Category: Process

Anatomy in Perspective, thinking outside the box.

Posted on 7th November 2024 by pj

One of my many (many) drawing difficulties is the dead body lying on floor syndrome. This pushes one thing I think I’m good at (the human body) against another thing I really struggle with (perspective). Perspective isn’t hard, per se, and often my most successful perspective drawings are where I try not to get too rigid with it, but inevitably (especially as I’ve gone digital) I tend to fall in to the everything-is-a-box and can be drawn in perspective. And since the human body is extra hard to draw, that means extra boxes and extra hard perspective.

And that’s sort of useful, but it really steals a lot of fluidity away from the human form. Plus, and I dunno if this is a feature of my brain but it tends to lead to a lot of floating boxes. These notional boxes taking up head, torso, arms and legs, still sort of follow the placement of wherever I put them – rather than, as with the human body – sagging int other space that’s there.

When stuck on this problem I start looking at Geoff Darrow, who’s Hard Boiled is a bible for bodies lying on the ground.

I mean, look at that. Every body is painful reminder of the fact we’re only human flesh bags.

Anyway, staring at this, it seemed to me, the boxes where my problem, and if I could think of another metaphor (it’s not the right word, for what I’m trying to do – a drawing anology?) that might help it might be worth considering and staring and staring and it occurred to me if I thought of the torso as a sack of spuds, that would give me much of the flexibility of a real human body –

I feel the weight of a sack like this, much more than I do a box, and it has a bend to it that the body does that none of my box drawings ever do.

And if I extend the metaphor so instead of a box human we end with a person made of bags of spuds (or other less-norn-irish stuff) we can have a better way to think about the body in perspective, something that can keep the all of the relative lengths of the body parts the same while also making me think about weight and giving me the flexibility to move the body.

Anyway, this has JUST occured to me, so maybe it’s a bad idea, but sometimes I think you need to question your assumptions so you can rethink stuff, especially stuff you’re stuck on.

Tools of the trade: Rotring Isograph

Posted on 18th August 2024 by pj

The Rotring Isograph is a pretty old school architectural drawing pen. It comes in a bunch of sizes, and it was my tool of choice before any professional work came knocking. I’ve had to dig one of the old pens out, actually, because I’ve been digital so long I’ve had to remove some mothballs on this one.

This is the 1.4mm sized pen. Up until going fully digital in the last decade, this was my tool of choice for drawing panel borders and why, even now, my default panel border width is 1.4mm. I think I’ve owned this pen since the late 80s.

Photo of the Rotring Isograph 1.4 pen, the lid and “shroud” for the pen nib have been removed as has the ink refill and the main body.

I’ve exploded it out here so you can see its workings. It’s a refillable pen, and you’re better just using rotring ink (which to the best of my memory isn’t waterfast)

I’ve always loved the chunky line it makes and though it requires a little too much cleaning and care (it’s been sat upright for at least a year and unused and needed a bit of a cleaning, though I didn’t do as thorough a job as I could) but once cleaned it’s pretty rock solid.

If you want the 1.4 line you’ve got to hold it at 90° from the paper to guarantee a steady ink flow. On the other hand if you start playing around you can get a nice chunky ink line with some body to it.

Chunky Hulk Sketch drawn with a Chunky pen

Anyway, I’m digging it out because I want to go and use some old school tools. Many of the tools I use have deteriorated (and look, let’s be honest – so have I) in particular by lovely black erasers that where brilliant for erasing and never leaving smears, somehow the chemicals in them, it turns out, are just not that stable and they’ve sort of melted in to many plastic surfaces they’ve been sat near. Very odd.

Anyway, will let you know how it goes.

Double time

Posted on 26th June 2024 by pj

Hello chums, I’m going to recap a thing I’ve touched on here before, the idea of the two things plan.

Prior to covid I started this new process where I would chop my day up into doing two things. I mean not small things, not like take-a-bin-out, but things I consider cognitively hard; two pages of inks, two pages of pencils, two chunks of layouts (a chunk being roughly 12 pages, so two chunks is layouts for an entire issue).

