Coffee Savings

I guess the good news with my new routine of working from my room and doing art on my desk is that I have spent so no money on coffee going to cafes. I remember it was the 9th of September that I set up my table with the drawing box and lights and home-made coffee. Let's do some rough accounts here:

$12 Table Lamp
$95 Drawing Box
$17.98 Coffee Plunger and C4 coffee roast 
$124.98 Total

So let's assume I normally buy 2 coffees a day on any given day – since 9 September it's been 7 days. So about $4.20 per coffee ($8.40 per day for 7 days), I've already saved $58.8 in a week. Though to be fair, currently I am typing this at Ally & Sid and I've just bought a coffee that's worth more than $4.20. 

This page was hard (pencil and ink with brush & nib, pen)

So this page was difficult. I took about 3 days to finish this one. Mainly because I got sick and had to take out 2 days of it from working on it. And even today on the third day, now that I am not as sick anymore, it was still a drag. Scenes like this that are not as action packed are harder. Two people in a room with a black panther – i mean, that does sound interesting, but not as interesting as a jet plane or gun fights.




For this page, I did the pencils and spent one slow boring morning doing that. This is a significant scene even though it is not crazy dramatic. Hence there is a pressure to get it right. I could feel myself getting sick the morning I was doing the pencils. Funny story, I thought I'd try a cold shower this morning. I did so and it felt nice, but I think I had a strain of flu in my body  and that evening I went down with a cold. My body just went cold! 

The next morning I sat for less than an hour and started the lines but it went nowhere. I was definitely getting sick. 

So I did the lines on the third morning (or maybe even the fourth morning). I'd been watching a few tutorials on inking on YouTube though my "digital minimalism" policy didn't allow me to, but because I was sick, I allowed myself some luxuries. But the couple of things I learned from Youtube about inking is that "contrast is your best friend when it comes to inking". I knew that but when you look at my comic book this far, there haven't been a lot of contrast. And the other thing I learned from youtube is that when you're inking you can make use of all the different techniques even on one art work. Again, to emphasise contrast. I thought that would be a taboo thing to do – to use multiple techniques on a page – for eg, pigment liners, ink with dry brush, ink with wet brush, ink with nib, shading with pen, shading with hatching, shading with wet brush – all of the above to communicate texture, contrast etc. 

Drawing and writing a comic book is a major process of construction and assembly. It is crazy the amount of layers, technique it involves. And speaking of layers, one thing that does make me a little sad is the layer of pencils that no one will get to see on the final page. There is something very dynamic about pencil scribbles because they are very gestural and full of movement. But when the final inks cover it, eventually the pencils are rubbed out. Anyway, that is the nature of this art. 


This one's an example of the two things I learned on Youtube. Using brush on Dolly, the panther, makes her look fluid and cat-like, whereas everything else, Calix and the blankets look a little less fluid. They also look like they are of a different make, a different breed, opposing elements. Which is a nice way to communicate.


I liked how simple those figure drawings are but the rendering of them looks nice. The subtleties of Bri's hips and Calix's downward tilt of his head – I'm happy with them though they are in no way perfect! 

Ink with brush

Bought a 0 size brush and a 4 size brush to do lines with ink on the pencils. Again, what I love about inks is the way it sits on the paper. It looks like it is moving. I've also got the ink nibs out of the boxes and are using it for the lines. I am planning on using the pigment liner pens for details but the main gestural shapes are done with brush and the extra lines are done with the G pen. 

What is great about using the G pen and the brush is that because they are hard to use and not too comfortable, I am mindful of the line work I put down. When there is no friction or effort between the mediums, then it's too easy, too smooth. But G pen, though it's really not fun to use it, I enjoy the struggle and the scraping sound it makes. 

The art below is a dream sequence blending between what the person saw in his dream and then reality as he wakes up with Dolly staring him on the face. 





La'ei and Hamish, done fully with brush and ink on top of the pencils. I will spend some more time fine-tuning it with pigment liners for the details. I didn't like how the paper took the diluted inks on the tyre. It ended up looking quite blotched up. But oh well. 

Ideas clicking into place

As I was driving around town, listening to a podcast and picking up some flowers for M, this incident dawned on me.

I had been putting the ending of Deep Black together down on paper and planning the rest of the pages and was stuck on how the episode should end. There were a few elements that needed to come together – and they are currently things that I don't want to give away so I won't mention the specifics.

But for a few days I weighed ideas and potential options. None gelled well. 

Then one day as I was waking up, in that state between sleep and wake, the idea rang clear – that is how to end it. I knew that was it. I quickly got out of bed and got coffee and wrote that idea down. That idea is how the end of Deep Black will finish. Not literally the last few pages, but part of the element of its closure was from that moment of clarity I experienced as I was half asleep. As though the pieces came together and clicked into place by itself. 

"The Beast"

Saturday, 10 Sept, 9:48am – Home

Spent this morning drawing this between conversations with Sirei and Vime about other life-matters. So it was to be expected that I could not expend all my energy on this drawing project as the convo was quite a serious engaging matter. Yet I am glad to come out with this simple drawing that is a study of Land Cruiser. It is not perfect by any measure, and the technicality is not great, but it gives me all the information that I need about this truck – which though I have drawn this a couple times on the second episode, I hadn't finalised on the references and details to go on it. 

Here is it: Bri's truck "The Beast", a diesel powered Toyota Land Cruiser.

This truck is is illegal to drive around town in Cathedral City because it doesn't comply with the carbon zero policy. Traffic is regulated and you are highly recommended to operate your car in a self-driving mode so that your car is synced to the traffic flow which is synced to the Globe so that all the cars that are on the city streets at any time are not just controlled but efficiently trafficked. This recommendation becomes mandatory during peak hours 7am-9am, 12pm-1pm, and 4pm-6pm. 

Bri uses this beast off-road in the Port Hills, Canterbury highlands and Mackenzie Country.