Gawain Project: Brothers & Sisters

Hello hello! There is good news and bad: you may have noticed the lack of update last Sunday, and as you can see, today I come to you not carrying any pages either. That is the bad news. The good news is: next Sunday I hope to give you three (maybe four, if I can make it) in one go.

The thing is, I discovered last week that the dialogue which I thought was okay (having been rewritten three times) was actually not as okay as I imagined it to be, so I had to rework it once more. This proved ... not easy, and then when I tried to visualise it, I realised that I couldn't do it on a page-by-page basis. Mostly I lay out the story one page at a time, but this time around, that didn't work. Which means I am currently working on three pages at once, and I couldn't finish three pages at once. As I have mentioned before, this passage is a difficult one to write. Both Arthur and Pellinore have to be credible, and though the pace of the story may seem glacial to you who read it one page a week, a lot of things are actually happening quite fast if you were to read this as a book or a 'proper' webcomic where you can just click through the pages. So every word has to be meaningful.

So: next week. I promise to work hard and get this done. Even if the weather is going to be very hot -_- (eurgh).

It is *possible* - I don't know yet - that I may have to take a short break to write out what comes next. Because this conversation between Arthur and Pellinore is finally coming to a close, and next there is a Thing. It's a Big Thing and I have only figured out half of it so far (with nothing actually written, just imagined - but I kind of like what I know and I'm rather excited about it!). And after the Big Thing it's back to Gawain. And I know how 'back to Gawain' starts off, but then a lot of Big Things are going to happen that I need to puzzle together.

...Man. I often joke that I will be writing this until I'm 90, but sometimes when I think of all the bits of story I need to pass on, it seems to me the joke isn't actually a joke. It's dangerously close to the truth.

HOWEVER. Here is a tiny little sweet to tide you over until next week. The top two are preppy sketches for Pellinore on page 175; then there is Morholt because I haven't drawn him for a while and I missed him ( ♥ Morholt); and there is Cai because - well I don't need a reason to draw Cai.

*~*~* 

More next Sunday!

***

THE STORY SO FAR:

Part I: The Darkest Hour

1-3 - 4-6 - 7-9 - 10-12 - 13-15 - 16-18 - 19-21 - 22-24 - 25-27 - 28-31 - 32-35 - 36-40 - 41-44 - 45-47 - 48-50 - 51-53 - 54-57 - 58-60 - 61-64 - 65-66 - 67-69 - 70-73 - 74-75 - 76-81 - 82-84 - 85-87 - 88-90 - 91-92 - 93-97 - 98-101 - 102-103 - 104-108 - 109-111 - 112-114 - 115-119

Interlude: The Sword of Kings

1-4 - 5-11

Part II: Sunrise

Brothers and Sisters

1-3 - 4-6 - 7-9 - 10-12 - 13-15 - 16-18 - 19-21 - 22-24 - 25-27 -28-30 - 31-33 - 34-36 - 37-39 - 40-42 - 43-45 - 46-48 - 49-51 - 52-54 - 55-57 - 58-60 - 61-63 - 64-66 - 67-69 - 70-72- 73-75 - 76-78 - 79-81 - 81 - 82 - 83 - 84 - 85 - 86 - 87 - 88 - 89 - 90 - 91 - 92 - 93 - 94 - 95 - 96 - 97 - 98 - 99 - 100 - 101 - 102 - 103 - 104 - 105 - 106 - 107 - 108 - 109 - 110 - 111 - 112 - 113 - 114 - 115 - 116 - 117 - 118 - 119 - 120 - 121 - 122 - 123 - 124 - 125 - 126 - 127 - 129 - 130 - 131 - 132 - 133 - 134 - 135 - 136 - 137 - 138 - 139 - 140 - 141 - 142 - 143 - 144 - 145 - 146 - 147 - 148 - 149 - 150 - 151 - 152 - 153 - 154 - 155 - 156 - 157 - 158 - 159 - 160 - 161 - 162 - 163 - 164 - 165 - 166 - 167 - 168 - 169 - 170 - 171 - 172

Gawain Project: The Darkest Hour p.1

I'm sorry, no page 166 today... I messed up my schedule. Instead, have a look at the new page 1 of The Darkest Hour in an all-pencil technique. Like? Don't like? Please let me know!