Of course, it’s a tiny amount of things, but if you can do it consistently, literally every day of the week, every week of the year, you’ll end up – if the two things are pencils/inks of a page – drawing 365 pages of comics. Obviously, it’ll not always work out like that, so I try and aim for 25 pages per month. You’ll need down days of course, and sometimes one of the things will be pay the tax man (because man, that is a cognitive load just filling that form in and hitting send on the tax)

The reason for doing this is because I can be over productive sometimes, and find, even as I draw three, four, five pages (of pencils or inks) in a day that I end the day frustrated that I haven’t done enough. That somehow, drawing twice as much as an average artist just isn’t going to cut it. So I have to set myself a hard limit.

Once I hit those two things, fair enough if I’ve time I can start doing other stuff. And, again, prior to covid, I managed to find the time to write, blog and draw for fun (my sketch books can be pretty shallow things because I save my drawing for work)

Anyway, along comes covid and all plans hit the fans and suddenly I’m trying to do as much work as is humanly possible. An entirely unsustainable thing. Part of the problem with being fast is you miss a day or two (because the world gets in your way) and suddenly you go from being on time to 8 pages behind.

Now, this week, owing to the fact that my wife and youngest son are heading off to Disneyland Paris, I was looking forward to getting caught up on a serious amount of work. I’d be staying at home. BUT disaster struck and my wife came down with vertigo, necessitating a change of plans on my part – so now I’m also heading to Paris to ride the many many rides my son assures me he wants to go on.

So I needed to rethink my work and so I decided, counter intuitively it was no use just ploughing through it and trying to hurry it up and see where I landed, I needed to break it down day by day. Initially I figured I could chop it up in to two pages a day, and somewhere in that time draw the extra left over two pages (so some days would be a three pager) and that started well, until I discovered that I’d accidentally calculated the time left as one day longer because I forgot there wasn’t a 31st of June. Recalibrated, it turned out ok, because I’d started and already done three pages a day for most of it. But doing so really made me sit down and start thinking; two is the way to go.

The past year I’ve really sort of relaxed the reigns when it comes to knowing what work I’m doing, nothing has had deadlines which has meant I’ve just been doing work as and when I can. Didn’t work today? doesn’t matter. No deadlines.

But, of course, it does matter, because no one is paying me for my days off.

So, work scheduled up to the 30th the on hols for a a week, where, of course, I will be working. Nothing too hard though. Probably two pages of very very rough pencils per day…

Chimpsky’s Law

Posted on 14th November 2023 by pj

NOTE: This was sitting in my draft blog folder, since uhm 2020ish, so you’re getting it now because it’s got art in it.

Well, there’s been enough time, so here’s a few bits of art, for fun!

It’s been great fun drawing Chimpsky and seeing how much people have enjoyed a nice fun Dredd story.

Before I start every script, I sit and read it, then I fire up clip studio, create a new document with a couple of extra pages at the end (so a 6 page story gets about 8 pages of documents) and in those extra I do character design or layouts. So here’s all the layouts along with a shrunk version of the art so you can see where I diverged. Generally I stick pretty close to the layouts, but sometimes I totally change it – sometimes there’s something else needed, ep 1 page 6 of Chimpsky was like that, I had Dredd facing the reader but it felt like not enough. If I saw Dredd’s face, I wanted to see more of Dredd. So I flipped him. Seeing his back, meant we know it’s Dredd (who else would it be?) but he sits on that page like a ominous for-shadowing of what’s to come.

Thinking inside the box

Posted on 9th November 2023 by pj

There are panels I lean on a lot, panel shapes, compositions, etc, and honestly, I’ll do them without thinking because they work for me, but I’m trying to rethink some of these choices and make more interesting (or at least, more thoughtful choices).

