Inks, Links, and Thinks

As ever, the images above are also posted below (with commentary), with a buffer of other fun business inbetween to defend against inadvertent spoilers.

This week:

• Are you having a nice life?
• Instagram links to make your feed more delightful,
• The style-shift from DD1 to now: a story of growth and acceptance,
• and some hits from the drawing board!

THE BABY CHECKS IN

I don't share a lot of personal-life stuff because part of me is just not inclined toward it and another part of me (perhaps mistakenly) thinks this DD4 "Production Diary" is already the most intimate thing I could possibly share. Let's make an exception, though.

Yesterday I was feeling glum—the weather was wet, the trees are bare, the year has turned, my tech-related anxiety was on the rise, and my on-again-off-again back-pain issues had peaked at crippling new highs. I was sitting on the edge of the couch folding laundry, watching Taskmaster, wallowing in some sort of miserable rumination. Our toddler was sitting nearby on a pile of warm towels. Apropos of nothing, I heard his sweet, little voice sing-song…

"Daddy, are you having a nice life?"

Reader, it was like someone dropped me into an ice bath. I shattered into a trillion tiny shards and was reassembled, free of cares, free of pain. "Yes," I told him, weeping, "yes, I am having a nice life."

The way toddlers do, he asked again, "Daddy, are you having a nice time?"

Before I replied, he pulled some towels into his lap, patted them in place, and said, "I am having a nice time."

I am still crying, in case you're wondering.

(Important admission: his mom occasionally asks him, "are you having a nice life?" so it's not like this question came out of nowhere.)

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SOME NICE CLICKS

I've been spending a lot less time on Twitter, but like some law of physics, all that procrastination has to go somewhere. For me, that has meant more Instagram. On one hand, Instagram is awful. On the other, here are a few follows that genuinely bring me joy.

adailycloud. I always smile at these. Gotta love a simple idea executed well and with consistency.

thewhalergirl. Sam Hogg is a concept artist whose work is impressive, but what I really like is these gouache paintings on Pantone chips. Again, a simple idea executed well and with consistency.

beckycloonan. I wasn't going to include any comics-related stuff, but then I saw this drawing and stopped in my tracks. So if you're not following Becky, please do, because she's such a killer draughtsperson.

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STYLE CONSISTENCY OVER THE YEARS

Patron Lex asked,

Are you intentionally making the figures and faces in DD4 more illustrative vs. cartoony (which I think some of the earlier volumes had) or is that just happening on it’s own?

This is something I hope people don't notice (which kind of answers the question), but I can't hide it.

^ These are some of the earliest drawings of DD, from 2006 or so. More than fifteen years ago! I love this sequence, but the inconsistency in the faces really irks me. Despite years of practice and training that led up to this, I was very much still figuring things out.

(Incidentally, when I talk about being displeased by these drawings, I hope the takeaway is, "if you want to do something, don't wait until you're 'good enough.'" If I waited for my draughtsmanship to be as good as I wanted, I'd still be waiting. I try to accept them for what they are, but I don't have to love them.)

^ For Delilah Dirk and The Aqueduct, I leaned into a more graphic style of drawing the characters. I thought this less-structural, more "iconic" look would be a good direction. I did not fully consider the implications that this might, one day, actually be turned into Chapter Three of The Turkish Lieutenant, even though it was loosely designed to work that way.

^ Now we're here, and I've moved away from a cartoony/graphic/exaggerated direction. Lex, to answer your question: this was not an explicit choice. I have, however, been searching for a style of drawing that is comfortable and unified-looking. I am still trying to figure it all out, and I'll be surprised if I ever do.

Instead of making a choice like, "I want my style to look like this or that," I am saying "here are the principles I want to apply, and however it looks, that's the way it looks." I want it to be easy to read, characters should be immediately recognizable, emotions and action should be clear, and I want the "world" to be absorbing. I evidently do not want it to be too "cartoony," but I must want it to be exaggerated to some degree, because just look.

I hope the level of detail and "realism" of the illustration style suits the tone of the story: dramatic in a serial adventure sort of way, capable of believable personal drama but still lighthearted. It should look like how it reads, the same way you might say "the letter A is the colour green." Sure, some people may say, "no, the letter A is red," but for the Green A crowd, it'll feel really right.

One direction I would like to move in is to make the artwork more "suggestive." I think a mark of an exceptional writer is that they are able to put the most evocative words in the right combinations to encourage readers to envision scenes that are both vivid and which suit the author's intention. Like someone who's amazing at charades: they can pick just the right gesture and their teammates immediately make the correct guess. I wonder if I can do that with artwork. I'd like to.

Like most artist-folk, I look at other people's work and think "I wish my style looked like that." But, intellectually, I know that this feeling is common and that, maybe, someone thinks the same thing about my work. Maybe. Ha ha.

So when it comes to "style"—the tricks and cheats and shorthands and visual conventions any draughtsperson borrows or develops to build their own representative language of mark-making—I try not to set a destination so much as I aim to practice acceptance of what I find along the way. No one told me this would be the major challenge of practising draughtsmanship over the course of decades, but I wouldn't have understood if they had.

An important thing to keep in mind re: art style is that the manner in which it is received is all relative to your reader's education. If you've been reading comics all your life, you can spot the difference between a Miller and a Mignola as quick as a flash. If you've grown up reading manga, you understand all the little iconic conventions that are part of that style. But if comics are only a small part of your life, you may look at SMILE and BLACKSAD and ASADORA and WITCH HAT ATELIER and think, "oh look, cartoons." For a lot of readers, the fact that a book is about getting braces or noir crime or midcentury amateur piloting or, uh, witches—the subject matter may well supersede the nitty gritty of art style considerations. I try to keep that in mind, as difficult as it is.

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LET'S ACCEPT SOME INKED DRAWINGS

^ Speaking of nitty-gritty style details, one thing I struggled with on this panel was "how do I represent shiny things," like the ornate silver candle holder. I don't know which influences I pulled into my rendering choices, but I'm pleased with the results. I'm also pleased with the choice to render the far BG in pencil, with the intention that it would separate itself from the inked FG characters. The question will be: when I scan them, how dark should I make the pencil work? We'll have to see what works best.

^ If you remember this video about the thumbnailing process, this is from one of those pages. I wasn't happy with the composition as thumbnailed, though. I'll be replacing the bottom panel of page 21 with this one. I like the face on the old guy on the left so much that I might let him sit on top of the previous panel (which would otherwise obscure his face). :)

I like how much is going on in this panel. We're seeing the wine be brought around. We see Vignelli at the head of the table, and that he's raucous and impolite, even at dinner. We see the captain of the Cordelia laughing along with him. The full scale of the table is suggested and we see Mom and Nikos taking it all in. Sometimes a sweaty composition really is worth pursuing.

^ Seductive!

^ Soothing.

^ And sometimes a straightforward composition is the best, especially when the elements are strong.

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Coming up: a reader asked about thoughts on writing dialogue—one of my favourite topics—so I'm putting together a post. That'll pop up next week or the week after.

I swear I know how to write a short post, but I'm not going to start with that one.

With convention season coming up, I was also thinking about a post on how to give and receive compliments. This was inspired by a post from Steve Lieber. I wonder if that would be useful.

Having a nice life,
TC
👶