To recap, I’ve given the thought balloon areas a first go over with color, removed the masking tape and softened the hard edges with a little transparent wash. The next step is simple. I just flesh out these colored areas with more watercolors until I’m satisfied. I do a lot of adding and subtracting of color using paper towels until I have the forms, light and shadow developed. It’s very difficult to be very comprehensive in my description of this phase because it happens very intuitively. I go into the whole thing with a rough idea of what colors to use (as seen in last post) and eventually become more and more specific as I move into the more rendered watercolor and pencil phase. I try to maintain a harmonious balance for the overall page while also giving the individual elements a certain veracity. I pay attention to the color of light hitting the objects (in this case a boy in a cave) and the resulting shadows as well. The more fully rendered page 26 looked like this.

At this stage I think I am ready to move onto the next phase of coloring the image and that is to go in with some colored pencils (or pencil crayons as I’m known to call them). I use Staedler Watercolor pencils as well as Prismacolor Premier pencils. The pencils help bring out some highlights, add details and activate the surface by rubbing them to pick up some of the paper’s texture. A technique I enjoy with the watercolor pencils is to apply the areas with the pencils dry and then modulate them by going over the area with a quick swifit swipe using a wide damp brush. This tends to unevenly darken and saturate the watercolor pencil color and adds a nice effect. There’s a bit of randomness to it that I enjoy. I continue with the pencils bringing out the highlights, deepening shadows and softening the balloon edges. Let’s take a look at the end result while I describe the remaining steps.

When I feel I’ve got ‘it’ with the pencils, I then take the white Prismacolor pencil and begin to add some of the ’stars’ that float around the edges of the thought balloons. I’ll also use other light colored pencils but primarily use the white. In some cases I’ll soften the edges of the balloons as well. Next up, I take process white paint to correct errors from the inking step and to add any bright whites and highlights. I take a small brush and a bit of Winsor & Newton Process White and dab around the edges of the balloons. This adds a little depth to the ’stars’ since this application of white is more opaque than the pencils. These brighter ’stars’ appear closer while the penciled ’stars’ appear to be deeper in pictorial space. Any mistakes in the black and white areas are touched up at this point as well. I seem to remember touching up the corner of my mouth in the third image. The process white can be tinted with the watercolors to add colored highlights as well. Most of the highlights on the scrit’s legs are a mixture of ultramarine blue with the process white. Lastly, I take a light grey Faber Castell Pitt brush pen and add a few lines to describe the rain seen through the cave entrance.

And that’s all of the steps that happen on paper! We’re now ready to scan the page and begin adding some digital effects and letters. Come back tomorrow when I finish this page in the final step, Digital Tweaks and Letters!

Once the inks are finished, I give the whole thing an erasing while being mindful of not losing the outlines of the thought balloons. They’re important for the next step which is laying a piece of vellum over the page and tracing these balloons onto the vellum. This sheet will become my template for where the balloons will be when I cover over the pencil lines with painter’s masking tape. That’s the next step. I lay down the masking tape to cover the balloon areas and once the whole page has been masked, I lay down my vellum template and trace the penciled balloons with an Xacto blade. The last step in the masking phase is to pull away the tape to expose the areas to be colored. Here’s what page 26 looked like at this point.

I enjoy the look of the pages at this point. The blue masking tape against the white of the balloons is somehow very appealing to me and I think it helps me get a sense of how the shapes work (or not) with each other. Now, onto the first step in coloring this page. I use three sets of watercolor pans by Lukas, Winsor & Newton and Yarka. I grew up using watercolors in trays and have always stuck with them. When I’ve tried the tubes, I felt there was too much waste and no real tangible advantage. At this stage of coloring my goal is to get some of the basic colors down and to bring out the edges of the balloons. It’s pretty simple and this is what it looks like after laying down these preliminary colors and removing the masking tape.

