Finishing up the fifth volume so far of Mr. Karl Ove Knausgaard’s series “My Struggle.” My mind is a little blown, but his story stimulates me not to give up on my own journey.
My pal is waiting for the final volume, coming out in September, but I will have to wait until she’s finished with it. Still, that’s no problem, because she turned me onto it in the first place. And for that, I’m grateful!
A comic by me, Jack Ruttan. Computer colours, this time.
Seems like digital is much slower, and much more reliant on know-how than watercolours are, which are sort of in my bones. Still working on the work flow!
Of course, what a person thinks about this who grew up with digital and has trouble with watercolours, I have no idea.
Life has been tough, lately, and I’ve not been doing some things I should have been doing. I don’t know if comics is one of them, but lots of illustrators are doing them. And if I call myself a writer/slash illustrator, then that’s a natural. But it’s not very renumerative.
I started drawing digitally, got frustrated with that, and then drew the whole thing out on a piece of paper in about an hour. Then I tried colouring it digitally, got frustrated with that, and then printed it out, traced around, and then made a watercolour overlay that went underneath the lines. It’s a little digital, since in the old days people like Richard Corben would draw lines on a sheet of acetate which laid over the colours which were hand done on a piece of art board.
I did something similar, tracing and then colouring in watercolour on paper. The paper shrinks, so it doesn’t always line up, but one can stretch the colour image, if one is canny and digital.
This turned out to be a lot of work, and I don’t know if it is totally successful, or as effective as drawing the whole thing out on paper, with ink overtop, but it was an interesting experiment I may never do again.
Still, I want to do more comics. Better written, and about whichever subjects, and coloured in whatever way.
I messed with both digital and traditional (as it’s called) sketchbook pages today. The traditional pages, compiled into books, are more organised. The digital ones are everywhere, squirreled into cryptic files, over two computers.
There’s a tiny bit of digital here, anyhow!
There’s a lot that I draw that I don’t put up. Trying to remedy that a bit. It’s not all brilliance, but here it is.
Pencil, coloured pencil, Gouache. I think that’s covered it, technique-wise.
….drawn while I was watching something else. Seems to be where my mind goes to when you set it into “neutral.” I wonder why?
Listening to this very good podcast about Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi, I drew my idea of Boris Karloff on my computer. I should really use references, so this guy is just Karloff-like. (darn it! Lots of pictures on the podcast site!)
You know, one of my Great-Aunts was married to Karloff for a while, but he had a few wives, as movie stars tend to do, and I’m not sure where she shows up in the list.
I like the background here, which looks very Impressionist, like a Monet.
Here’s the final version of my “Green Monster” diorama. I find this quite charming.
A lot of work went into getting the graphics and the lighting right. While I’m still a beginner in Blender 3D, I learned a lot here.
“Aloysuis” is pronounced “Allo-wishus” if anyone doesn’t know.
I placed a rusty steam pipe into my Blender monster scene, but didn’t have the energy to add a spiffy valve to it, or a lot of joints with bolts on them. Still, I’m pleased with my mastery of the “spin” tool. One more thing learned! #b3d
Slightly improved green sea monster. #b3d
