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.