Inks and paints...

Cecilia is on a campaign to try and make me change my plan of not inking the comic and painting the pencils instead. She is quite insistent on the matter. What to do? An "artist" (I don't like applying this term to myself, but I haven't so far discovered an adequate English translation for "tekenaar", which I do feel I can call myself, despite not being a professional) like me, whose skills are rather limited, has to make the most of the things s/he is good at. So what am I good at? The first thing that springs to mind is "lines" and "inking". It's certainly not colour. Then why on earth would I cut out the inking? Well, for one thing, it takes ages - I ink very, very slowly. For another, I feel like my pencil originals are more lively than my inked versions. I tried to remedy that by using brush pens instead of my faithful Staedtler pens. But with brush pens, you can't draw the tiny details and microscopically smooth lines that I am so anal about. (Yes, I know, why fuss about that when there are still basics that I don't get right? Well, that's me for you.) So inking with brush pens would mean a) adapting my style and b) overcoming my fears. A third reason why I am inclined to dispense with inks is because I feel that stark black lines don't suit my story. I want something softer and more dreamy.

Now - I have recently done a picture for my sister, inked with two Faber-Castell PITT pens, one brush and one Small. It reminded me how much fun these pens are (even if they tend to lose their shape pretty quickly :/). It also reminded me that these exist in a wide variety of colours, so that I wouldn't have to use black. So this week I popped into one of the two art shops in my street and bought a handful of PITT pens in a variety of colours - Caput Mortuum, Warm Grey, Indian Red and Raw Umber. At first, I was a tad nervous about the fact that these colours only exist in brush pens, meaning that I haven't got a Small pen for details or corrections... But then I thought, what the heck, I'll just have to learn and adapt my inking to the brush like a big girl. Above is my first all-brush inked image, done with the Raw Umber pen.

The lady in the picture, as you can tell by the caption, is Florie. She is Gawain's second wife and the daughter of the Carl of Carlisle. The text of Sir Gawain and the Carl of Carlisle doesn't give her a name, so in a previous incarnation of the character I picked a random  Welsh one for her. In the meantime I have changed her name to Florie, which is a name traditionally associated with Gawain. It fits nicely, too, because the sons Gawain has with his second wife are called Florens and Lovell. Okay, Lovell is not so relevant here, but Florens can easily be the son of Florie, right? :-)

Anyway - this image is waiting to be coloured. I hope to get round to it soon.

This little portrait (postcard size) was drawn two weeks ago as an experiment. I wanted to try a combination of colour pencils (for the line art) and watercolour. So this was drawn with a purple pencil and then painted. It didn't work at all. The lines were too pale or not sufficiently defined or something - in any case, the image looked lousy. This may be partly because I used opaque paints - it's possible that the lines would have looked better if I had stuck to transparent ones. I started with a wash of Ceruleum Blue and some orange (made of Winsor Yellow and Permanent Carmine). That mixture produces a lovely, delicate tint (I think), but even though it's pale, it's not transparent. So it was probably not a good idea to use it for washing. In an attempt to save what I could of the image, I accentuated the lines with my Caput Portuum PITT pen, which turned it into something more or less acceptable. 

So what did I learn? Well, first off, I guess I shouldn't be using opaque paint in washes. And secondly, it might be a good idea to draw hair like Lot's in such a way that I can colour it in a more straightforward manner in the comic. I have to simplify it. 

...And a textured version, because the watercolour didn't live up to my hopes ;P.

Gawain comic, 7-9

The story has been drawn up to page 18 now, but at this moment I have got a little bit stuck. The matter is that I have to make sure now to organise my information well - and without 'telling' too much, because 'telling' is boring to read.

So, well, I'm trying to work those issues out. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy the continuation of the story :)

CLICK THE THUMBNAILS FOR A READABLE VIEW.

Gawain & Ragnell

Remember my Gawain and Ragnell sketches? I finally completed the inks yesterday, just in time for the contest. I did intend to add colour, but there was no time - I would have had to copy the drawing onto watercolour paper, ink it and paint it. Now that there would be no colour to draw the attention away from the lines, I gave the inks my all.

Does this work on its own, though? It's very pale; I guess it would have been stronger with some blacks. Only, as I did originally intend it for colouring, I didn't reckon with any blacks, and adding them as an afterthought would have looked messy.

Hm.

