Long John

Even though the academic year comes to a close and I’m busier than ever making sure everything hits its goal, I’m actually finding that I’m able to carve out time here and there for a lot of developmental stuff. In addition to getting layouts on Chapter 5 done, I also have three other projects at various stages of development, all of which I’m very excited about.

One of them is still very nascent, but I have a scene that involves an older gentleman that goes through a range of emotions. Though I’m not necessarily thinking about drawing this project myself, the idea of the comic has been so energizing I just wanted to throw some faces onto the page (the iPad) and come up with an expressive face to take through those emotions.

My most favorite things to draw are faces, so this ended up actually being a nice catharsis for the stress my day job is giving me––something I need to remember when I feel like I must sit down to draw but can’t think of anything to draw (I’m not a natural “sit around and sketch” kind of guy). The challenge is coming up with a base face (the face that’s to the left of the middle drawing was the first one I did) and then trying to draw that face in a range of angles and emotions while also staying “on model” (meaning it looks like the same face from drawing to drawing). It was an exercise, so it’s not perfect, but it is actually something I find fun to draw.

I guess that’s a difference with me as an artist from a lot of other comic artists; I don’t really tend toward making finished drawings aside from comic pages, it’s more the action of drawing and problem-solving that keeps me coming back.