Gatillos

Creating a composition for a panel is a very nice exercise and lots of fun. I usually do some doodling then try it a few more times, then do something a bit more serious, then when it looks about ok I start all the rest.

There is another approach, which is basically ripping off from a friend that has a great sense of composition but works in another area, like, let’s say, photography :). Today I decided to steal another photo from a friend, in this case the photo is not that great from a technical point of view, after all it was one of the very first ones he took as a learning exercise, but the composition was there and fits very nicely with the one I had in mind. What I did is very simple and not that difficult: 1) find a nice photo, 2) either sketch it maintaining the composition or as I did with this one, actually copy the main proportions, 3) forget about the photo, concentrate on the drawing itself.

Today I decided to try and put a little more effort into coloring and shadows. Up to this point shadows are most of the time drawn on a separate layer on top of everything, with a filter of type ‘darken’. That works great for some shadows, but it doesn’t play well with other objects, as it needs to be on top of everything. It’s essentially like drawing with a brush over the finished drawings.

Hiya. Well time continues to fly but my little webcomic hasn’t received an update for about two weeks. Thing is, I’m still working on it, it just takes time and it’s hard to concentrate when there is this bright sun everywhere trying to drag you out to the streets.

I’ll try to keep this a bit more interesting by posting again some drafts and then compare those to whatever they come out to be. Usually I redraw things so much they barely resemble the original sketch, so this makes for an interesting test.

I’m starting to think my story is a bit too ambitious given my current abilities :), but foolishness can get you quite far. Thing is, the story I’m trying to tell is supposed to go back and forth between three different ages of the main character. That means I need to be able to draw the character in three different stages of his life (as if it was not difficult enough to draw one character in more than one position!).