More Pencil Talk

Happy (belated) New Year friends!!

First, I'm sorry for the lag in newsletters--I'd hoped to do this monthly, but in unpacking my own exhaustion, mental state, and trying to keep up with everything, I have had to let things fall to the wayside.

Second, some news!!I am in for the Toronto Comic Arts Festival (May 11-12th) AND the Montreal Comics Festival (May 25-26th). I look forward to seeing a bunch of you come May, where I will have this comic printed.

Last we spoke I was still frantically penciling away, but as of Dec 28th I had all my pencils wrapped up (aside from some minor edits) and now I've been frantically inking away.

Some other stuff that happens before inking

I realize I've forgotten to mention some of the test printing that happens while I do this. First, while penciling (and doing the lettering), I did a couple of test prints of my pages (mostly) at size, with various font sizes to see what was the smallest size I could use while still maintaining relatively good legibility.

Once that was decided, I continued on with pencilling and when I was done the pencils, I arranged everything in InDesign to make a booklet to print for myself. This serves a couple purposes:

• it lets me check the general flow of the story and if it's working

• engaging with my work in a different format helps me look at it differently and see if there's something I might have skipped over before

• double-check the font is not too tiny (it's a bit small, but manageable)

• see how pages look next to each other, and shift/re-map any if I want a particular one to fall on the left side (usually for kind of big surprise moments, you want the reader to flip right to the reveal)

On to the inks

Inking is long on it's way (half way there)! Every new stage brings a new wave of doubt and comparison, but I just try to keep going.

My brain/hand are fighting over the type of style we want to adopt in the comic, and with out limited timeline I need to let it play out as it is.

Another thing I’m noticing is I'm very timid about spot blacks and need to work on a nice/confident feathering (think of the black hatch lines in panel 3 of the Cloonan page)

New Year, New Goals

I'm always hesitant to share all of my goals, so I'll just summarise some of the main ones here.

1. Launching the first chapter of my Baba YagaThis includes the physical black and white launch happening for TCAF and MCAF, and then some months later, the colour web launch.

2. Being more mindful of my media intake.Less mindless youtube watching, or dumb TV show watching. That's not to say I can't do any of that, but just be more aware of it. I also want to focus more on reading this year, and that means limiting screen time to make space for that. So I'm more decisive with my movies. And I've started a book/movie journal where I reflect on what I've watched (still leaving room for those just-for-fun romance reads, etc).

3. Continuing to try to not let the social media pressure of constant posting get to me.I'm back on the socials, largely out of necessity, but just keep trying to breathe through it and not fall deep into the comparison hole. I'd like to see myself limit my time on there a bit more than I've been doing though, but I don't have a good idea of what that looks like right now.

Recommendations

• 🎥 Bill Hader’s writing advice (video above):”Be wrong, fast. So, like, if you have an idea, just write it”

• 📝 This post on avoiding same face syndrome in drawing is a neat reference and resource.

• 🖼️ This post on the art of Ivan Bilibin, who’s a big time inspiration on this project.

• 📚 Jacob Mikanowski’s article (and by extension, his book) Goodbye, Eastern Europe, on what is exactly, and what it means to be, Eastern European. Recommended by someone in my history bookclub and was an insta-buy because I think so much of my Baba Yaga comic touches upon similar themes.”The truth is that Eastern Europe belongs less to the geography recorded in road atlases than to psychogeography. It isn’t really a place, but a state of mind.”

• 🎥 This Jackie Droujko video on good goal setting is a must-watch. Also I like her paint-over videos.

• 🖼️ I don’t know if anyone is familiar with Miro, which I’ve used to paste up reference images etc. The free plan is extremely limited with boards so I went hunting and found Concept Board, which has unlimited boards. It lets me just plop images that I use for reference/inspiration/mood setting all in one place.