Gift drawing

You know what: visitor number 3000 (see the counter below in the right column) can claim a free drawing if they feel like it. Show me a screencap of the counter @ 3000, leave a comment with your e-mail address or send me a mail, and you get a picture.

Neat or not?

Good luck!

:-)

The Darkest Hour 104-108

This week we have a pretty wordy update. This episode was not easy to script. I guess the tricky part was to condense everything and still keep it comprehensible and credible. If it doesn't work, please let me know :). I spent more time on some of the art than is reasonable for a storyboard, but, you know, I do want to have something worth looking at - that is more enjoyable for you and me both. Some of the faces came out so well that I'd gladly use them to accompany a cast description :-). I may just do that.

At the comics festival in Turnhout at the beginning of this month I was told that my storyboard is much too elaborate art-wise. That is true. But if I had drawn it with stick figures, I couldn't very well have posted my progress. The storyboard has been my main occupation, art-wise, since April of this year. Take out its pages from this blog, and there will be rather little left. I guess I could have progressed faster if I'd spent less time on the art, I suppose - but I don't think I would have been able to assess how well (or not) certain set-ups would work if the pictures had been strictly basic. That, and it's always a good thing if I enjoy myself while working on something, especially on a project this big.

Famous last words?

Maybe.

In any case, we are in the meantime getting very close to the story's end indeed :).

Season's Greetings

Have a very merry Christmas, or whichever festival you celebrate at this time of the year :D!

And at that holy tide

"And if the wars were unwelcome, the winter was worse,
When the cold clear rains rushed from the clouds
And froze before they could fall to the frosty earth.
Near slain by the sleet he sleeps in his irons
More nights than enough, among naked rocks,
Where clattering from the crest the cold stream ran
And hung in hard icicles high overhead.
Thus in peril and pain and predicaments dire
He rides across country till Christmas Eve,
our knight.
And at that holy tide
He prays with all his might
That Mary may be his guide
Till a dwelling comes in sight."

From: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Part 2 (translation by Marie Borroff, 1967)

I'm trying. But clearly I still have a loooong way to go. Why is colour such a difficult matter to me? Painting this was so very hard. And in my head the colours looked better :/.

The Darkest Hour 102-103

I had intended to post extra-large updates from now on, so that The Darkest Hour would be all told by the end of December, and here I am with an extra-short update -_-. It is all because of the snow - the snowy skies inspired me to do a full-page illustration with watercolour, the colours of which I couldn't get right and spent a lot of time worrying about. So now I have only two pages of comic. At least I did finish the illustration today, meaning I can devote myself entirely to the comic now :). I may end up doing middle-of-the-week updates - I'm thinking about it.

Meanwhile, I hope you enjoy the continuation :).

As always, lcik the images for a readable view...

The Darkest Hour 98-101

I have the feeling that this week's episode has finally cleared the road towards the story's ending - there are some minor things to figure out, but King Uriens rather unexpectedly showed up exactly where I needed him, so now the waiting is for the last two guests of the Grand Finale. It would be great if I could finish The Darkest Hour this month... That would require Extra Large updates, though, because I have only two Sundays left before the new year :-). We'll see.

This week: VIOLENCE! BLOOD! WALKING DEAD!
(Just trying to attract an audience - don't pay it any attention. But there is a bit of blood and a walking almost-dead, so I don't feel guilty about stretching the truth a little bit :P.)

Watercolour sketch: young Gawain

Yesterday evening I was pottering around with my watercolours. I 'potter around' much more often than applying myself seriously - mostly because, though I love watercolour, it also makes me nervous, and I have to overcome my fear before I can paint something 'for real'. It is just so easy to ruin a picture if you have as little skill with watercolour as I have :/. And yet it's fun!

What I was actually supposed to be doing is to paint Christmas cards. Trouble is, I haven't got a design yet that I like enough and can replicate a dozen of times. So instead I started to mess around. That is when I decided to do a little try-out for Gawain. It's very frustrating: he's the hero of my comic (even though at this point in the narrative he hasn't been born yet), but I have such trouble getting him to look right. One thing that annoys the hell out of me is that I never manage to colour his hair properly. Gawain has glorious red hair, and it's sort of important. Now, I used to start from a basis of cadmium red because I reasoned that real red hair looks a bit orange-y. But it always looked awful on poor Gawain, and it was also pretty difficult to combine with greens and blues. It was garish. Now, I'm pretty sure that much of the failure is due to my own ineptitude at mixing colours. But, well, there's no one but me to do this, so... In my experiment of yesterday, I started from a basis of crimson with some raw sienna. I have never seen anyone with this hair colour, but it gets the point across and it is easy to combine. I like the result - even though there is, as usual, lots of other stuff wrong with the picture :s.

For the record*:
- I used very cheap watercolour paper - 175 g/m² and with a texture like ordinary drawing paper. Not pretty. I wouldn't use this for a 'good' drawing, but it serves for a sketch.
- The drawing itself was done in lilac watersoluble pencil (Caran d'Ache Classicolor). This was fun and I think I'll do it again. The unnecessary lines just dissolved with water (I draw very lightly) and I was able to do some corrections while painting, most notably on the nose and mouth.
- The paint is Winsor & Newton and some Cotman. I mixed it on the page, because sketching serves as an excuse for the most awful laziness. It's a miracle the skin tones turned out as reasonable as they did XD. Colours used: raw sienna, Winsor yellow, Alizarin crimson, permanent carmine, permanent mauve (my new favourite! it's such a great colour for mixing), cerulean blue, Winsor blue, Winsor green. (You can tell by all the Winsor colours that I bought them all together in a box, I guess :P.)

*I need to keep notes, because otherwise I forget how I got a certain colour/effect, which is stupid.

I made a complete mess of the shadows, the nose and the placement of the eyes. So, um, suggestions for improvements are always welcome :-).

The Darkest Hour 93-97

I guess this week's episode can be summarised as, "Time passes" :-). But I tried to make it pass nicely.

I am getting everything aligned for the story's ending, finally. Mind you, I think that it may take another twenty pages until The Darkest Hour is told completely and in a way that doesn't feel rushed. Keep reading :-)...

As always, click to enlarge!