FIRST on Friday I went aboard the USS Constitution (the oldest commissioned war ship still afloat in the world) for a harbor turn-around, most of which I spent running around taking ridiculous photos with my fellow museum learning staff and drinking more than my fair share of hot cocoa provided by America's Navy. If you are not crazy about how much of our tax dollars go to the armed forces, perhaps it will make you feel a wee bit better that some of those dollars go towards providing me complimentary hot chocolate with delicious marshmallows. Then I worked on my Day of the Dead painting and went to a shift at the theatre where I work.
NEXT on Saturday I went to the Museum School bright and early for Part I of a weekend workshop on making comic books, taught by a fantastic artist-- Raúl González whose name would score a LOT of points in Scrabble if proper names were allowed and there was more than one Z included in a standard Scrabble set. I digress. Check out his work! After the workshop, I high tailed it to a fancy hotel to work at a fancy dinner to raise money for the USS Constitution Museum. I schmoozed, met a lot of great people, and wore a ball gown! A BALL GOWN! Then I took a lot of really ridiculous photos with my fellow museum learning staff. It was a good weekend for that.
ON SUNDAY I submitted my painting to the Uforge Gallery and took the bus to the Museum school for Part II of the Comic Book Workshop and after that, back to JP I went for the annual Lantern Festival where there is apple cider, live music, and hundreds of handmade lanterns. It was beautiful and lovely and a perfect end to a weekend of running around like a crazy person.
So what I actually intended to focus on in this post was the workshop. The Workshop! It was attended by a small but mighty group of aspiring comic book artists (who had all already made quite a bit of progress of their own). It was a lot of ground to cover in a very short amount of time. Raúl guided us through the steps that comic book artists go through to lay the groundwork for putting together a story-- character designs, storyboards, measuring panels-- with a ruler! I do exactly none of those things when I go to draw Girrrl!!! so I think it was great for me to have someone explain/demonstrate them.
We got a chance to try out every step of the process starting with character sheets:
I did one of Jenny but then focussed more closely on a character that Caitlin and I have not yet introduced in the story, but she is coming and she will be awesome:
We looked at examples of styles and mediums used by a wide spectrum of established comic book artists and, again, attempted them ourselves. This was the moment, as I wrote in the title of this post, when I tried ink for the first time in the context of cartooning. It. Is. The Best. I have often wondered how the work I do on this comic related to painting and I had never been able to connect it before. I think I am more of a painter than a drawer (is that the right word for an artist who draws?). In fact, my college professors told me pretty candidly that I'm not good at drawing. Painting and drawing are actually pretty different skills, and I think I'm generally a pretty rockin' painter (room to grow, but pretty rockin' nonetheless) but perhaps my drawing just isn't strong. But this weekend I learned that I CAN PAINT COMICS. Get ready for an ink explosion, guys. It's coming. I can sense it. These were my first tries at ink:
Oh man. I'm excited.
Also, since I imagine you were wondering:
