Wednesday 4 February 2009

Gwen Will I See You Again?


Well, I'm blogging a bit now as over the next few days, I'll be heading back into my comic-drawing habits again so will have less time to blog (unless I get distracted). Anyway, my copy of Love and Rockets: Maggie the Mechanic arrived today after a meeting at work that makes me feel slightly less like I'm about to be shown the door, although there's never any guarantee, so I celebrated by making a real chili instead of the usual meat-free packet version I usually knock together.

As mentioned in a previous entry, I found I quite liked Dave Sim's Glamourpuss as it's not actually a comic but an illustrated essay on art techniques. There are sequential panels but they're random selections used to illustrate Sim's points. He also covers Alex Raymond and Al Williamson's work, which I also love, and I quite like Sim's pinup art. Yes, it's traced so a bit of a cheat but as he's demonstrating inking techniques, I can forgive this as it's no real hardship looking at pretty women, is it? (Reading a few pages of the model's spook inner monologue however, IS). Look, there's a pic: probably of less interest to writers, this is till worth a look for any artist types.

I've been scripting a bit today, writing the text for four of the five pages to be scripted from the SF strip. I missed one page as I've got to cover the philosophical issues in one page and may need to tweak some of the dialogue leading up to it (I drew the pages with only a rough idea of what people were supposed to be rabbiting about!) Mr McGee's kindly agreed to letter these few pages and has also been inking some of my Mary Jane samples. I sent him fullsize scans, which he printed on blueline and started inking before my pencils drove him buggy after a few panels. Still, I've always wanted to see my stuff brush-inked and Tone's done a nice job. Above is a shot of Gwen Stacy, a lot softer looking than if I'd inked it myself and all the better for it...

4 comments:

Rol said...

You do work very well together - you could well become the new Maguire & Gordon. (See how I resisted saying Byrne / Austin?)

Unknown said...

Celebrate with a chilli eh, that's a new one.

Glamourpuss has its moments, but a book on artists by Sim without the tracings and fashion bobbins would've been preferable.

It's weird, I kept thinking that was Mary Jane for some reason when I was inking it...

dave said...

I'm not suprisd Tone went mad - I've inked you before and it's strange inking pencils done for someone who inks with tech pens with a brush or mapping pen. I tried inking some Top Cow pages once and I went beserk just blacking stuff in cos I couldn't be arsed after spending most of a day on one panel

Unknown said...

Dunno about mad, but it's a good job these were Nige's 'clean line' pencils, as the level of fiddly detail and precise tiny lines leaves very little leeway. I ended up going the Kirby inking route and just left out any lines that weren't strictly necessary. I'll send Nige the page I've mostly inked, soon as I find a pen thin enough for the backgeound detail.