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It's All About Arthur...
Saturday, 1 October 2011 04:00 pmLast week, I said that I had the next sequence of the comic all written out. That wasn't a lie, only... Well, I'm going to rewrite it. I hadn't started laying it out yet because it didn't work quite so well as I would have liked. It was only yesterday night (and I do mean 'night' - it was 3.30 and I couldn't sleep) that I figured out that another take on that particular sequence might be better. So that's what I'm going to do. It is going to involve other characters and ... stuff.
Meanwhile, I have painted my first young Arthur. I am doing pictures to develop some of the characters that you will be meeting soon, but also to test paper types for the final comics art. This is the first one; I'll be posting the others too and compare them.
My technique is the following:
- I sketch my image in watercolour pencil.
- I ink with a Faber-Castell brush pen.
- I take a brush with water to the watercolour pencil lines to disperse them and turn them into a wash.
- I paint the picture.
I like this sketch-and-wash technique. It's relatively quick, effective, and not hyper-clean. Because the sketching stage takes place on the watercolour paper, I don't have to do any transfers and my line art is more lively and loose. HOWEVER. It does require a certain sturdiness on the part of the watercolour paper. I use a kneaded eraser during the sketch phase, and during the wash phase the paper gets rubbed. Apparently this can be problematic - see below.
This picture was done on Lana paper - 300 g/m² Cold-Pressed (NOT) paper with 25% cotton in it. Normally speaking, this is my favourite cold-pressed paper; November, Lullaby, Ride of the Valkyrie and the Shoe Series were painted on it. HOWEVER. This time round, painting on it was pretty tortuous. I couldn't lift any paint at all. This paper is not as annoyingly absorbent as my Fabriano - but as soon as my brush touched the page, the pigment was there to stay. I have never had this happen with Lana before, so I'm assuming that this is a result of the fact that I treated the paper more roughly than usual. The phenomenon is more striking in places where I used my eraser a lot :(.
So, on to the next paper. I have some Canson Montval and Bockingford/St Cuthbert's Mill to be tested...
Meanwhile, I have painted my first young Arthur. I am doing pictures to develop some of the characters that you will be meeting soon, but also to test paper types for the final comics art. This is the first one; I'll be posting the others too and compare them.
My technique is the following:
- I sketch my image in watercolour pencil.
- I ink with a Faber-Castell brush pen.
- I take a brush with water to the watercolour pencil lines to disperse them and turn them into a wash.
- I paint the picture.
I like this sketch-and-wash technique. It's relatively quick, effective, and not hyper-clean. Because the sketching stage takes place on the watercolour paper, I don't have to do any transfers and my line art is more lively and loose. HOWEVER. It does require a certain sturdiness on the part of the watercolour paper. I use a kneaded eraser during the sketch phase, and during the wash phase the paper gets rubbed. Apparently this can be problematic - see below.
This picture was done on Lana paper - 300 g/m² Cold-Pressed (NOT) paper with 25% cotton in it. Normally speaking, this is my favourite cold-pressed paper; November, Lullaby, Ride of the Valkyrie and the Shoe Series were painted on it. HOWEVER. This time round, painting on it was pretty tortuous. I couldn't lift any paint at all. This paper is not as annoyingly absorbent as my Fabriano - but as soon as my brush touched the page, the pigment was there to stay. I have never had this happen with Lana before, so I'm assuming that this is a result of the fact that I treated the paper more roughly than usual. The phenomenon is more striking in places where I used my eraser a lot :(.
So, on to the next paper. I have some Canson Montval and Bockingford/St Cuthbert's Mill to be tested...
