Blogwithfeet: The art/rant blog of Renee Lott

Festering Romance page 61 pencils + inks

For today, here’s a pencils/inks comparison for Festering Romance page 61.

First, here are the pencils for page 61:

And here are the inks:

I chose this page since out of all the pages I have inked so far, it has a lot of Freya in it. The only pages I have finished right now either highlight Paul and Janet or Freya and Janet, and since I’ve already shown Paul pages, I thought it might be nice to show a Freya page. Freya is Janet’s main female friend and major annoyance. Although Freya might make Janet’s life more uncomfortable, she does add that little spice that keeps it exciting.

You might notice that I didn’t ink in Freya’s hair line, but I plan to fill in that area in the toning stage. I’ve been planning my gray placement as I ink, so the dark/light balance might seem a bit out of whack without the tones at the moment.

You cannot escape the CHRISTMAS.

Well, as of today, Christmas has come and gone. I hope everyone was able to have a good time and chill out somewhat during the holidays. Kyle and I don’t make such a hoopla about Christmas and stuff, so things were thankfully quiet. Somehow, we managed to avoid the Christmas hurbubble for the most part, and even when I had to visit the mall briefly, I was able to get in and out quickly and ride the bus home without traffic problems. Even the post office wasn’t such a nightmare and actually seemed to be a bit more efficient than usual.

For Christmas, Kyle and I exchanged gifts and made our standard “special occasion” meal: baked cornish hens, mashed potatoes, buttered corn and crescent rolls. I got Kyle the Home Movies Anniversary DVD set, and he got me the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation (spiraling me into hunting for the rest at low low prices). We gave Ginger, our cat, a deluxe cat food tin and a few new mouse toys. In the mood for festive entertainment, we watched Jingle All the Way (a cinematic exercise in holiday sadism). Things went off pretty much without a hitch until Ginger decided to go medieval on our miniature Christmas tree’s ass, but to be honest, she’d been eyeing it for weeks. Merry Christmas, Ginger. Merry Christmas.

For anyone keeping an eye on the links section of this page, you may have seen a link to Kyle’s in-progress webcomic site, SCRAMBLES! Well, lucky viewers, his first comic update will be tomorrow on Saturday and will continue to update every Saturday from then on. So go on, visit his site and enjoy the mad antics of a chupacabra and dogtopus, best pals and mischief makers. I enjoy it, maybe you’ll enjoy it, but either way just go visit it already! Geez!

Well, thanks for checking out my blog! Knowing that people actually look at this site makes my heart grow in a Grinch-like manner. Happy holidays, a nifty new year, and all that rot! Check back on Monday for more art from Festering Romance!

Process & Materials: Festering Romance SPX preview cover

I thought it might be interesting to show the process I use in making images, so here’s the process used in making the cover for the Festering Romance SPX 2008 preview.  I’ll also be discussing the materials I used to make it.

Pencil sketch thumbnail

Step 1: Thumbnails – As with most of my pages, I made a few small thumbnails for the cover design.  The thumbnail above shows the composition I chose to work with.  I just drew this with regular pencil in a small sketchbook. It may be small and sloppy, but the composition in the finished piece remains very similar to what the thumbnail shows.

The finished pencils for the cover

Step 2: Pencils – Next, I drew the pencils for the cover. The process for this cover was pretty simple, I just drew the image straight onto my 11×17 copy paper with blue Col-erase  pencil (the scan is in grayscale) — something I may wish to change now due to some strange properties I’ve discovered with these pencils:  1) when the lead is moistened, it becomes permanent and can’t be erased (not a very common problem, but it happens) and 2) over time, when I go back to rework old pencils, I find when I erase the blue Col-erase, a bright pink haze of the pencils remains that I can’t erase.  I guess there must be some red pigmentation in the pencil that separates over time.  If this is happening to anyone else, I’d enjoy hearing about it.

The finished inks

Step 3: Inking – To ink, I scan my pencils and print them out in blueline on bristol board.  I then ink directly on the bristol board and my original pencils are preserved in case I need them later.  I used to use vellum bristol, but I’ve switched over to smooth recently since I’m trying to avoid a dry-brush effect and am trying to keep things as smooth and tight as possible.  I mainly inked this with a Raphael Kolinsky sable #2 brush, 102 nib, a Japanese G nib, and Copic multiliners.  I use waterproof Windsor Newton black india ink since I find it is especially superblack.  I usually have to dilute it, or it gets too thick and clogs up the brush and nib.

