THE KILL HOUSE - script to pencil (1)

The name of the game is problem solving.

The script, as I found it--  because my brain is broken, yes, I literally found a script in a drawer  --is very minimal.  I assume the minimalism was the point.  There are no stage directions.  The text is internal monologue, and from it I must infer the location, the sets, the wardrobe & the action.

Easy enough, right?

Chapter Zero--  because I always start things off with a Page Zero, or a Chapter None  --is three quarters of a page.  Terse dialogue, very clippy stuff.  I guess the chapter is set on a boat.  I guess Cray is airdropping into water, then boarding the boat.

So then the task becomes drawing it.  Cray's in full gear-- no visible face, no exposed skin.  Weapons?  No.  I don't want to draw guns in general, much less on page one.  So he's empty handed until he gets in the water.  The first page should be a full-page splash, because Comix!  And I figure it should be action.  Get those blank page jitters out of the way.

So begins the problem solving.  What pose should I use?  The reference stack of comix on the desk is all Image drek, early years:  Deathblow 0, 1 & 2 by Jim Lee, Team 7 #1-4 by Aron Wiesenfeld, and the Deathblow / Barbarian story from Wildstorm! 1 & 2 by Aron Wiesenfeld..  The Team 7 stuff has all the best figurework, so I start scanning those.  Pages 1, 2 & 3 all have good figurework on Cray, so those wind up being the basis for the first two pages of my riff.  There's a deceptive amount of choreography in Wiesenfeld's layouts; I say deceptive because it's all smartly done, but gets obscured by the OCD detail bullshit.  My mission becomes, then, freeing the figures from the web of fiddly inking.

All the 90s pouches & bandoliers have to fucking go.

The tactical gear is crap, so I throw together my own.  It doesn't have to be full-on detail because the art should be superheavy on shadow.  The scenario is easy:  Cray jumps out of a helicopter, the huey banks and draws fire away, Cray dives into the water, latches onto the hull, sets up a charge.  That's the first three pages.  Page one is a fullpage splash, so one panel, no borders:  that should transition smoothly to page two, which is a montage of shots with no defined borders.  We go from looking up into the air to panning down to the water, to level with the ship.  Nice and smooth.  The only boxiness on these pages should be dialogue boxes, which is a conversation I need to have with myself shortly...

Jim Lee's Deathblow couldn't make up its mind on text boxes or dialogue format.  Issue #1 has lowercase font in the narration, slightly italicized, which doesn't match up with issue #0 or issue #2.  Both 0 & 2 are all caps block lettering.  None of which feels very appropriate.  And the boxes themselves have hand-drawn borders; for the italic lowercase font the borders are all nib-thin, whereas the other issues do the narrative boxes with thick lines.

Who fucking cares.  I'll come back to the text boxes.  My main goal is placement, at the moment.  I scribble everything out to make sure it fits cleanly.  Briefly consider doing the boxes as wholly separate from the text, the way FM often does in Sin City, off in a column of its own.  But I want all the real estate I can take, so no separate column.  Not for this chapter.  Maybe I'll do that in later chapters.

The first two pages resolved, I move from air to water.  Cray beneath the waves, affixing a charge to the boat hull.  That's the third page, three panels.  I start to separate the panels with borders, by the base of the page, so as to carry the border style over onto pages 4 & on.  Everything is nice and sharp, and the action is quick.  I decide to skip showing how Cray climbs up, because Action is the point here.

Page four gives me some pause.  If I'm skipping showing how Cray climbs up, maybe I should be even more elliptical with the action.  Part of the point of these pages is establishing character-- and how better to establish the character of your badass than by showing what Kind of badass he is?  So instead of a bunch of little panels establishing details I decide the entire scenario can be done in two.  Setup two guards looking at pooled water on the deck, completely unprepared for Cray, who's leaping to attack from behind: a nice frozen moment, action in media res.  Cut to panel two, a view from just off the ship's bow, knees-down of Cray as he tosses the ragdoll bodies of the guards over.

Boom.  Four pages, and I'm halfway through the text for chapter one, in layouts.

I go back to the beginning and start working out spotting blacks.

the burroughs folio: 2 penciled...

Kammerer & Mikey Portman are both pretty much done, pencilwise.  Leaving only Ian & Robert Barlow.