Take this panel:

Panel 1

Absoloutly fine. Dredd gets to a door, door gets open. Not terribly interesting, but largely doesn’t need to be, this isn’t high drama. But the next panel, is an almost identical composition and so I needed to rethink it. Initially I went for this:

Redrawn Step 1

This is a bit better, I think. Pulled out more it’s an establishing shot, much easier to see we’re outside at a doorway. But still, that old habit of mine of keeping everything on an eye/just below eye level. What if we wanna move up higher (giving us a little more distance, a little more of the location?)

Third go…

SO I think this is better from an angle, though the danger with panels at these angles is they feel voyeuristic, like you’re standing beside someone watching the proceedings, I mean if I added a window frame it would feel even creepier…

Creepy much..
Too creepy..

Anyway, that’s not what we’re after (I mean it COULD be, and if it was, it’d be great… but it’s not…)

Since a panel isn’t alone in it’s composition, it’s judged by what went before and what comes after, I check the previous panel and find – OF COURSE – I’d gone for an almost identical angle on the previous page (last panel) and this (the first panel on this page) feels a bit… like the time gap between them is immediate… I want it to feel like more time has elapsed, so a cheaty way of doing that is to flip the horizontal of the panel…

Still works!

And in context, this flipped panel feels better (you’ll have to take my word) but I feel like I’ve lost a little of the atmosphere of that second attempt, so I’ll take another swipe at it…

rejected

I think what I’m losing here is some sky, and at this angle (birds eye view) I’m not gonna get it, so time to go low… really really low…

AH-HA!

This has enough in it that I think this could be the one, so a quick refinement later and…

YES!

One thing that I’ve started thinking about on this new Dredd strip is… how much does this bit look like a scifi book cover (and how little does this look like something I’ve drawn before?) and this scores it on both counts. We’ve take a functional but dull panel (in my drawing of it, at least) and turned it into its own little sci-fi tale. Pleased with myself now, let the self loathing recommence in 10 … 9 …

Studio Tour (2023)

Posted on 19th October 2023 by pj

I’m due a studio tour, right?

We’ve been in this house for around a year and there’s still a fortune worth of work to do. Outside of the studio we started by adding a new fence to the outside drive, so we could have private space in the backgarden which was a godsend over the summer (otherwise you can see our backyard from across the road) but it cost a fair bit. And we changed the stair case (money) and then updated the kitchen (more money) which, combined with buying the place has left me sort of broke. But we have a house on a ground floor with an outside which meant I got to do nine barbecues this summer (and if the bloody weather had been more dependable it would’ve been a lot more) including one just as my son finished secondary and him and his mates got their university acceptances and we had a big barbecue with him and nine mates, and the family and my wife’s cousin and her family and one of our friends and one of my brothers and there was twenty people in total. Was great. Worth it.

Anyway, the studio.

The Main Studio
To the right, books shelves, laser printer
Behind me, the very tall magical cupboard
Are we… are we about to enter Narnia?
NO! It’s where I keep a bunch of Artists editions!
Even more artists editions!

Funky Pencil Monkey

Posted on 11th October 2023 by pj

Spent a couple of days in a bit of a funk. The world is just … ugh. My mood has been dark (which, all jokes aside, I partially put down to binging Walking Dead which finally got to Neagan, a character I despised so much on first contact, and the grim never ending awfulness of what the characters are going through that it genuinely has effected my mood, so I’ve put it away – no thanks, not watching that) have turned instead to the delights of Gone Fishing.

I’m in a fairly privileged position (in that I’m in a part of the world that is relatively stable, and safe) and so have decided I can’t watch the news at the moment either – things are too grim and it’s impacting how I think about stuff. I don’t remember when things felt this oppressive (plus the comic industry seems to be going through one of its cyclical crunches where there’s more published work than there are readers, and more talented comic book creators than there are jobs for them)

There’s a guy in fixing my gas (big bill I could do well without) and he’s working in my studio room. So I’ve decided to blow the cobwebs off a script idea I had a few years ago (oh god, just after me and Declan did “M” for Dynamite, in 2017) and start polishing it up with a view to drawing it myself as a commando digest sized comic.

