Days For Days
For the last couple of weeks I've been writing and roughing out material that will follow the current Steeple story onto the web. It's a one-off thing, 32 pages, that will run on badmachinery.com on February. Having not drawn "in anger" since mid-October, I've been excited to get back to making comics. So I've been warming up for the return to action with some Giant Days drawings.
I've written a few times here in recent months about being dissatisfied with my drawing - not so much that it was bad, more that I had lost a certain feeling a few years ago and have struggled to get it back. I dug out the artwork for the second and third self-published Giant Days comics today and tried to work out why, for all the technical strides I've made in many areas, they somehow feel more like the comics I want to make.
I think half the issue is simply that, coming off the early Bad Machinery stories, I'd been drawing kids a lot and my characters are slightly cuter and cartoonier as a result. I love the proportions. But to reintroduce them requires unlearning a lot of muscle memory.
I could work at this for thirty more years and I know I'll never quite master drawing the way I want to. I have no idea what I'm aiming for, I don't realise when I get there, and after I do, I get on a train to somewhere else without knowing the destination. Every time I learn something new, it seems to push something useful out. Thank goodness I enjoy just pushing a pen around.
Comments (9)
I will never not crush on Susan Ptolemy.
Can't help but smile whenever some Giant Days material comes along. I too am glad you still enjoy pushing the ol' pen around.
The amount I draw is vanishingly small compared to how much John draws Nevertheless I feel that last paragraph so hard
Top right: Daisy, Queen of Heck, surveys her internal legions GOSH, YES. Bweehehe! How does looking at your own work compare with looking at the same images but flipped left-right? I find I generally prefer the flipped versions of anything of mine's I look at it as someone else's work. It's kinda like the Hawthorne effect.
Flipping my artwork only ever reveals mistakes, though, I am proud to say, not so often these days. I know what you mean though. I used to favour images where I'd accidentally drawn the eyes too far apart. The error lent the images a difference, an alien-ness, that appealed to me.
Artists and torment, a tragic combination. I'm sorry for your struggles. But as a selfish reader, I really enjoy seeing the results and want to help you make as many comics as possible. Seeing all these drawings of Daisy makes me very happy. Stay strong♡.
Seconded!
"Every time I learn something new, it seems to push something useful out.". John, this is, as the kids say, a mood.
Please keep pushing that pen around. I don't think there is a nirvana (illegal highs aside), so at best you can keep orbiting it and getting a little closer each time (perinirvana?)...