Guess that's what's tomorrow's for.  My eyes are very tired, and my perspective's shot.  Time to unplug.

finding the lines

is finding footing for where the ink goes.  that's the essential zen of it:  making the marks on paper is to provide a flightpath, a landing strip, the suggested foreknowledge of where surety lay.  never definite.  simply the surest places to put lines, in the wild mind of the penciler who wishes they were instead inking.  if followed they may not all be Great Lines but they will be True Lines.  not all True lines are Great.  Not all Great lines are True.  this is my general policy.  it leads me, by instinct, by the nose, as i build things.  i'm working on the Kammerer portrait now, and the ticonderoga is the perfect tool for making predictive pencil marks with an eye toward brush.  it's got a wide tip--  a quarter inch, across the head if it's perfectly flat (which mine never is, worn to an ovoid nub)  --and because of the broad body of the pencil it can be held in ways that mimic the deftness of stroking an inked brush across paper.  it's a good pencil.  perhaps my favourite, next to the mechanical drafting pencil i habitually use.  although of late it's been whatever pencil's handiest.  i don't truly have an axe.  i've drawn with chopsticks

the burroughs folio - the secret dreamer (1)

 

pencil rough for the final portrait in the burroughs folio series:  'the secret dreamer'

Azure Pantry / the Burroughs Folio - Kiki (1)

in progress.  one of a series of six portraits to be used as chapter stops in the Azure Pantry.  each portrait will precede one of six dreams; the dream sequences from Azure Pantry will have a limited print run, separate from Azure Pantry & Denizen, bound together as the Burroughs Folio

that's the plan, at any rate.  this is the third portrait.  i've already got ian sommerville.  thought i'd posted him already.  guess that goes up tomorrow.  still moving toward finished pencils on this one.  next up is inks & colour.  probably cop out and just colour the background...  that's what i've done with the others

"finished" pencils, a little later...

i no longer am certain whether he looks like the historical Kiki, whose name is not recorded.  i only have one photo to work from.  but he'll do for "my" kiki

(actual final pencils)

i know, i know, the hands look like shit.  i'll figure out how to fix it in the brushwork.  that's how these things always go:  i find the final line in The Doing, wielding pen or brush or whatever the final medium is.  the backgrounds will probably be chalk and graphite with some brush whereas the sky should be a chalk blue with pure cloud, so those regions of paper should go wholly untouched

typical

 

dangit, paper!

 

you might be asking yourself why in the name of horus am i using a ticonderoga, a lumber pencil, to refine my sketchy-ass linework & demented anatomy.  because it's a broad, dense lead that you can carve into a useful shape, and the lead works well with bristol board.  same essential reason as why i use felt-tips, and brushes: the necessity of a tool with a variable line width.  you can turn a standard pencil lead on its side and maybe achieve the ticonderoga's line-thickness: but i don't have to alter my grip or turn the pencil sideways to achieve the effect.  all i have to do is rotate the pencil and the line widens.  it's a very easy and intuitive thing that allows you to modulate your line width, you just shift forefinger and thumb and boom, wide.  so that's why the ticonderoga, which i'll be the first to admit, is a clumsy-feeling implement to hold.  it's like trying to pencil with a ruler, at first.  the hand is accustomed to cylindrical implements so the rectangular pencil is a li'l weird.  but it's well worth it.  i call it a "lumber pencil" because that's how i was introduced to them.  my dad used them all the time, and i'm pretty sure he drew up the schematics for building the geodesic dome we lived in using a ticonderoga.  it's just what you have handy.  and they're hard as hell to break.  that's another bonus.  traveling with them there's less chance the lead will have snapped because you threw your bookbag too hard or something.  the body of a ticonderoga takes temper tantrum exhibitions of strength to break

my tarot - XVI - the tower

 

xvi - tower (finished pencils)

this one's the most recent.  i was contemplating patterning her dress, but c'mon

 there would be another card by now, but holidays, new job, unscheduled illness, etcetera

still haven't finished my christmas present for my husband, either.  it's been that kind of new year's

as dave sim once said to me, "probably:  you're going to make yourself crazy doing this"

my tarot - XXI - the garden

 

xxi - garden (sketch; partial pencils)

(finished pencils)

my ocd is acting up so a lot of the raw penciling began being built with granddad's lightbox, then the markmaking brain took the wheel-- the bark & shading are all hands running on automatic with "me" as a backseat driver.  doing my best to go with the flow r.n., to not kick & argue with the compulsive impulse, because this is what my subconscious & the card wants.  when we listen to the OCD the work comes out clean.  look forward to the dry brush stage of this thing.