*~*~*

More Brothers & Sisters next Sunday! (I hope...)

***

THE STORY SO FAR:

Part I: The Darkest Hour

1-3 - 4-6 - 7-9 - 10-12 - 13-15 - 16-18 - 19-21 - 22-24 - 25-27 - 28-31 - 32-35 - 36-40 - 41-44 - 45-47 - 48-50 - 51-53 - 54-57 - 58-60 - 61-64 - 65-66 - 67-69 - 70-73 - 74-75 - 76-81 - 82-84 - 85-87 - 88-90 - 91-92 - 93-97 - 98-101 - 102-103 - 104-108 - 109-111 - 112-114 - 115-119

Interlude: The Sword of Kings

1-4 - 5-11

Part II: Sunrise

Brothers and Sisters

1-3 - 4-6 - 7-9 - 10-12 - 13-15 - 16-18 - 19-21 - 22-24 - 25-27 -28-30 - 31-33 - 34-36 - 37-39 - 40-42 - 43-45 - 46-48 - 49-51 - 52-54 - 55-57 - 58-60 - 61-63 - 64-66 - 67-69 - 70-72- 73-75 - 76-78 - 79-81 - 81 - 82 - 83 - 84 - 85 - 86 - 87 - 88 - 89 - 90 - 91 - 92 - 93 - 94 - 95 - 96 - 97 - 98 - 99 - 100 - 101 - 102 - 103 - 104 - 105 - 106 - 107 - 108 - 109 - 110 - 111 - 112 - 113 - 114 - 115 - 116 - 117 - 118 - 119 - 120 - 121 - 122 - 123 - 124 - 125 - 126 - 127 - 129 - 130 - 131 - 132 - 133 - 134 - 135 - 136 - 137 - 138 - 139 - 140 - 141 - 142 - 143 - 144 - 145 - 146 - 147 - 148 - 149 - 150 - 151 - 152 - 153 - 154 - 155 - 156 - 157 - 158 - 159 - 160 - 161 - 162 - 163 - 164

Bluebell Spring

I still haven't got a new scanner, so I tried to take a photograph of this drawing. The lady is Florie, daughter of the Carl of Carlisle in the eponymous romance. She is Gawain's second wife and one of my favourite characters in the (future of the) comic. Then again, I am ridiculously fond of every single one of my imaginary people. Even the villains are beloved.

I love drawing feet XD... Yay toes! Few things in art irritate me more than artists who can't be bothered to draw feet properly. Some seem to think that as long as the boobs and the hips look good, they have put down a proper human figure. Well, no. And I am the living proof that you don't need to be a great artist to draw nice feet, so 'too difficult' is not an excuse. There.

;-)

Between Worlds

It's been a while... I have been sketching a lot and working on the continuation of the comic, but I haven't produced much that is postable. Unless you like to see my scribbles. It does mean that I'll start posting layouts again soon, so there will be some more reading material for you :).

The picture above is my first ever A4-sized colour pencil illustration. Actually it started off as a sketch on a stray sheet of Bristol board, but when I'd done the face I liked it so much that I thought I had better turn it into a complete illustration. Because it wasn't at all planned, I improvised all the way. The main reason why this turned into a mysterious night scene is the falling star on the left. It wasn't a falling star. It was a few random lines to try out the feeling of my colour pencils on the sheet of paper. And I found I couldn't erase it. So I had to incorporate it into the picture somehow. Disenchanting, eh? XD

I really enjoyed working with colour pencils here, and Bristol board is the perfect carrier, as far as I am concerned - though I'll go for a heavier sheet in the future. However, I was also reminded why my original idea of doing the comic in this medium ultimately had to be discarded. It's so terribly time-consuming. I probably spent about ten hours on this, everything taken together. But it looks pretty :-).

