More Pencils, Swashtober, Master and Commander, and more!

Okay, I joke around a lot about "spoilers, tee hee," but let's get serious. This week, if you really want to go into Chapter Five blind, let us just tip our hats to each other and keep moving.

Actually, no — I have two nice things to draw your attention to this week, and then — woo hoo hoo! — then we're really snooping around behind the curtain.

(As always, images in the carousel are mostly repeated below.)

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First of all, look what Chris Schweizer drew.

I've mentioned before: I like how Chris draws. I have some of his sketchbook-books and they're always fun to look at. He's so good with shapes and design. As I have said elsewhere: I am taking notes.

He's also running a Kickstarter now for a book of swords. It's already successfully funded, so if you like what Chris does and you want more of it in your life, just go pre-order it.

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In other news (tangentially related, because I know Chris and I share a love of Master & Commander), I started listening to a Patrick O'Brian audiobook yesterday and…

… I love it so much.

This is only news because I have — perhaps controversially??? — often boosted Horatio Hornblower over Aubrey & Maturin. O'Brian's books always seemed too fussily concerned with the minutiae of sailing technicalities, and the plotting was all over the map (or charts). His stories always seemed really strangely-shaped.

But I had only been reading them. I had not been listening to the audiobooks. Turns out, the audiobooks are great. I have started with THE SURGEON'S MATE and am only half way through right now, but I'm going to assume it's not too early to form an opinion.

I don't know why, but the narration somehow smooths over whatever issues I had with the text. The sailing stuff makes more sense. Aubrey and Maturin's characterizations shine brighter — they really are a wonderful pair. The plotting is still very strange (to anyone a little too-used-to Hollywood-style plotting), but in my specific circumstance (penciling comics) the almost episodic quality is working to its advantage.

There is a possibility that my appreciation is less the audiobook and more due to my own age and experience. I read Hornblower when I was in my twenties. I have learned a lot about everything since then, including the Age of Sail, and I have changed. For example, I read David Grann's THE WAGER earlier this year. It's about sailing ship disaster. And I kept wondering, "why is all the sailing stuff described for babies?" before I realized, "oh, most people reading this will be unfamiliar with sailing terminology, whereas you, dumbass, have been neck-deep in naval details for twenty years now." That might explain my changing opinion.

Regardless, I heartily recommend Patrick O'Brian's THE SURGEON'S MATE, as narrated by Simon Vance. I do not believe you need to read these books in order. As a responsible author, O'Brian incorporates all the important details into the text.

Now! I need to find out how Hornblower holds up. Is Hornblower still the one for me? This — growth and changing tastes — is super interesting to me and! probably no one else! Have you had this experience?

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DRAWINGS. Good news: I'm really getting into the groove and I feel like my characters look as consistent as ever. Bad news: I'm six pages away from the end of the chapter.

Yes, Alexandra, that IS cause for concern.

Last chance to back out before the spoilers!

Very pleased with these hands. From reference, maybe too-obviously, but hopefully the inking will lessen that effect.

On a related note, I was looking up visual reference for raw, uncut rubies and Getty Images would show me pictures of red gemstones, but the descriptions of some of them said "red meat."

I don't know what's happening here. It certainly DOES look like meat, but … ummmm… it is not. Did they "A.I."-generate the image description?

Anyway, back to the meat of this post.

I did so much research for this guy's costume (above) only to find out, ahhhh, I could have just made that up, it would have been fine. No, that's not true. The research will be important when it comes to colour.

 This sequence is going to be fun. I hope it's as much fun for you as it is for me.

 Very pleased with everyone's pose in the panel above. That's all.

 I posted on social media (Bluesky, specifically, which seems to me has been gaining momentum lately) that I have discovered my New Least-Favourite Thing to Draw: figures lying flat on their back (above). There's something about that pose — it's been so hard for me to feel like I've "got it right." It always looks wrong for reasons I can't discern.

Sometimes it works out, though (below).

Why is Alexandra's Dad lying flat on his back? YOU'LL SEE.

And sometimes pages just come together (like below, I think) and everything looks and feels the way you want it to and a surge of good feeling wells up inside you and you are overwhelmed by the power of this primordial magic, to be able to imagine things and then turn those unspoken, intangible images into pictures on paper and then, further still, to give them a little bit of life and meaning by putting different pictures in a certain order. I love it.

And you might say, "it must be nice to feel like that all the time," but of course it does not feel like that all the time. It comes and goes like the weather, and our job is just to notice when the clouds look like a kitten.

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Okay, gotta go, busy week. But! It's that time of year when the katsura trees start to shed their leaves and smell like cotton candy. I have been doing my best to get out and enjoy that.

I hope you're all making time for the katsura trees (literal or metaphorical) in your life.

Until next week,
I remain,
a close-up of red meat,

TC