Well, strictly speaking I’ll be drawing it A5, and printing either A5 or some reduction of same.

I wrote a fairly detailed treatment of it, and then I rewrote and rewrote it. It was a James Bond pitch originally, and I’ve turned it into “John Regent” a Bond like MI6 Secret Assassin.

Honestly it came about because in our book M, Bond’s boss – a former british soldier – returns to Belfast, and I thought “Oh, man… if James Bond came to Belfast … he could get stuck in an Orange Parade!” because Bond surrounded by a load of guys in Bowler hats marching to a band while he’s being hunted by OddJob is very very funny.

Of course, what often happens between inception and treatment/scripting is the original idea gets lost as you build your plot. So ultimately, that didn’t make it.

Anyway, I have a detailed treatment (no page numbers, just plot happenings) and 64 pages to do it in. So I’ve been trying to work out how long each section should be and man, 64 pages seems like a lot, but every page is only 1 – 2 panels. So you’re really cutting it up a lot. But that’s ok. Because the treatment basically breaks down into Prologue (it’s James Bond! gotta have the bond bit at the start!) Act 1, Act 2, Act 3 and Epilogue I’ve sort of picked arbitary points for these things to break down, that’s when you really start to feel it.

BUT – I’ve adapted tweets into comics, so taking this treatment and going, well, these words have fill 8 pages – beginning on a splash and ending on a splash, giving me roughly 12 panels to tell that part of the story isn’t impossible.

Plus, to be honest, I’m trying not to get bogged down on “what if this is rubbish?” so what. Then it’s rubbish. I don’t think it will be, I think it’ll be not-as-good-as-I-want-it-to-be, which has the same effect as “what if it’s rubbish?” and that effect is to stop you even trying.

So I’m ignoring that instinct and I’m going to write it in to pages, and then draw the damn thing as fast as is humanly possible. And then, if I get that far try and kickstart the beast (I won’t be after big numbers, just enough to get it printed)

But the kickstarter is a long way off, and honestly, I’m doing this because right now, my workload is very very light, and that’s not a terribly comfortable place to be for me. I’d rather have way too much work on.

Sent to kill the super hacker codenamed “White Rabbit” MI6 Assassin JOHN REGENT discovers that she is, in fact, an 11 year old non verbal autistic child. Mission aborted, REGENT and the girl are attacked. Betrayed, REGENT has to go on the run with the girl and her mother to find answers, and to discover just exactly how far down the rabbit hole this goes.

“White Rabbit”

Mutie Mayhem!

Posted on 13th September 2023 by pj

I don’t often just do a full piece for myself, but I’m off to cork this weekend and thought I’d do a very limited run of prints of a Judge Dredd piece.

The inspiration came from watching the walking dead and that scene in Skull Island where Tom Hiddleston is swatting weird monsters out of the sky with a machete through a green smoke (it’s an awesome awesome film if you haven’t seen it)

Drawn on paper and coloured in Clip Studio (using a whole load of tricks I’ve picked up from “Colour With Kurt” Kurt Michael Russell has a whole bunch of great videos (as well as a paid-for full tutorial) and i’ve been studying those things furiously. Still a long way to go, but I’m gonna try and colour more of my work.

Clip Studio Quick Access

Posted on 4th September 2023 by pj

I’ve refined my use of Clip Studio so much over the years (starting with Manga Studio 3(!) from 2006 – so coming up on twenty years) that sometimes when a new feature hits I don’t even bother with it, as I’m already optimised up the wazoo.

Anyway, a couple of versions ago, Clip Studio introduced a “Quick Access” panel – basically a pop up window that can have your most commonly used tools in one location (rather than scattered around all over the place).