I'm thinking now that I did something stupid buying Classicolor pencils. I love my Caran d'Ache and the colours are great - but they are water-soluble. At the time, I thought that was an advantage, but now I'm not so sure anymore. I probably should have bought Pablos rather than Classicolors...

As for Morgana, I'm thinking this more or less settles her look. You have seen her in purplish/grey and black habits, but I have settled for white. I like the idea of Morgana and her nuns as ghostly (white) Wise Women ("witte wieven", "weisse Frauen", "Dames Blanches"). These legendary beings have the same combined association with mischief and wisdom that I'm looking to give to Morgana. In the picture, she's also wearing the Celtic cross I found for her - not your classic Irish cross, but a continental one, because the Irish crosses that we know so well are really too recent (8th century+).

Finally, I had been thinking about how Morgana does her magic. Magic in my story is mostly organic - Morgana, Morgause and Ygraine make things happen just by being somewhere. Ygraine walks across a field and stuff starts to grow. Morgause ditto, and when she touches a wound, it heals. Morgana can kill with a touch. But she's powerful enough to do magic from a distance, as well. I don't want her to use spells, though, but a special gesture would be nice. Now, I was reading Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle, in which wizards use the index and middle fingers of their right hands as a kind of conduit for their magical power. This gesture looks like a religious blessing in the West. Well, if that isn't perfect for my Morgana, I don't know what is :-). So here we are. Lots of stuff settled in one picture *g*.

Bad photos of first pencils

The most annoying thing about working with a large format (A3) is that I can't scan my pages at home. The scanner is A4. So you get some bad photos instead. Sorry about that. The light has been bad for the past few days, so that didn't help the quality either. In any case, here is proof of the fact that I'm working on the 11-page episode "The Sword of Kings" to find out whether my new style works - and can be sustained for lots and lots of pages.

Not being able to do my own scanning is very annoying, but on the other hand, I can't remember how I ever managed to draw comics in A4. I have become fully reconciled with A3 - and in fact I sometimes wish my originals could be even larger XD.

(click for full view)

Slightly re-designed Uther, more British and more fifth-century than before :).

The 'Sword of Kings' was based on the sword of the so-called Lord of Oss. That means it is at least 1,000 years old when it comes into Uther's possession. (The original was 200 years old when it was buried with the Lord of Oss, so why not?)

(click for full view)

Look, it's the Giant Herdsman! I love to draw him. The perspective and the beasties were a challenge, though.

Next stage: transfer le tout to watercolour paper, then ink, then paint. Finally: add speech bubbles and text in Illustrator. Clearly, we're not done yet. I'm going to do all the pencils first, though. I like the idea of letting the pencilled pages lie around for a while, to leave room for possible corrections. I rarely spot my mistakes at first sight, so a little distance can't be bad.

Pencil sketch: Kundry

Meet Lady Kundry, Gawain's third wife. She first appears in Chrétien de Troyes' Perceval, where she is not given a proper name but gets a few telling epithets instead, such as "l'Orgeuilleuse de Logres" or "la Mauvaise Pucelle". Apart from having the most alluring mouth in Christendom (as per Wolfram von Eschenbach), she also has a marvellously sharp tongue that she uses deftly to lash out at every knight she meets. She makes no exception for her future husband.

I thought she should have a proper name, so I gave her the one she has in Wagner's Parzival, even though the character in the opera is quite different from my version.

Obviously, I like Kundry an awful lot :).

Pencil sketch: Arthur

Here he is: the King Arthur you will eventually meet in my comic. The "classic" Arthur is often blond, but I like mine to look like a lion with a black mane :). (I really need to draw a silhouette in which the lion-like quality of his hairdo is more obvious - I'm rather fond of it...)