(Click for a large view.)

Sketchdump

Look, piccies!

I have been trying for, what, two weeks to write a decent post about my chouchou Gawain and the project as a whole, but I don't seem to be able to manage without getting very long-winded and giving away every single plot point I would like to use XD. So I have a few pages stored on my hard drive that I just can't post... Ah well. I *will* post something on the characters, an introduction, and also the sketches I have done so far. There's a bit of story in there, but nothing major, just loose little ideas.

Below are some - very quickly - inked sketches. The first I'm including especially for Nout, who found it amusing because he discovered a parallel between my 'serious' version of Gawain, and Kaamelott's hilarious Gauvain. Gauvain is a complete loser who constantly makes a fool of himself - possibly even more so than the other characters in the series, and that's saying something :P. The saddest thing is that he really means well. So when Arthur once again loses his temper about one of his nephew's amazing stupidities, Gauvain tends to react with a disappointed, "Mais, mon oncle..." In fact, the 'serious' Gawain, too, has an impressive number of truly embarrassing adventures, the poor darling. The difference is that he manages to remain quite heroic all the way through. *g*

I did a number of sketches on the train, mainly to exercise in drawing King Lot, because I was enjoying his character so much. Unfortunately the sketches all turned out to be amazingly bad. Yesterday, thinking I had nothing to lose, I decided to take my Faber-Castell pens to them and try if there was anything I could salvage by inking. The result isn't brilliant, but it's certainly an improvement :D.

Lot, Lot, Lot - except for, top right, one Gawain drawn directly in ink. I'm doing a lot of Gawain pictures these days to figure out his built. He's supposed to be muscular and yet slender - I don't find that easy :/. I keep trying though.

The middle one is Gawain; apart from that, Lot and Morgana. You'll notice that Gawain and Morgana have strange eyes - I use the eyes to distinguish between humans and (part-) fays.

More later!

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!)

Double Comm

I was thinking the other day that a nice, and very clear, way for Comm to show his allegiance to Rome would be to adopt the clean-shaven, short-haired Roman style. Such a gesture overcomes language barriers. It's a little painful for me, because I love Comm's long hair, and to have to sacrifice it... But it makes so much sense to me that I have decided to put aside my personal preference :-).

Now, the tricky part is of course to make him still look like Comm, even when the beard has gone. For me that is not an easy matter. One reason why I gave him a beard is, of course, to make it easy to distinguish him from other characters. So far I have only one dark-haired man with a beard, and that is him. When I remove the beard, he looks awfully much like a generic Roman :/. Of course that is the point, but it doesn't make things easier for a reader. For me personally it is quite obvious that this is Comm on account of the shape of his nose, but that is probably not enough, because his nose doesn't have any particularly striking features. It's shorter and rounder and more turned-up than other characters', but I'm not sure that is obvious to anyone but me. I'll have to think of other ways to distinguish him - like giving him a torque. That would make sense :-).

Apart from experiments with Comm's look, these two pictures are also the first two that I have inked with brushes. I'm not sure how I feel about the results. I like what brushes do to the inked look of Comm's hair. But I was not quite at ease with the lack of control I had over the brush, and the lines did not come out as I had hoped. No doubt I shouldn't expect a lot when I do something for the first time, and I do think that inking with brushes requires serious skill - something I can't have unless I exercise a lot. Nevertheless, it annoys me that my brushwork lacks crispness, and that the broad strokes were still obtained by going over a line several times, which is the same thing I do with my Staedtler pens. I wanted to see if brushes could give me a more flexible stroke, and in that respect I was a bit disappointed. Then again, it may be the lack of exercise. Which only means I should try plenty more :-).

Two colour thingies

I said I would be trying a few things with colour, and this picture of Rigantona is one of those experiments. I combined my usual inks (Staedtler pen) with colour pencilling. It's not bad, I think - I especially like the skin tones and the hair. The dress, however, looks rather paler than I had hoped, though I picked the brightest green in my box :/.

I am planning a more ambitious drawing of Comm and the black stallion with which he is gifted by Caesar - but seeing as the design involves a horse it may take some time ;-). In any case, that drawing would be on better (and whiter) paper, and I'm curious what the pencil colours will look like in those circumstances.

Rigantona's brother, Vercingetorix, in pastel pencils. (Click on the picture for a larger version...)

