Blue Moon Blog

This is the initial sketch I did when preparing the post on Lyle Lovett earlier this week. I was working from a variety of photos, but got carried away taking liberties and lost the likeness. Adding too many wrinkles and some sharp edges in the wrong places, I ended up with an amalgamation of Lovett and a beardless Abe Lincoln, or a suggestion of Steinbeck’s Tom Joad. Not a bad drawing, just not Lyle.

I’ve been having trouble sleeping the last few days, which opened the door to another cold which has settled in my chest. Fun! This exquisite feeling reminded of these two pieces I did long ago, back when I had even more trouble with sleep. I was experimenting again with the Hunt crow quill a lot back then, and with weird textures. For both of these pieces I dipped my digits in ink for fingerprint effects I thought helped get the point across, either for a wrinkles on a weary and weathered face, or twinkly spots before tired eyes.

When doing layouts for a comic book page, the artist considers a variety of options quickly. Working with the script to tell the story as best as possible, one breaks down the page in a series of panels. Each of those panels has its own composition, but must also work within the overall page composition. Each panel is presented from various points of view, which correspond to and support all the other panels. And through it all, the artist must make sure the information and story is communicated clearly and doesn’t lose the reader.

The challenge is to make the art and layout fun and interesting, while still following sound and solid storytelling and layout principles. For example, here’s a page from Dreams Of Looking Up, an historical and educational comic book I drew for the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe.

In this page, we see an old woman looking at photos and a painting of an eagle, recalling her youth. The page begins in the past, the young woman holding her baby, looking up at an eagle taking off from its nest on a high peak. I decided a long, vertical panel would best depict this, also establishing a connection (both physical and emotional) between the young woman and her surroundings. This long vertical panel on the left is balanced by a column of panels on the right. The trick is to make sure the reader doesn’t just skip to the last panel.

In that regard, I have a few things going for me here. In America, folks are trained from early on to read from top-to-bottom, left-to-right, so it’s ingrained and natural. In that first panel, though the vertical shape pulls the eye down to the woman and the baby, even for a split second, the reader’s eye is pulled back up (rather than to the right) to see the eagle, and follows its flight path to the first caption, which is bridged between frames one and two, linking us to the row of panels on the right. Now, it’s possible the reader will be drawn to the eagle, then to the caption, or directly to the caption (as indicated by the diagrammatic dotted red line above), but people take in images rapidly, and you’d be hard pressed to convince me a reader wouldn’t see the entire first panel, even if only for an instant, before their eyes dart back to the top. Once there, readers will follow smoothly south, reading words and pictures ’til rejoining the present day conversation between her grandchildren.

This is just one page out of twenty-four in this particular comic book story, each presenting its own layout and storytelling challenges. A lot of thought goes into each panel, each page, each story at this stage, before the real drawing begins.

This page, and more pages from this book and its companion volume can be viewed in our Major Works section. Or order your own copies at the official Mille Lacs Band web site.

We’ve completed the latest installment of Tzivos Hashem Kids comics, which I wrote about last month. I’ll blog a link when we’ve posted the finished pages after it’s printed, but here’s a little preview of one panel where our hero, Joey is searching for an important book in his grandparent’s attic.

While laying out the pages, in this panel I just quickly added boxes and brick-a-brack to frame Joey with the book, and to establish an attic environment with the limited space I had. In the foreground I indicated an old lantern sitting on a box. By the pencil stage, it struck me to change that object to an old tray my grandmother had left me when she died. It means nothing to anyone else, but it’s a plus whenever an artist can connect to material with references to personal emotional or nostalgic touchstones; it can bring the work further alive. At the very least it makes it more fun to draw and look at later.

It doesn’t end up being much in the final art, and will be partially covered by a word balloon, but I know it’s there. I was pleased when Mary said, “Hey, I know what that is!” as she started coloring the pages. There aren’t many more on the planet who would recognize this obscure little object.

I’m not sure why this is the single trinket Grammy chose to leave me in her will. Maybe when I was a kid it caught my eye sitting on her dresser, and I commented on it to her? It’s not much to look at, as it’s dirty and beat up, crinkly in the center and off-kilter. But it means a lot to me because she chose it for me. Over more than thirty years now, I’ve used it to hold pins and buttons other such stuff, usually on my dresser or nightstand. Every time I see it, I think of her. I just moved it to the studio, where it holds and displays marbles, as I’ve been collecting them since the summer.

I don’t know if you’d call it a tray, or a dish, or a dish-tray. Laura thinks it looks like a hat.

Here’s to the little knick-knack my Grammy wanted me to have, in all its glory, awesome power and might!

I still attend the occasional comic book convention, but usually only the local Minnesota cons twice a year, in the Spring and Fall. I take the opportunity to do a few convention sketches. The Thing from The Fantastic Four was heavy on my mind at this time, apparently, and this sketch now hangs on the wall of a fan.

Twenty years ago in my early days of self publishing, I’d cart my brush and ink with me to all shows, and eventually found it cumbersome and messy. Within a few years I developed a process of doing color sketches on colored paper. Dark paper works best, at least a mid-tone. I begin with a thin black line drawing, beefing it up and adding shadows with a thicker black marker, then add the punch with color pencils and Bic Wite-out pen. The materials travel easy and are virtually no-mess. I can execute these quickly and still achieve a colorful image that pops.

