Option 3: A Comic Book
I was initially intrigued by the idea of exploring option one: gradual destruction through drawing or painting. I had some chemicals in mind that I thought might produce interesting reactions. However, I decided to stick to an area I am more interested in improving/learning more of and focused on creating a short comic book story.
Drawing from previous exercises and my experience on tackling them, I aimed to keep the "story" element relatively simple. I often overestimate my ideas for smaller exercises, making them hard to complete within the given time. For this reason, I chose to document a slow walk.
Last year, I finished a small illustration inspired by a "Peachtober" prompt. It was a straight forward 4-panel comic in a square format. I do think the illustration turned out quite well, and I still enjoy looking back at it, hoping to create more works like it. For this exercise, I considered capturing the same feeling I achieved in that illustration.
The word for this illustration was "sky" and quite early on I had this concept in mind. To help capture the actual vision I had, I searched high and low of image reference that featured the perspective I was looking to achieve.
Using a similar process, I wanted to capture my own reference images that I could illustrate from. On a cold Saturday afternoon I took the route I had in mind and brought along my camera to take some snaps of the views, little details of nature, and of course, the horses. I wanted this comic to capture the feeling when taking this particular route. It's a stone throw away from the town, yet feels to be miles away in a rural tranquility. When you take the walk at a good time, you could be the only one there, and despite the odd helicopter, plane or car passing by, it feels like the perfect peaceful escape. I'm fortunate to have a few accessible spots like this very close by, but this one has different points that you can reach which can make it either a quick walk to a very long walk.
Here are the thumbnails of the photos shot from this walk with a friend.
All the horses had coats on, which didn't exactly fit my wild horses vision I originally had for this idea. That said, I did manage to get a few variety of poses and well, coats will just have to part of it.
The intention with the photos was to get a variety of landscape, closeup of nature, walking shots , and horses - I really wanted to get some good horse photos to work with!
From here my plan, as mentioned above, was to create a comic that had a similar affect to the illustration I created last year. I'm not sure the best way of describing it in words, but there is a silence in this type of comic which gives feeling. You sense the space, the loneliness, the silence, maybe it's the wandering, the ability to position yourself in the frame and already know what it must feel like, I'm not sure. There's a pace to the comic which feels mindful, and when there's no words with the images, you're left to your senses, your interpretation and your response.
I like this style, I often gravitate towards it when I think of comic ideas. Ideas come in several ways, visually there's a blurry outline of an idea, then theres the emotion attached to that vision, it's then a matter of connecting those into a narrative, and how to best convey this in a way that can be familiar, relatable, or needed.
So, with that said, I got to work with sketching very rough thumbnails for the pages.
The sketch included a build up page, but once I had sketched it I had already felt that this page was not necessary and that perhaps the way to show that this is a walk to escape the distractions and reconnect/recharge in nature, could be achieved in 1 or 2 frames. Or, perhaps this detail is just not needed at all and the walk will speak for itself. For now, the page exists as putting thoughts down, the problem solving can be later!
Once I had these initial page ideas down, I wanted to go in and edit them. I want the pages to feel interesting, to feel slow and mindful of details that would be noticed when walking. The first draft are quite basic with achieving this and so I wanted to explore flow in each page by switching panels around or focusing on different moments.
These pages were beginning to align more closely with my goal, and by redrawing certain sections, I came to like and enjoy this drawing style using the pencil in Procreate. Although I enjoy the energy of the sketching phase, I don't often leave drawings like this. Typically, I use them as a foundation to "ink" a finished piece, which, although this does have its benefits and value, it can also often results in a loss of texture, movement and energy. A completely different vibe all together!
For example, I took the final page of the horses to the next phase with ink and testing noise texture for the background.
I was quite unhappy with this version which is what had sparked the different renders in the edited pages. The black and white in the horse just didn't feel right, I missed the depth that a pencil can achieve. The background also didn't work for me. I wouldn't call this awful, but it lacked that something you can connect with.
Based on this, my final comic might stay as a pencil drawing, as I'm keen to see how this could look traditionally.
Now that my pages were taking shape, I thought about how I could present this comic. I liked the idea of working traditionally and on a larger scale so that it could be sized down for print. To do this I ran over the sketches with a black ink brush on procreate, I then printed the pages split across A4 so that I could stick them together to create A3 templates. Working from the black pen lines would make it easier to trace the general composition which I could then work into more using pencil. I've worked digitally quite a lot in recent exercises (and for work), I miss creating final pieces traditionally and so planned to try do as much as possible in this part of the course.
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