Clearly, when I say I want a simpler style and more stylised, I am not talking about my characters' hair. A few simple lines simply will not do in that department ;-). I am so doomed.

Another small pencil sketch

A small pencil drawing a week? Let's see if I can keep it up... It would be nice, and I would have a Moleskine full of nicely finished pictures. - I can dream, can't I? In any case, you can see the style I want to go for. I wouldn't colour the whole comic with pencils (I am enjoying the use of these pencils immensely, but colouring one A3-sized page with them would take a full week), but the pencilled line art is representative of what I want.

This is Lady Ragnell, by the way. She is Gawain's first wife. You are not due to meet her in the story very soon, since our hero has some growing up to do first, but doing character concept sketches tends to help me figure out my stories, so here she is already.

A Test with Morgana

File under: Experiment.

I am trying to figure out how best to go about drawing the comic. The questions are many: colour or monochrome? Pencil or ink? A4 or A3? It is important to get everything right, so that I don’t run into trouble at some point in the future.

I had more or less decided on inks and monochrome, because black and white is what I think I do best. Colour still gives me trouble. I adore watercolour, but I am not good enough at it to paint a comic. I have seen digital colours that I like, but I don’t have the Photoshop skills to achieve them myself. Nevertheless, in a comic in which the colour of the hero’s hair and, occasionally, the colour of his enemies plays a part in the story, it would be kind of nice to have colours.

Now – one way of colouring that I do feel up to is with colour pencils. I like what I can do with pencils on the pages of my Moleskine notebook, so I sought loose sheets on which I could more or less reproduce that effect. The paper that I think comes closest to Moleskine is Bristol board. So I had a try with that. The result is this:

The original is very crisp and, I think, rather pretty (if I may say so myself). I think it reproduced fairly well… The skin tones are very delicate, and some of their subtlety got lost, as did the blue of her eyes – but all in all I think the scan is not so bad.

In order to judge the effect in a comic page, I will have to actually draw and colour a complete page, I guess. Still, I’d much appreciate your opinion about this little test. What do you think?

I also made a version with texture added in Photoshop. This is not difficult and could easily be done in the comic too, I suspect.

One disadvantage that colour will always have is that it is more expensive to print than black and white. That is in case anyone besides myself would like to hold a paper version of the story .

Anyway: I would love to hear your opinion on this – on the feasability of a comic drawn entirely in pencils, a comic coloured with colour pencils etc. Please let me know what you think!

Say Hi to Gawain

Because once in a while, he actually comes out looking more or less the way he should look. Now for a nice colour scheme...

No, seriously: why on earth is it so difficult to draw my main character properly?! *sigh*



This was drawn with mechanical pencils in a Moleskine sketchbook. (I am liking the combination of Moleskine and pencils more and more.) It took several hours. (Don't ask.) No reference used. (Bad habits die hard.) Finally, the sketch was slightly pimped in Photoshop. (No cleaning; just added texture and some highlights.)

So there.

Ygraine

I don't want to count the hours I spent working on this small picture! It measures 13 x 21 cm and I started it on the Thalys to Paris. (I have a little something with trains and drawing, don't I?) All that remains from what I drew on the train is the nose, the hand and the rose. All else was reworked again and again. All that to end up with such a flawed drawing... But somehow I like its flaws. They give Ygraine something a little bit otherworldly, which is quite appropriate to the character.

I didn't expect I would be happy with the colours I got from using colour pencils. But it turns out that I am. Maybe my colours skills have improved, because when I tried colour pencils in a Moleskine sketchbook before, I didn't like the result at all. Now I am actually looking for a type of paper as close in texture to Moleskine as I can find, because I want to do this again in the future on loose sheets :-).

I spent more time and effort than usual researching the costume and jewellery (even though you don't see a whole lot of it *g*). That is because this drawing is part of my concept pictures for the final version of The Darkest Hour. More will follow.