The project that convinced me I would enjoy and could find work outside the comic book industry, Look ‘N’ Find Scary Monsters & Other Creatures was a lot of fun in many ways, and took a ton of time and energy to execute. Over a three month period, I produced nine large detailed color spreads, eighty-three small spot character illustrations and of course, the cover. To complete the sizable project, I worked 13-15-hour-days, holidays, nights and weekends, with only a couple nights off. I’d probably never tackle something exactly like this again, but in hindsight it sure is fun to peek through and for kids to pour over.

In the vein of the popular Where’s Waldo series, this book required me to fill vast areas with multitudes of silly and scary creatures, all meant to hide and disguise certain specific characters throughout. Printed at a 10 x 12 size, the book opens then to spreads of roughly 12 x 18. The original art was done on huge sheets of illustration board, sized about three feet wide, drawn with brush or technical pens, then colored with markers, occasionally augmented with colored pencils. I never would have made the deadline for not the aid of my trusty Gal Friday, Mary, who jumped in at the second half of the book to help color. It also helped to have company in the studio as we headed to the finish line.

Drawn in the days just before the advent of the world wide web, I made numerous trips to the library to check out large and toppling stacks of books for reference to help me get details right and for inspiration. I found some of scariest monsters actually exist, especially deep sea creatures, requiring no additional imagination from me!

You can view one of the large spreads in our Major Works section of this site. Though now out of print, one can still find used and new copies at various sources on line.

Tried the Cintiq for another quick sketch, this time using the NagelSeries33-Pencil2 Photoshop brush. This brush is wider and darker than the one I used for my last sketch, and I worked a little smaller, too, which allowed me to retain more of the loose pencil look I’m after. I worked with a “Multiply” setting, at 100% flow, adjusting the opacity percentages as needed

You can see more of the pencil effect in this close up, and before I tweaked the color for something of a sepia tone. This is closer to how it looked to me on screen while I drew.

Old man wrinkles are always fun to draw. I guess it won’t be too long before I’ll be doing more of those in self portraits!

While on the phone with my brother last night, we got to talking about one of my early characters, Demon Boy. Inspired by Jack Kirby’s The Demon, and his Moon Boy, Devil Dinosaur’s pal, I threw in a little Mowgli from Jungle Book, and…voila! Instant Original Character! He’s almost thirty years old, but the little guy can still scare the skin off a pickle, as this quick Demon Boy Sketchcast I did during our phone chat will attest.

I’ve had my Wacom Cintiq screen for a couple weeks, and am still getting used to it. I did this sketch on screen using some new free Photoshop brushes I was finally able to install, after reading about them on my buddy, Cedric’s blog. This quick sketch is from a photo of a young singer, Missy Higgins, whom I hadn’t heard before today.

I’ve got the Cintiq semi-configured with my Apple Cinema Display, so I’m using a multi-screen set-up for the first time. I had a large Wacom Graphic Tablet for several years, but it is another thing to be able to draw directly on the screen. I’ve spent so many years at the drawing table, I know I’ll never give that up. But today colored my first storyboard job on the Cintiq. I still started with scanned pencils, but instead using my typical process of printing those on marker paper and coloring with markers and colored pencils, I went to town on them on screen. This method saves a couple steps without losing the rough, loose look I like for my boards. I’m sure I’ll be able to attain a less digital look the more I work with it. I’ll post a couple choice frames if and when I get the go-ahead from the client.

We planned a family night to watch the biopic, Miss Potter, starring Renee Zellweger, and our two girls were worried it would be either an old black-and-white movie or a boring, monotone thing, like the ones Mom watches on the Biography channel. Fortunately for all concerned, what we got instead was a charming, lively and inspiring entertainment, the story of a creative woman’s life, Beatrix Potter.

Her work on Peter Rabbit and other stories is widely known and read, but I for one didn’t know anything at all about her story, which turned out to be an asset as the movie unfolded her life to us. It’s a revealing portrait of an an artist making her way, first as a young girl sketching in the garden, then as a young woman struggling to get her work published, finally as an accomplished author and conservationist settling in the rolling majesty of her Hill Top Farm. Through it all, she’s at home and one with nature, intimate with the creatures she draws and the characters that populate her stories. This is illustrated through brief and tasteful animated sequences of Beatrix interacting with her characters, as they come to life on the page.

Her father is almost always supportive throughout, but I cringed for Beatrix at every disparaging comment and belittling remark from Beatrix’s mother about to her daughter’s talent. How fortunate we all are she pressed on anyway and persevered, regardless of the obstacles. But how much easier it is when artists are given a positive helping hand, as I wrote yesterday.

Zellweger is rosey and plucky in an honest portrayal of Potter, especially sparkling when reunited on screen with Ewan McGregor (their first paring was a the fun satire, Down With Love), positively bursting with joy in their joint creative venture and as they develop feelings for each other.

What a pleasure it was to watch this movie in particular with our girls, artists and lovers of nature themselves. Once the movie ended, our daughter, Emily immediately pulled the Peter Rabbit books from our shelves, requesting we get more, and asking questions about Potter’s life. One can learn more about Beatrix Potter and see her observant and subtle drawings at some great resources on line, but you may want to watch the movie first, to go on a splendid ride, and save the further details for afterwards. But you can’t pass up the virtual experience of reading the first Peter Rabbit book, apparently originally published in black-and-white.