For the past week or so I've been working on a minicomic about a scholar and a prostitute. I've been trying out a few different modes of drawing for this one, and I think I'm going to take a good long break from ink washes once this is done.
I've been tooling around with just how much, if any pencil I should use. On small single images, I like the look I get when I don't pencil and just sketch in ink, but for a comic that becomes a little harder. I need to sketch at least a little bit first or there is very little panel to panel consistency. And I definitely need to sketch the faces first and go over them with a bit of precision, or else the expressions communicate very little.
I actually drew all these on separate sheets of paper. Sometimes the foreground and the background are even on separate sheets. I'm in the process of arranging them into a (hopefully) coherent comic now, and doing the lettering. I'm not sure how much I'm behind that process. On one hand, I like the way it makes them all feel disposable. It creates something low pressure which allows me a great deal of freedom. On the other hand, even though I've thumbnailed these pages out I didn't work on them arranged as they will be on the page. I've found myself changing the format around a lot, and I think the overall coherency suffers. I think in the future I'll go back to drawing on the page.
Though, there are a few interesting things that happen what you do a panel on a completely separate page. With this one, I'd originally intended to cut off the panel around the scholar's thighs. Hence why I basically just scribbled in his legs without thinking. But as silly as those legs look, I'm kind of liking the way the whole image with the blank areas and all look.