"automatic penciling" sessions 1-3:

 

automatic penciling 1

 

automatic penciling 2

 

intermission (gingerbread)

 

automatic penciling 3

addendum: final strokes

my tarot - II - the oracle

 

ii - oracle

strictly a pencil upload this time.  this one's next on the block to ink, but that will wait until decent prints are made of the pencil stage.  turned out better than i'd hoped.  glad i took the time.  only last night fixed the reflections on the rim of the dish and corrected a kneecap--  i leave it to you to figure out which knee

cliff's notes:  the central figure is styled on Mariana Pineda's statue, The Oracle.  i fell in love with that statue the first time i saw it.  just a marvelous gestural figure.  so evocative.  i wanted to homage Pineda's work & pay tribute.  by using Pineda's oracle to replace the priestess i wound up triggering a series of changes in the composition...

first by the addition of the putto:  a cherubic figure meant, along with the oracle's robes, to evoke imagery associated with the lady of guadalupe-- the putto ordinarily would be supporting a crescent moon, in the original ikonography, whereas in my version would be presenting a choice:  the grasshook or the lamp?

the four suits are represented here for the first time:  the sigil (or pentacle, in rider-waite; the intersecting alchemical symbol in the dirt), the grasshook (standing in for swords & athames & all that), the lamp (for the clubs / fire symbol), and the bell (standing in for cups / chalices)...  which i realize on first glance plays hell with the standard elemental symbolism, but i'm not going to discuss that here because i don't feel like typing & revising for 5hrs to justify myself aloud for an exclusive audience of my own crazybrain

the drapery that hoods the oracle bears a pattern created by the artist known as Gerhard, who endured dave sim on cererbus for more than can be acknowledged in the length of this sentence.  the pattern was the background motif of the cover to cerebus 186, inverted here as a cheap counterspell against the diabolickal magicks dave sim indulged in throughout his most infamous work.  dave sim was a correspondent of mine for a time, but if he'd known i was gay he wouldn't have spit on me, let alone talked shop about brushes & composition.  my mother was a feminist.  so fuck dave sim.  gerhard's a real one for putting up with that crank

the underside of the drapery is patterned on pamela coleman-smith's original art for the high priestess: this pattern hung between the pillars, behind the priestess.  i believe pamela intended the fruit to be pomegranates

the pillars are engraved with the "crown" motif from the imp card--  as is the bell, if you look carefully.  the pillars will be explored more in full with other cards, such as 'the initiate' (the revised hanged man card), the lovers, and temperance.  these will be different perspectives on the floor of a larger temple.  this will be one of several instances of my trying to use the framing device of the cards to offer different perspectives on three-dimensional spaces or objects

i'm interested in the psychological effects this has when the cards are dealt & their meanings juxtaposed:  i want to see how they're read as pages in a book dealt out of order

have i mentioned that i am a crazy person?

i think that's all the important stuff.  wait, what else?  oh, yeah, i forgot to complete my thought earlier, about composition:

by adding the putto to the figure of the oracle you have a subtly queered helix ascending between the pillars.  that was my main fixation when building this.  composition drove almost all these cards for me.  symbolism & mystical interpretations were almost as an afterthought, if i'm honest.  it was like that with the imp card, it's been like that with all these.  i just follow my OCD and eventually i have art on the other end

 ...if i'm lucky

Next:  o - fool

(no, for serious this time)

THE AZURE PANTRY - 1: thumbnails pps. 1-10 + 1st sketches

Decent progress today.  Finalized thumbnails for pages 1-10 of The Azure Pantry.

This all looks perfectly inscrutable to you, I'm sure.  Which is fine.

After all, these aren't the comix themselves.  Those will arrive before your eyes eventually.

Bottom row:  my very 1st two sketches for the project, for panels 1&2 of page 7.

"Mister Bradley / Mister Martin, disaster to my blood whom I created..."

Freehand pencil session to limber up so I can ink w/out plotzing all over the damned page.

I guess it worked.  Stryfe looks alright so far.  As "all right" as he gets...

Off to a cafe to practice penciling pages alongside my husbando.

Soundtrack:  Zola Jesus vs. the LA Vampires - Bloodstone + some other track I can't remember...

inking sinister - 3

 

 

this has been a sprint so i may tap out now

*thanX xrybody for a productive night*

ALPHA FLIGHT vs. Howard the Duck's Severed Penis (NO)

 Maybe I should change the cover of the comic.