Remember when I said I’d add my latest comic into my shoppe? I also promised to post the original art for the cover, didn’t I? Yes, I think I did. Well, here it is! You may also recall that I promised to wax romantic about yellow ink. I’m not so sure I can go quite that far. Lately my roving eye has been ogling magenta. In fact, I can’t remember why I decided to use yellow in the first place. Ah, but aren’t I getting ahead of oneself. You probably want to know what the hell I’m doing putting yellow ink all over an otherwise perfectly fine drawing.

It all started with Farmy Acres, and it’s notorious black+one color scheme. Basically I wanted my still-cogent inker self to indicate to my future late night computer colorist self where to put the color. In the old days, comic book artists would draw thin outlines as “color holds” to indicate where the colorist (who was of course a different person) should drop a shadow, for instance. I’m one person and I have Photoshop, so I figured I could do better than that.

On Dan Clowes’ art for Ghost World, the secondary blue color is indicated by cyan ink right on the original drawing. I use cyan “no-photo blue” pencils to sketch things out, so I can’t use blue to also indicate a color separation. The pencils would get all mixed in and it’d all go to hell! It occurred to me that instead I could probably just draw with one of the other two process colors. I got ahead of myself again. Process colors. They’re the four colors with which most things in color are printed. But you knew that. The reason I figured I should stick with them is you can look at your Photoshop art broken down into its component color channels. This makes it really easy to find and select something that is 100% made up of just one of those colors.

Well, I know I’ve said how much I love using colored ink. A whole spectrum of ink bottles is arrayed by my drawing table every day. So, I just started dipping my pen, and eventually my brush, into the little glass bottle full of yellow. For some reason I didn’t use magenta. I really can’t remember why.

Anyhow, I’ve been doing it for a few months now, and did so for this cover design, as you can tell. I wanted the cover pages to look like title cards from an old cartoon. I pulled together elements from Looney Tunes, Disney (“A Walt Disney Donald Duck. Technicolor.”), and Tom & Jerry. Using a lightbox, I put my Bristol paper over a 1/10″ grid to make the letterforms consistant.

See the crayon stuff above the front cover? I used that for a spotlight behind the lettering. You know, like old title cards.

Did you make it all the way down here?? Gee, you must really need to kill some time! Wull…thanks.

Speaking of girlfriends, happy birthday, Caitlin Martin! Your name rhymes!!

Hi friends living the comics dream, and others who accomodate it. Hello spambots and spamesses. Good evening, internet. I have a new plan for life. I won’t go into detail lest I jinx it. Yes, thanks for asking, it does involve cardio-dance-Pilates videos streaming from Netflix.

Starting next Tuesday: A Promise Kept! Look out for a Red Flower in your underpants or a Sticky Substance in your sheets, because this website is hitting it’s awkward phase. I’ll serialize my Petrified Girlfriend comic with the frequency of pimples and pubic hairs, a page a week.

Yes, Petrified may not have been written with the intent of being dragged out that way, but at any rate it’ll give me a chance to find the story another path out into the ether. I want to finish this thing. I hope you’ll enjoy it, and I’m sorry if you’ve already read the second chapter (in O&L #3) because that’s where I’m starting. If you want to refresh yourself on the first chapter, now’s the time to do it. You may notice that between chapters 1 & 2, the style changes. A lot. You’ll have to live with it for now. If you want a consistent look, well, get the damn graphic novel! In, like, 2027 or so.

Over the summer I did some guest instructing at CCS’s Summer Workshops. I taught one class on freelancing alongside Alec Longstreth. We’d done it once before. I also supplemented Jon Chad demonstrating nib anatomy and technique with a lesson on brush inking. It’s always a thrill to get in front of a class of eager grown-ups and talk about comics. Sure, it takes getting over a strong sensation of Who Am I to Tell These People Anything?, but sharing comics energy with enthusiastic fellow cartoonists has got it’s rewards, too.

So I inked these both as live demos. Later I went back in with a pen to tackle the backgrounds and some details. Then I colored em because Everything is Funnier in COLOR!! Even a pair of distressed Catholics. [Buchwald the Repentant Demon, ever-developing character at top. Wilma Whistlepig, who I miss drawing in Farmy Acres, bellow. If you don't know, now ya know.]