Commander series had reinvigorated my interest. That's still true — narrator Simon Vance continues to be doing a brilliant job of bringing the books to life — though I am now half-way through The Ionian Mission and my earlier gripes are rearing their head. O'Brian still expects me to know how the setting of certain sails affects the ship's movement. He still expects me to have a mental map of the locations he describes. And the pacing is still very strange. I suspect that The Surgeon's Mate — the audiobook that prompted me to write my original recommendation — just happened to have fewer of my gripes.

Still, the recommendation remains. I am very much enjoying having Napoleonic Nautical Adventure in my ears again.

If you're considering diving in (or returning) to the series, here's a tab to keep open: the Patrick O'Brian Mapping Project. If nothing else, it revealed that several of the locations mentioned in The Ionian Mission are fictional, which partially explains why it was so hard for me to imagine what was going on.

PENCILS!

As mentioned, Chapter Five is all drawn now! There's a lot to be happy about — more on that in a minute — but I'm also… not sad, exactly, or melancholy… I'm not sure how to describe it. Maybe it feels a little like watching a kid walk for the first time: you know it's a vital, necessary step in their growth, and it means you'll be able to do so much more together, but it also means saying goodbye to their baby-selves.

Chapter Five contains the sequence that I described to myself in the very first note I wrote, the little Notes.app seed that would grow into to this whole project, with its village and provveditore and Nikos and Katerina and all the years that have gone into it so far. I can't find that original note now. It's probably hidden away on the iPod Touch that died from an expanding battery compartment. I think it's from 2017, maybe earlier. I don't know why I have such a strong memory of this, but: I was walking off Main Street with my earbuds in, as always. It was a grey day. I had a thought, paused my music, and sat down on a yellow concrete bollard between the Sarah Mclachlan music school and a new bike shop. I started typing out that thought. It ended up being a longer thought than I expected.

That note is now Practical Defence Against Piracy, and I've just finished the chapter that I described to myself on that day. I've drawn images that I've been waiting to draw for seven years. It feels strange, like a little victory, but not a complete victory, because there's still so much left to accomplish.

It's hard to imagine how it will feel to get to the final sequence, which is also a strong image and which also goes back to those early days. And, of course, it'll be the end of the project. I should stock up on Kleenex.

Last week's post was all about fixing up a boring panel (above)! If you missed it, catch up and enjoy what is apparently a relatively old-fashioned process.

I mentioned being happy with Chapter Five, and there are two reasons for that.

First of all, it looks good and I felt good drawing it. For example, that panel of Nikos above, I got that right on the first try, no reference, no erasing, and it looks exactly how I wanted it to look (more or less — my drawings never look exactly like I want them to, because I rarely really know what I want them to look like).

There's a lot of Alexandra's Dad in this chapter, too, and he's a real thorn in my side. There's something about his features that makes it so hard to get him to look consistent between one panel and the next. And yet, by the end of Chapter Five, I was really happy with how he's looking.

I'm also very happy with how the story of Chapter Five unfolds. Once I finished my pencils, I paged through it to see what the reading experience would be like, and I enjoyed it. And you know what? Modesty tells me I shouldn't reveal this — what if you don't have the same experience? I'd look like a fool — but I got goosebumps. Ha!

What makes this extra pleasing is that in all my years of doing this, I have never written scenes that intercut between each other… until now. And I think the effect is working out as well as I could have hoped.

Because Humility, part of me wants to keep this all to myself, but no, I am sharing it. For one thing, as this (the "DD4 Production Diary") is a document of of this process, it feels irresponsible to exclude the parts where I thought, "this is going well." Otherwise I'd create the impression that I'm just a miserable old grump trudging through mud, which is only partly true. (Wink emoji.)

The other thing is that this speaks to a presumably-universal artistic experience: the balance of an artist's taste versus skill. I first heard of this from This American Life's Ira Glass. Here's a link. That link doesn't describe it the way I remember it, though. Here's what I remember:

For anyone in a creative pursuit, you have a Certain Set of Skills (mine might be drawing and trying to tell a story), and you have your taste (mine is liking my comics a certain way). You have good taste, which is why you've chosen to try to make something. Sometimes, the level of your skills do not match up to the level of your taste. I draw a character, then think, "that's not how I wanted it to look." Sometimes, your skills do match up to the level of your taste. I draw a character, then think, "hey, that turned out well."

This notion feels true. I can very easily visualize my skill and taste rising and falling relative to each other, like little EQ meters. Often, I'm doing the work to try to get everything — the writing, the layout, the drawing — to match up to how good I think it should be. But every now and then, the meters balance out — like how things have been going with the latter half of Chapter Five — and it feels important to acknowledge that this state of affairs is possible.

Now, what happens if the skill meter rises higher than the taste meter? No one talks about that. I guess I just have to be more demanding on myself.

In another previous post, I talked about giving a slow moment some more space. I like how it turned out (above), and I immediately felt like I'd made the right choice, injecting two more pages.

What a mess. I'm not sure how I'm going to render them, but shadows-cast-by-the-moon play an important role in this chapter, and I've got to remember to take them into account, compositionally-speaking. That's how I end up with drawings like the top panel above.

- - - - -

It's Canadian Thanksgiving as I'm writing this, so I will say I am thankful to my lovely partner who is so very understanding, especially in regards to this project and the time and energy I've been shovelling into it. I am thankful to you, too, Dear Reader, who have chosen to support this project and who have shared your thoughts and suggestions and enthusiasm in the comments and elsewhere. As always, I look forward to sharing the process with you, with all its ups and downs.

Coming up: I have to thumbnail Chapter Six, because I need it to "simmer" while I ink Chapter Five. On the other hand, I'm so happy with my pencilling right now, I'm considering jumping right into Chapter Six pencils as soon as it's thumbnailed. I've decided to wait and see how confident I feel about the thumbnails. If they hold together tightly, if they feel solid and fun, I may go straight to pencils. If I feel uncertain about them, they will get the simmer-time they need.

Either way, you all have some absolutely cracking chapters coming at you next year.

Until next week,
I remain,
composed entirely of turkey and stuffing,

TC