An idea in development: Gawain and Ragnell

Take 1:



Take 2:



Take 3:



Take 4:



... and counting :).

So far, I like the fourth one best, but I'm not happy with how Gawain's legs look, plus I think Ragnell should reach out a bit more - right now it almost looks as though Gawain is holding her hand against her will. On to the next attempt...

This is for a contest at deviantART. All concrit is appreciated!

Project: Gawain (continued)

Morgana, straight from the draft of a brochure :D. This pencil sketch is tiny, but I like it very much. It determined Morgana's general look for me, and I guess it contributed to my determination to make her a nun *g*. I have discovered that I enjoy drawing veils and capes, and that they can be very flattering :).

I'm still debating whether I'll call this gentleman Myrddin or Merlin. I am rather partial to Myrddin, but there seems little point in using this Welsh name if I don't have Welsh names for each character in the story :/. It has crossed my mind to simply rename the more "classic" medieval characters, but then I remembered how much I as a reader like to find familiar names in my Round Table books...

Hm.

Still pondering the matter.

Happy with this Morgana, by the way :).





Two Gawains.

I'm very fond of his nose, it's going to be cutesy ;).

In fact it rather looks like my Ambiorix's.

With and without beard. Think black hair on the beardless Gawain's head to see the alternative version of Medraut/Mordred.

I'm trying to draw my heads smaller ever since Cecilia made a remark to me about the size of the head in proportion to the body, but I have to confess that when I draw them closer to their "real" size, they always look too small to me. Maybe that is because I have a large head and narrow shoulders myself...?

A tiny sketchie, just to get some idea about my hero's build. Of course stuff is wrong with it :P. I haven't started seriously studying anatomy yet (I should start with arms and hands, methinks), so I'm sort of trying out how far I get on my own. I know I would be better of really studying, but I haven't got the energy in weekends. Basically I need to SLEEP as much as possible, and to relax. Since I get worked up about my pictures' shortcomings, studying anatomy is *not* relaxing :/. So I keep putting it off. But I'll get to it. Seriously.

A few characters

Below are a few characters in random order. They are not final yet - these are mostly the first sketches I have done of them and liable to change. Most look a bit clumsy. Of several characters I have in the meantime done better pictures, but I haven't got round to scanning them yet. Will do when I have time :).

This sketch of Morgause, Gawain's mother, looks very much like the Morgauses I used to draw when I was fifteen. (I remember doing a comic for my bestest friend in which a similar Morgause complained to Morgana about an unfair decision during an international football game of the Belgian national team. Don't ask.)

Her hair is supposed to be black, though I did not bother to colour it here. Her eyes are blue. She has changed a bit in the meantime, but the general idea is: petite, pretty, otherworldy - and cold.

Morgause's younger sister, Morgana. I have considered spelling her name as Morgain(e), because it would look nice next to Gawain and Owain, but it reminds me too much of Mists of Avalon, and I positively detested that book.

Because I am always contrary and got very tired of the whole Morgana-as-a-priestess-of-the-Goddess ado that is so very popular, I decided to go with the one book I ever read (I don't even remember which it was) that says Morgana was actually an abbess. Hah! She makes one cool nun, I tell you ;D.

Two archenemies: King Pellinore and King Lot. I have this idea that Pellinore is Scandinavian - I got that into my head after I realised that his name has the same ending as Elsinore, Hamlet's castle, which is an Anglicised form of Helsingør. So I started thinking of Pellinore as Pellingør. Again, don't ask :-).

Pellinore, contrary to popular belief, is a pig. It annoys me that he is usually painted as good and noble when one of the first things we hear about him in Arthurian lore is that he is a rapist. Blergh. BAD pig.

Lot is a pig too. Ask Morgause. He amuses Morgana, though, so he is slightly better than Pellinore. That, and I'm biased because he dotes on his sons.