I’ve been studying a bit on colouring in clip studio, and discovered that this quick access panel might answer a few distinct problems I have with workflow, and I’ve played with it and sort of love it. It’s especially useful if you have limited screen real estate. The quick access panel can use tools, menu items, actions or pretty much anything you want. I’ve set mine up for four distinct modes :

Pencilling, Inking, Flatting, Colouring and Lettering.

If you combine that with the ability to duplicate tools and add your own icons, you can have a powerful set of tools for specific modes. Here’s my pencilling set up (I won’t go in to too much detail, though I will answer comments if you have any!)

I’ve also mapped the quick access pop up to a key (Numeric zero on my keyboard or one of the quick buttons on the huion) which makes it really useful when you’ve a small screen with a small set of commonly used tools you want to pop up and down on the screen.

The Pencilling Quick Access

This has tools for Managing a new project, including an action to create page of thumbnails (custom icon on an action)

Tools for pencilling and tools for editing the panel layouts (all things I do at the pencilling stage)

Inking Quick Access

This is probably the simplest and action could be even simplified more. The numbers beside the tools here are part of the names – I coded the number keys along the keyboard with the various common tools I use and then renamed the tools to include the keyboard number so I wouldn’t forget. (Which a handy thing I nearly wish it was a built in feature)

Flatting Tools

Actually, I suspect they’re all simpler than the pencil quick access simply because it’s got most of the starting utilities I use for beginning a new project. One note on colour, I used to use the colour wheel for colour picking, but these days I’ve taken to using the colour slider, which gives you a Hue Saturation and Value sliders for changing the selected colour and takes the guess work out of which colour should I pick next.

Colouring Quick Access

No wait, this is complex! I have thousands of brushes, but lately, I’ve been focused on Kyle’s Builder Brush (Kyle of Photoshop brush fame, released this for free ages ago) and Daub Pigmentio Dual 02 – both add texture/noise to the colours as I paint them. Lots of great texture in the art.

Also a selection of actions to create different kinds of layers, saves me having to tap a new layer and adjust it afterwards.

And finally…

Lettering Quick Access

Text Edit is basically the object edit tool set up to only allow it to edit text. I’ve duplicated and created a bunch of text tools with the fonts I like, if I had time I’d make icons for all of them with the font in it (but I’m lazy)

And that’s it.

Comments are open, so if you wanna ask me about any of this, please do. (If you ask here rather than on the socials, I can answer where which means everyone gets the answer)

Scritchy Scratchy Screen

Posted on 5th March 2023 by pj

As you may or may not know, I bought a Huion Kamvas (sic) 16 graphics tablet and – for the price – it is FABULOUSLY impressive – honest. Resolution, while not 4k (it’s HD, but in a 16″ screen that’s about 140dpi) is actually pretty damn good and price wise (I got it for around £300) it is hard to beat.

Currently it’s on sale on amazon for £349 (and there’s a 15% voucher off the price too right now).

Mine is a year old. Within a very short period of time, I’d scratched the display up. At that price, it was slightly annoying but not maddening. One thing I didn’t buy with it, largely because I’d bought similair for the ipad pro and hated it, was a protective screen. BUT – I bought one recently an placed it on the screen and it’s really made a big difference, firstly the scratches (while still present and still visible) you can no longer feel – the pen just glides over them, and better – new scratches will only effect the screen protector and I can always buy a new one.

The protector I bought was this one (around £18 )

I did have a bit of a painful time getting the dirt out of it, accidentally adding more little bubbles of dirt when I tried to fix, and then I tried a different technique (I’ll not recommend it just in case it’s not great long term, but certainly short term it really helped)

I half lifted the screen protector off (half of it had lots of speckles of dirt the other half was pretty clear – all, I stress – my own fault) then sprayed lens cleaner, and wiped the dirty area with the screen protector cloths that came with the protector, then placed the screen on – which left slightly excessive bubbles of liquid under the screen, but I pressed those out to the edges (using a credit card) and it seems to have picked up all the dirt and restuck to the display perfectly well.

Next time I buy the screen protector and apply it immediately and if you’re buying the Huion I recommend you do the same.