Made it! Another Inkspill comic.

You wouldn’t think this was a hard one to do, but that first panel is the result of three attempts. Again, in the interest of time, I worked my way through a tricky angle. It’s my job to use my free time to study that particular head position. I’d say it turned out okay, though.

This comic is cleaner than yesterday’s. I made it a point to not overwork anything, so now I get a little bit of a cleaner look while still maintaining that sketchy look.

My hand did start to hurt, but then I remember to stop, relax, stretch, and return to the paper a little looser. I think perhaps it’s the thickness of the pen holder, which is actually fairly big (I’m using a Deleter holder) and the fact that I’m squeezing the fulcrum with my thumb, forefinger, and middle finger too much. When I’m drumming, I distribute the work amongst all my fingers, so when I put the burden on my “triad” for too long, it tends to hurt. That’s the current theory, anyway.

This ends four weeks of comics rehab for me, and I dare say it’s working. I’m beginning to think that maybe I don’t need to go through rehab anymore and I can just get up at 7:00 AM every weekday to work on comics and, instead of documenting every day, I can start documenting significant days. I’ll give myself the weekend to think about it. I will admit that the decision to include a post about the day’s work is a bit of a motivator.

The important thing to learn from this rehab is that one must stick to a schedule and do nothing else during the time allotted. If all one can afford is an hour, make comics for an hour – no more, no less. This helps to develop a specific regimen and supports good time management. However, I admit that, while I did usually draw for an hour, the post usually takes me at least 15 minutes more than the allotted time, meaning the time spent on comics-related activity is over an hour. Perhaps I’ll just allot myself an hour-and-a-half to spend the last half hour doing whatever it is I need to do.

I wonder what kind of rehab I can put myself through to help me pick a project?

Today’s comics was done with a dip pen (G-pen nib), Koh-I-Noor black ink, and a Faber-Castell pen brush on Strathmore Series 500 bristol board

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This is an Inkspill. Inkspills can only be done in ink and must be drawn, scanned, cleaned, and posted in one hour, no more.

Here’s today’s comic. Click on the image to view the larger version.

I just made the hour!

So, a few questions about the strip:

1. Do all women do this?
2. Could her hair be any frizzier?
3. Are they growing in each panel?

Considering I did this in all inks, it’s not too bad. I thought I’d have more trouble with the female character than I did. The problem I did have was the sketching; it occurred to me whilst drawing today’s comic that perhaps my tendencies to overwork my pages stems from the fact that I do prefer sketching over drawing. I mean, look at the number of lines! I just noodled away, didn’t I? I’ll have to streamline that bit, I think.

My hand started to hurt on the underside of my wrist at the base of my thumb, and my hand began to go numb again. I wonder if it’s my hand position; drawing with a dip pen is not like drawing with a pencil whereby the pen can be held at the same angle I would normally hold a pencil at, otherwise the ink wouldn’t come out of the nib. Or maybe because I’m standing up and the angle of my hand to my arm is such that it’s causing pain. I’ll have to look into this more because I don’t think it’s very healthy to have a hurt hand while drawing.

Today’s comics was done with a dip pen (G-pen nib), Koh-I-Noor black ink, and a Faber-Castell pen brush on Strathmore Series 500 bristol board

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This is an Inkspill. Inkspills can only be done in ink and must be drawn, scanned, cleaned, and posted in one hour, no more.

I’m waiting for the last bit of ink to dry before I scan.

Today, I did a three-panel strip entirely in ink, which qualifies it as an Inkspill. Of course, I have to get it cleaned and posted within the hour, and according to my timer, I have 22.5 minutes left.

Inkspills are great because they force me to commit to whatever I’m drawing. Sometimes it turns out bad, sometime good, and sometimes in between, as can be expected. But I figure the more I do it, the more confident I’ll be with inking and I’ll also learn to draw the picture elements more efficiently.

Be right back… going to see if the ink has dried…

…

Okay, so the ink wasn’t dry, but then I had to use the restroom, which isn’t fair since the ink probably dried while I was “busy,” so I reset my timer for 10 minutes. I cleaned the strip before the timer went off but didn’t get it uploaded. I don’t know if it’s cheating, but because of the potty break, I’m giving myself a little bit of leeway on this one.

Click on the scaled-down version of the strip below to read the full-size version.

Done with a dip pen (G-pen nib), Koh-I-Noor black ink, and a Faber-Castell pen brush on Strathmore Series 500 bristol board

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This is an Inkspill. Inkspills can only be done in ink and must be drawn, scanned, cleaned, and posted in one hour, no more.

Today I actually got up at 6:50 AM and got to the drawing board just before 7:00. Woo hoo!

I finished inking page 1 and it looks a little better than yesterday. I a little over-worked, but better. I had to stop myself from over-working the page too much because I could feel myself trying to find ways to make the page look better, but any more noodling and hatching would’ve made the page look even crappier than it does.

So here’s the problem: I want to keep the look of each page consistent. Does this mean I have to work each page to match page 1? Or do I just approach the next page with the same aesthetic goal but try to cut back on the over-working, risking the next page(s) not matching page 1 entirely? And, what if, in the meantime, I found a better way to approach and, hopefully, accomplish my aesthetic goal, something different than what I did with page 1? The goal is the same but the approach is slightly different? Just go for it and see what happens? Wait until next time?

I also noticed that my hand didn’t really hurt today. Maybe because I didn’t do that much outline work. But also, today as I used my dip pen, I kept thinking to myself, “Treat it like a pencil. Treat it like a pencil.” Which I hate, because a dip pen is not a pencil. I don’t like treating things as if they were something else. Sure, I’ll note that some things are similar, but I don’t want to go too far and treat different things as if they were the same. I remember Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller talking about how directing and making a comic were basically the same process, and I remember thinking how ridiculous that was. They may be similar, but they’re not the same. The end goal and the end results are different. The interaction with your materials, actors, story, etc. are different. Perhaps that’s why Sin City was a decent movie but not a great movie; a lot of visual power was lost in the translation because they tried to take the transition from comic to movie too literally.

But, I digress.

I will start inking page 2 tomorrow and see how I approach it. In the meantime, I did this spontaneous little sketch with my dip pen after I finished page 1. I think it took about 3 minutes or so.

Done with a dip pen and Koh-I-Noor black ink on Strathmore Series 500 bristol board

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This is an Inkspill. Inkspills can only be done in ink and must be drawn, scanned, cleaned, and posted in one hour, no more.

Done with a dip pen and Koh-I-Noor black ink on Strathmore Series 300 bristol board… and now I remember why I hate that paper. It doesn’t take ink well at all.

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This is an Inkspill. Inkspills can only be done in ink and must be drawn, scanned, cleaned, and posted in one hour, no more.