A tiny picture from the margins of one of my brochures: Cai. He has very long brown hair, a very long brown 'stache and a long brown beard :-). Oh, and cool eyebrows that he hasn't got here yet... Ah well. I want him to have all the strange powers he has in ancient Welsh texts, so count on him being able to keep his breath for three days, grow as tall as a forest tree, and have a high enough body temperature to be used as a stove by his mates in winter XD.

I see we have arrived at Gawain's three wives. Yay! I like them all very much - not these sketches, really, but the characters behind them :-).

This is Ragnell, Wife the First. When she married Gawain, she looked - not very good. In fact she looked her real age, which is ... a few hundred years? Fortunately the kiss of a handsome prince can work miracle, at least in fairytales.

She is a fay, and Gawain loves her to bits. Unfortunately, she dies ;_;.

Ragnell is the mother of Gawain's eldest son, Cillian.

Wife Number Two is called Rhonwen. Her father threw a spear at Gawain as soon as he set eyes on him. He's a giant, incidentally. How he begot Rhonwen on her normal-sized mother I just don't want to know. I think it's called poetic licence, or something of the kind. In any case, Rhonwen is a fay too, and lives with her mother and father in a fairy hill until Gawain comes along.

Rhonwen's daddy is known as the Carl of Carlisle. His name is *not* Carl ;P.




This is Kundry. She is bad-tempered and sarcastic, and sets a record for keeping Gawain dangling. But as she takes the place of Third Wife, you know the dangling doesn't last forever. Gawain cannot perhaps convince her that he is the best and most interesting man around, but Kundry does end up believing that he might just be good enough for her. Of course *nobody* understands what he sees in her because - well, she's really not nice. And she never smiles. Or at least not in public.

Obviously she's my favourite :P.

And here he is: the bad guy.

I'm sorry. He is really bad. I haven't found a single redeeming virtue in Medraut yet. That is a bit frightening.

I really like how he looks here. Nevertheless I am seriously considering making him a black-haired version of Gawain, to posit them as clear opposites. I'm thinking it over.

Gawain looks very ... Asian here. It's not just me, is it? Clearly I have to sort the funny fay eyes out before I can get down to the serious work :). Maybe I have been reading too much Tsubasa lately *g*.

Apart from that, his looks are pretty stable now.

More next time - I have a few pretty Morganas on the shelf...

Arthuriana

Just throwing a few pictures at you... I have been doing too many Arthurian sketches to put in one post, so I'm giving you the more finished ones to get a taste for my new project ;-). The others require some text, because they are mostly character studies. Have these first, in a quick post :-).

(...if you needed more proof that I'm bad at drawing kiddies...)

(Making a mess with watercolour, YAY! This is SO not thought out... *g*)

(Happy with my inking. This is done with a brown Faber-Castell PITT pen.)

(My new favourite couple :P... It's Lot and Morgana!)

Commission: "Esten"

My LJ friend redvelvetcanopy commissioned a drawing depicting Esten, a warrior character in the fantasy novel she is currently writing. I am posting it here because the commission required me to take on a challenge or two, and also because I am rather pleased with the result :-).

Esten is this dashing swordfighter - he had to be handsome, masculine and muscular, and the last two are not my strong point. It was important for the character to have a beautiful and athletic body, so I drew a grid in order to get the proportions right. I was especially weary of the size of the head, as I have a (very strong) tendency to make that too large. In the end I suppose expert eyes will find mistakes to point out, but I daresay they won't be quite so prominent as in most of my previous drawings. I should probably make it a habit to draw grids, and to keep redrawing until I have corrected the mistakes that I can spot and correct myself; but if I am honest I tend to finish drawings on the same day that I started them, because I am just so very eager to see the final image. I also draw impulsively, and never ever start with reference pictures: I draw a pose that I had in mind, and then go looking for bits of reference as needed for the bits with which I have trouble. I rarely think things through in the art department, which is funny in a way because when I a dealing with text, I do give a lot of thought to the construction and cleaning up and that sort of thing. It seems that when drawing, I am a perfectionist, but one who is too impatient to give perfection all the preparation that it needs :/. Time to break the habit of a lifetime, I guess...

