It’s been a minute since my last blog post! I have a LOT of art to share, but I will start with some of my favorite sketches out of my sketchbook. A lot of it is Chiara (and some Jonathan)–it’s exciting to see her evolution in my art as I draw her more.
All of these sketches are done with some combination of fountain pen, ballpoint pen, Blackwing pencils, Mildliners and Kuretake Zig Clean Colors.
Ooh, it’s been a minute since my last post! I’ve been on vacation in Seoul while falling back in love with traditional art, specifically watercolors and markers. At Seoul, I had the pleasure of going to the Hangaram Stationary Art Store and buying so many art supplies, but most importantly, I got a bottle of Platinum Carbon Black (a black ink that flows well in fountain pens and is resistant to water) and a couple more Kakunos, which have been my favorite fountain pen to draw with as of late.
Anyway, here’s the latest sketch dump.
I assembled a tiny Art Toolkit with my watercolors and swatched them all. I think I have a lovely little paint set here, although next. time I might change the Pyrrol Orange for something else.
Lately I’ve been thinking more about my main antagonist, Marcello di Ferro. As a character, he’s been with me for a little over a decade, but the original story I created him for was a bit of a mess (who hasn’t created a terrible story in college before?!). Repurposing him for La Principessa as a rich newspaper mogul worked out so much better than expected!
Daylight savings time has me exhausted as usual, but I’m somehow reminded that I need to post some stuff out of my sketchbooks again (some of which I’ve neglected to post in a while… whoops). Mix of the traditional sketchbook and the Supernote this time!
Been a little quiet on this blog and online in general because I’m excited to say: I finished my second draft of La Principessa and now I’m in the middle of a comic-creating flurry.
I’m really glad I tackled my first draft as practically a stream of consciousness, which is how I did my first draft of Cans of Beans as well. I don’t do well with intensive outlines and plotting! It’s on my 2nd draft that I spend some time analyzing what I’m trying to say and what the themes, character arcs, etc. are, and then edit/build towards that. I find writing way more fun that way.
The next step (besides sending out this draft to my marvelous friends for reading) is to start thumbnailing the dang thing, which I’m doing in my trusty Supernote. Chapter 1 of thumbnailing is complete because I’m so dang excited!
Just so you have a little treat of what these comic pages are looking like, here’s a little preview. Ciao!
Forgot I never posted these, more sketches out of my Supernote! It’s very Chiara-centric. What can I say? I love drawing this girl!
I saw a photo of a couple of young Italian girls in identical dresses, and I thought that dress would look adorable on Chiara.
Reference Photo from Slim Aarons – La Dolce Vita by Christopher Sweet
Lately I’ve been finding a lot of comfort in drawing Jonathan. He’s an OC who’s been with me since middle school, and while his backstory has changed a LOT since then (he used to be a magical writer with depression… lol), I keep returning to drawing him and trying to figure out how to weave him into a story. I think with La Principessa, I finally found a home for him that makes sense.
I would describe this week as ‘low energy’ and ‘sad & tired,’ so these aren’t my best doodles by any means, but it’s good to keep pushing myself to doodle, even if I don’t really want to.
“Signora Stassi, when the hell did we let an Englishman into my home?”
This is a scene from Chapter 2 of La Principessa, but I couldn’t wait to get around to actually drawing the comic pages, I wanted to draw it nowwww