It’s not much yet but it’s a start and the next phase will really start to bring things into focus. For that, you’ll have to wait until tomorrow when we see what happens in Colors Part 2! See you then!

So once I’ve got a final pencil drawing on vellum, I transfer it to the watercolor paper. I trace the image on the opposite side of the vellum and then rub this onto the paper. This is helpful because I can also check how the reverse of the drawing looks as I trace it. It’s like the old mirror trick to see if things still look ‘right’ except I do it by flipping the vellum. Okay, once I’ve got the drawing transfered onto the paper, I then go over it again to strengthen the lines before I begin to ink it.

The first areas that I ink are usually the ‘real-world’ areas that are going to be in black, white and greys. I use the Faber Castell line of Pitt artist brush pens to do these areas. Depending on how I would like to create the ’space’, I ink the things that I feel should be closest to the viewer in black first and then choose some of the darker greys to draw the outlines of other objects further in pictorial space. Once I’ve got all the objects outlined in their respective shades of grey and black, I begin to fill in the areas with the lighter greys to create the shadows. With this page I had all the images from the ‘real’ world inked and began to fill in the grey tones when I became a little unhappy with the way things were going. This often happens where I start to ink a page and find things that I think could be improved. Because I am using the Pitt pens, I have only a certain number of grey tones to choose from and I don’t always get it right the first time around. Images like the third ‘panel’ weren’t as effective as I thought they could be so I decided that I would try another approach on a second page. This first attempt starts out with the best intentions of being the final page but alas it ends up being a guinea pig and that’s why this first scan is a bit of a mess! I put this page aside and retransfer the drawing onto another piece of watercolor paper and start the whole inking process over again. Once I know that it’s not going to make it to the final round, I really am free to practice things before doing them on the second page. As soon as I have all the grayscale ‘frames’ inked and toned, I move onto the thought balloons. These areas are inked using a Pentel Pocket brush because the ink is not water soluble once it’s dry (I need to use watercolor over them) and the brush is great for fine line work as well as dry brushing over the paper texture. I’ll test out a few approaches on the first page and then eventually move onto the second, final inked page. Here’s what the second page looked like at this stage.

That’s better! You’ll notice that the balloon of the boy recoiling at the end is not inked at this stage. I thought I would wait until I had that ‘frame’ colored before I would go in with a black line. I knew that I wanted to have a spray of blood so I thought it best to ink around whatever paint spatter I got.

That pretty much covers the inking phase of things! The next step is to mask and color the thought balloon areas. Come back tomorrow for Step 4: Masks and Colors Part 1!

All of the pages to date have been done on 12″x16″ Arches cold pressed watercolor paper with the actual art at around 10″x14″. Since I don’t do too many preparatory sketches before diving right into the image at its final scale, a lot of erasing and reworking takes place at the penciling stage. So, to save the wear and tear that this would cause on this expensive paper, the pencils are done on translucent vellum that is taped over top of the final watercolor paper. Once I have a pencil drawing that I happy with, I’ll use the vellum to transfer it to the watercolor paper. Below is the first stab at penciling.

Here, you’ll notice that the sequence of images is different from the final version. This drawing was abandoned because I felt that I was repeating myself by having a close up of the boys face to open the page. I had the idea to have me coming out of the bathroom door from page 25 as ‘panel’ 1 of this page with the second image being the thought balloon of the boy’s face. I approached the next sheet of vellum with this plan and after working out the first two ‘frames’ realized I could have myself standing in front of the refrigerator in ‘panel’ 3. Here’s the second sheet.

As you can see, having the first two images in this way allowed me to use the third panel to both establish setting as well as further the plot by showing me about to open the refrigerator door. I also liked the symmetry that this created; the image of the boy in the thought balloon ‘framed’ by the two drawings of me. In the next row, I knew I wanted to build up some tension before opening the fridge door as well as parallel that action with the cracking open of the scrit exoskeleton. In this case I used a similar symmetry as the first row. The thought balloon in the middle is flanked on either side by the ‘real world’ opening of the fridge. The leftmost vignette shows my hand about to grasp the door and the angle of the lines of that handle are mirrored in the lines of the handle in the rightmost ‘frame’. The idea behind this is to create a sense that these two hands and handles imply a pull in opposite directions that emphasizes the action of the boy’s hands as he pries open the shell.