Anyway: here is Esten.

(Click to enlarge.)

RVC liked the pencil sketch I sent her, and though the original plan was to ink the drawing, she now preferred the idea of pencilling. I used pencils ranging from H3 to B4, but the shading was essentially done with watercolour pencils in pale and dark grey. I like how the final drawing has the softness and smoothness of pencil and a touch of paint, as well as the clear lines of which I am so fond. All in all the picture is very polished - those pencils must be the cleanest and most meticulous I have ever produced.

More faces - and some colour

A whole week has passed in which I have been very busy, but somehow I don't recall accomplishing anything :/. It suddenly struck me that I hadn't done any pictures for War in Gaul for a while, and my fingers got itchy... So here is a sketchdump with the results.

Here is a first glimpse of my Original Roman Character (*grin*), Quintus Tullius Veridicus. At this stage he is still worryingly much "a Roman" - that is, I know quite a few things about him, but not so much his looks, unfortunately. Amateurs of Roman names may notice that Veridicus has Etruscan ancestors: the Gens Tullia, so I discovered, has Etruscan roots, and the name "Quintus" is not the Latin for "fifth", but a Latinised form of the Etruscan name "Cuinte".

The reason why I am so keen on making this man Etruscan is because - well, there are several things. First off, the Etruscans made the Romans, but sort of disappeared inside them as well. I find that an interesting given. Second, the kings of pre-Republican Rome were Etruscans. They were so hated that they inspired fear of kingship in ancient Rome, and one reason why a civil war broke out between Caesar and Pompey is that many people feared that Caesar wished to turn Rome into a monarchy again. (They were right, of course, and le grand Jules ended up being stabbed to death by a bunch of Republicans.) I like to refer to this conflict between republicans and monarchists because what Vercingetorix tried to achieve in Gaul effectively mirrors Caesar's actions in Rome. I'm not sure yet how I am going to integrate this into the narrative, but at least the element will be there so that I can call upon it when it pleases me :-).

Finding a face for Veridicus is not so easy. I should like to have a look at the ancient paintings in Etruscan tombs, to see if I can snatch some stereotyped looks of the people depicted there... One problem I have is that the Romans don't seem to leave me a lot of scope in terms of hairstyle to help me distinguish between characters :/. I am at present in danger of producing a bunch of clones...

I have also been pondering Veridicus's cognomen. I don't know of any Romans called Veridicus. I gave him that name as a cognomen in the sense of a nickname that says something about the kind of person he is (in this case, "he who tells the truth", honest and outspoken), but in fact I doubt that the cognomen still functioned that way in the first century BC. It is rather likely that he would have a more standardised name, one that serves to specify the specific branch of the Tullia family from which he hails. Of course in the meantime I have become rather attached to the name of Veridicus, and I'd rather not change it. And I don't know how many people would fuss about it if I let it stand ;-).

I am still working on Rigantona. It is such a bother having to draw someone really pretty. I mean, I hate it when I read a comic where it is clear that a character is supposed to be gorgeous when they don't look at all gorgeous to me. Besides, it really annoys me when an artist can't draw beautiful women. So, well, I would rather not be guilty of those offenses myself XD.

It's a bit stupid - I used to be much better at drawing pretty girls than at drawing men. Then I tried to get better at drawing men, and now I am no longer happy with how my women look (and my men still look girly *g*). Blah.

Anyway - Riga is improving, I am glad to say, though there is still some work to be done. I guess I will be looking at photos of beautiful women for inspiration, and see where it takes me. I also need to go back to studying naked females. Something always seems to goes wrong with the ladies' boobs these days, and we can't have that, can we? Not that you should ever expect the trashy Lady in Skimpy Outfit from me, but I want to be able to do "alluring" when I need it :-). I'll post the results as soon as they look nice.