I think that strictly speaking I make these much too smooth; I use my felt tool thingy all the time, blurring just about every pencil stroke. I guess this is my way of attempting more or less realistic colouring :-). On the other hand, my insistence on graphite pencil lines and sharp contours seems a little contradictory. But I rather like this effect.

Oh - I mixed the purple of the cloak. Go me! More colour experiments are imminent, now that I have got myself a book on colour theory and mixing, yay! ;-)

Styles...

I find it a little bit annoying that I haven't been able to settle on a style yet for this project. I haven't found one for Mademoiselle de Maupin either. It's not as if I haven't got anything more basic to do and learn than develop a style for these stories - I mean, writing a scenario would be a nice start ;-). But for some reason I like to know about the visual element too; it goes hand in hand with the story and atmosphere for me, and I am used to developing both at once. For my previous project things actually started with the style and developed from there. So I'm feeling a bit blah about my inability to settle on a particular visual approach. I did a few try-outs, but none of them feels right so far.

The first thing I tried was inking with Faber-Castell PITT pens (see image above). Compared to my earlier inking style, it is rather loose (I used a brush pen as well as a more ordinary one), with an attempt at slightly more realistic shadowing. I don't really know what to think of the result. I guess that for me it is not neat enough, but on the other hand I am not sure whether my usual preference for a more polished style is all that suitable to a story about a brutal war...

Despite my love of black and white illustration, I rarely use quill pen and ink, and have never ever attempted to ink with a brush. I can't control them very well, and only started to ink my drawings when I discovered Staedtler pens - teensy felt tip pens that don't run, don't stain, dry very quickly and produce really neat lines. With them I have about as much control over the linework as I am ever likely to get. The drawback is that they don't allow much variation in the lines in the way that quill pens or brushes do when you apply pressure or swirl them. Drawings done with Staedtler pens arguably lack in spontaneity, too - they are perhaps more static than pictures done with a quill or brush, or at least they are when I am drawing.

In this drawing of Catuvolcos and Ambiorix I thought I would give classic inking a try. It is done with quill, brush and waterproof Chinese ink. I suppose the result could have been worse, but I am not entirely happy with it. Once more it is not quite neat enough to my liking, though that may be because I am just not adept enough at using these tools. Also, I am wondering whether my lack of insight into realistic shadowing does not make this type of drawing look merely clumsy.

Another thing I tried was to combine graphite pencil linework with colour pencil. I am not yet comfortable using colour in a comic; up until now I have always worked in black and white. But the Celts were a colourful people, so much so that the Greeks and Romans felt obliged to report on the many and bright colours of their clothing. Not to use colour means not to counteract the drab costuming in so many films...

One problem I already have to face is that the scanner, for one, does not like my pencil colouring very much. Quite apart from my merits in using pencils, the subtleties just don't register in the scan :/. I am garantueed to have trouble if I should try to get art like this printed from scans. It just won't look the way it should, and it's not a mere matter of enhancing contrast in Photoshop - I tried that.

Apart from that, I don't suppose it is very practical to use only pencils and no inks. I need to try a combination of colour and inks and see where it takes me. I have no idea whether inks and colour pencils combine well... So far I have only ever tried inks with watercolour, but that requires special paper, which is not very practical either.

If I manage to sort my colouring problems out, I should very much like to adopt clear colour schemes for each main character. It would make them more recognisable, and say something about the character at the same time. For Ambiorix I want blue and gold, and royal purple for Vercingetorix. Rigantona, as a priestess, I would dress in vivid greens. Green is the colour of the supernatural and of nature; I should like to give my druids green clothes too, in order to avoid the cliché image of the white-clad bearded man who is in remarkably little evidence outside of Roman sources.

I'm not sure about Comm's colours yet. My very first plans involved lots of black for him, but I wonder whether that wouldn't be a little too unusual. I'm still considering it. Maybe a black cloak and a red tunic? Volca will probably end up in browns and reds - warm colours, but not too striking. She isn't supposed to be someone who likes to draw attention to herself, unlike Ambiorix, who is a bit of a showoff.

Anything watercolour-related takes a bit more preparation than anything you see in this post - I can't just try it out in my sketchbook, because for sketching I like a very smooth sort of paper, and watercolour simply doesn't catch on that. I will be posting painted colours for comparison, hopefully soon, and comments and advice are very welcome :-).