A lot of readers are probably a little bewildered by some of the thought balloons that feature an old man/cyborg, a female android and other characters not previously introduced. These little non sequiturs are thrown in to enrich the feeling that we are privy to the images that flash before my mind’s eye but they also serve another purpose. They help introduce characters that I intend to introduce later in the story. When we learn more about them in the future, the reader’s experience of these earlier pages will be deepened.

Okay, on with the final row. Here we have another look at the little boy as he strains to open up the scrit shell followed by a shot of me opening the fridge door and a thought balloon of the boy being slightly thrown back. These last ‘frames’ complete the action of opening the fridge door/scrit shell; the “CHUK” sound acting as the sound effect for both. This is a strategy that I have used in other pages as well. The sounds of the real world fill in for the sounds of the imagined realm and sometimes the imagined sounds stand in for action in the real world. As an example of this, look at page 23 where the “Klolp!”, “Klilt!” and “Klup!” of the boy flicking the limp scrit arm stand in for the sounds of me walking up a set of stairs. Even the action of the boys fingers are like those we make when we act out walking with our fingers. It’s this sort of collusion between the imaginary realm and the ‘real’ world that I am playing with in this chapter.

I think that pretty much covers the penciling stage! See you again tomorrow when I show you the next step in the process, Inking!

Welcome to my behind-the-scenes look at the Process! This is the very first phase of creating a page. I’ll call it the ’script’ and thumbnail stage. I use the term, script, in quotations because my writing is itself very sketchy and likely to change over the course of the page’s development. The following are the relevant pages from my Moleskine wherein I have a very rough breakdown of the events of page 26.

This scan shows the first list of what’s going to happen. Originally the list was ordered 1–7, but I played with the numbering to find what I thought would be the best order of images for maximal effect. At this stage I was happy with the idea of having the page open with me approaching the fridge in an image that would establish the setting in the kitchen (this really is my kitchen, by the way). The next image of the boy’s face is understood to be in a thought bubble. Next I have an image to, “set up [my] hands about to open fridge” that parallels the following panel that, “[sets] up hands about to pry open scrit underbelly”. After we get in close on my face, I have a note describing the fridge opening with the sfx, “CHUNK!”. This appears in the final page as, “CHUK”, which is, as everybody knows, the sound of a fridge door opening and the sound of a scrit exoskeleton being pried open. This causes what we see in the final panel 7; the boy’s face being spattered with blood.

This page shows another list of images that were planned to make up the story of page 26. Many of the items here are the same as in the previous page but appear in a different order. You’ll notice that the sfx has been changed to, “CHUK!” I think it was the clarity of the steps in this list that made me feel comfortable enough to start working out how this script would look. That’s what you see happening in the two incomplete thumbnails at the bottom of the page. Both are abandoned to pursue another idea in the next thumbnail. At the very bottom of the page I tried to make clear what the goal was for this page and the next. In the case of page 26, I have the goal as being the, “boy about to crack open skrit [sic].” For page 27, however, I have listed the goal as being the, “fridge opened” followed by what looks like a grocery list of bread, juice and cold cuts! In the interest of full disclosure, these are the contents of my fridge but why I included them here is a mystery even to me! Okay on with the next page.

Okay, here’s the final page with two more thumbnails and some more notes. These notes are basically reiterations of stuff from the last page. The thumbnails are a little more complete than previous sketches with only the last one mapping out the whole page. That apparently was good enough to start on the full size drawing as there are no other page layout sketches. So I think that’s it for this first round. Tomorrow I’ll show you the Penciling phase and show you how that helped get us a little closer to the final piece.