This is slightly more serious as a drawing :-). A few weeks ago now I thought I'd take out the enormous pencil set which Waterzooi gave me as a present this summer, and see where all those types of graphite would lead me. I was thinking of a picture I had done of Volca a while ago, and of the nice effect I got doing the texture of her skirt - I wanted to have a try with Comm and exercise my cross-hatching skills. It didn't work very well at first, but I continued to layer with ever darker pencils until the hood looked really nice (or so I think). What keeps escaping me is the shading of faces. I really didn't like what I got, and erased almost all of the work I did on the face. In the end I have a relatively realistic hood and beard, combined with my typical cartoony face. I'm not sure whether I am entirely happy with that.

What I do like is the fibula :-). If you click the picture and zoom, you'll get a better idea of what I mean: the hard pencils allowed me to achieve what for me is a rather good metal-y look *g*.

Seriouser and seriouser: the following is a quick sketch run riot :P. I was drawing spears in the booklet that I keep for copying historical artefacts, when something struck me about the designs I was drawing, and I ended up toying with a bit of plot. To make sure that I wouldn't forget it, I doodled a scene, and then thought I might as well refine the drawing, and everything got out of hand from there *g*.

Yes, yes, plenty is wrong with this, but please have mercy and don't tell me right now - you can offer concrit in a few days, when I am ready to accept enumerations of all the flaws. It will be obvious that I didn't use reference for anything except the spear and the Roman uniform, and then I didn't even check whether I gave Veridicus the clothes that befit an eques... I was enjoying myself too much to bother. Bad reflex, that ;-).

So, anyway: here are Veridicus (looking rather "standard Roman" - *sigh*) and Comm, in a picture entitled, Comm Commios and the Well-Ordered Mind. *giggles*
There is a story to go with it - though, story... It's horrible, but I will always drift from action into contemplation, it seems. I'm supposed to be working about the war in Gaul, so you'd expect plenty of action, but what do I get? "We interrupt the action for a Philosophical Interlude about the Difference between Roman and Celtic Mindsets." Go me. Alas, this is my idea of "fun" and "interesting stuff". Incidentally, this drawing has decided for me that Veridicus and Comm will meet - they weren't going to. I had invented Veridicus for another storyline. But Comm is the kind of character who wants to understand what makes Romans tick, and that means he needs a Roman willing to talk to him about such things. Caesar would seem too busy, Antonius too frivolous, Labienus too antagonistic - so I thought of Veridicus. I will have to find out which rank and function he needs to have in order to hang around Comm for a while and then move somewhere else when I want him to.

The drawing doesn't really work without a plot - it doesn't tell you by itself why Comm looks so startled, or what Veridicus is talking about. But I like it because I ended up making it very detailed in terms of costumes and such. In fact, when I was done with the pencils, I thought it might be worthwhile to try and colour the drawing, because it would provide a good picture of the complete look I hope to achieve. I'm not saying that it's now decided that everything will look like this - just that graphite and black/white feel incomplete for this project, and that I want to get an idea of what a coloured look can be like.

I didn't want to colour my pencils, because they were too small. I photocopied the drawing from my sketchbook onto heavy paper, enlarging it to twice the original size. The photocopier didn't like my paper, and its black dusty stuff stained and came off. The photocopy looked very grotty, which normally speaking I would hate, but somehow I took a fancy to all the dust and stains and decided to use it. The photocopy dust mixed with my coloured pencils, but I thought that made for a nice effect. I guess the result is my best pencil colouring job to date, and at this moment I am rather pleased with it ;-).

It was more obvious to me in the pencil version that Veridicus is looking at the tip of the spear, not at Comm - in the "inked" version he seems to be staring at a point between Comm's head and the spear tip. Too bad. At least I had fun with it, and Comm looks singularly handsome ;-).

(Please click for the larger version!)