I now use Acryla Gouache white or FW white ink for white out.  I used to use bleedproof white for my white out, but like the Col-erase pencils, I discovered some strange properties I didn’t like: 1) when inking over bleedproof white (Dr. Ph. Martins or Windsor Newton, I tried both), especially in large areas, even when the white-out is dry, it seems to absorb the ink and flake up,  and 2) in the same situation, the ink may actually mix with the bleedproof white and create a gray muddy mess.  I had never heard of this happening, but when it did, it was a real maddening problem to try to fix.

The only problem I’ve found with Acryla Gouache is that it can sometimes pick up color when you’re erasing pencils (something I don’t have to worry about when I’m inking onto my blueline pages).  FW doesn’t have this problem, but it needs a few layers of white to be opaque and can develop crack marks if you flex the paper.  These issues seem small to me compared to the problems I had with bleedproof white…

Computer tones and lettering added

Step 4: Toning & Lettering – When I finished the inks, I had to scan them into my computer (600dpi) for computer toning and lettering.  I tone my pages “at print size” to avoid resizing distortion in the tones, so I had to first resize my image to the 5.5″x8.5″ mini-comic size. I have a plug-in for Photoshop that I use for toning.  Basically I just select an area, pick a tone pattern, and fill the area.  I’d like to get a better program sometime, if anyone can suggest one with a wide range of tones that works with Windows and is simple to use.

I had a few fonts made very cheaply with Fontifier. And, to be honest, they look like cheap fonts when you use a large font size, so you get your money’s worth.  But, for small format, it’s alright.  I used my fonts for the text for my name and the small banner on the bottom right.

Step 5: Last-minute stuff – The last thing I did, which isn’t shown here, is add the Oni Press logo to the right side of the Festering Romance title (Oni printed and bound the previews for me from an InDesign file I made) and add the “price” of the mini (marked as FREE!) right underneath their logo. I left room for these beside the title because I knew I would be adding them later, so that’s why the extra space is just floating there. I had to wait to get the Illustrator file of the logo, so it was something I added last minute in the InDesign file.

I sometimes have a few more steps in my process, but all of this is the pretty basic stuff I encounter with every page or illustration I make.  I’m sure I’ll discuss other parts in my process in later posts discussing the process for other images.  I hope you enjoyed hearing about how I made this image, and if you have any questions or comments, feel free to post in the Comments field.

A few things that kept me going in 2008

The Venture Bros. Season 3 DVDs... I can't wait till March...!

I’ve been watching a lot of DVDs, listening to a lot of music and audiobooks, and even playing a few videogames (I broke down and bought a DS) since I started work on Festering Romance, so I just thought I’d mention some of the best of the batch that helped me keep going through the dull and the tedious this year. I’ve definitely seen a lot more than I’m listing, but these have been my favorites, oldies but goodies, and new pals. Thank you,

DVDs and movies: -Sex and the City -The Venture Brothers -Futurama -Seinfeld -Freaks and Geeks -The X-Files (NOT the new movie though…) -Undeclared -Moonstruck -Singles -Planet Terror

Music: -M-flo -Heartsdales -The Avett Brothers -Clazziquai -Avril Lavigne -Honey & Clover OST -The Darjeeling Limited OST -Garden State OST -Sex & the City OSTs -Gossip Girl song lists

Books and audiobooks: -the works of David Sedaris -Lord of the Rings -Hate -Love & Rockets -Yotsubato -Julie Doucet’s works -Hitoshi Iwaaki’s works in English -8 Steps to a Pain Free Back (this book SAVED me!)

Games: -Cooking Mama 1 & 2 -Puyo Pop Fever -Mario Kart DS -Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventure

Oh, and, just for fun, here’s my “Top Comics of the Year“ list in no particular order: -The Education of Hopey Glass by Jaime Hernandez -Against Pain by Ron Rege Jr. -Barefoot Gen vols. 5-6 by Keiji Nakazawa (though the inside date lists 2007, everywhere else I’ve seen says they were actually released in 2008)

Although I suppose it doesn’t say much that my “Top Comics of 2008″ are all reprints and compilations. Having said that, I still look forward to seeing the new Kramers Ergot once I receive it.

Hope you enjoyed the lists, and please come back on Monday for a new artwork post.

Festering Romance page 23 pencils

Festering Romance page 23 pencils

Yep, I’m posting pages out of order, but I don’t think it should really be an issue since I won’t be posting many that are in direct sequence anyway.

Festering Romance page 23 sets us up near the beginning of Janet’s big date with Derek.  It’s nice seeing Janet and Derek getting along, for now…