The first page of chapter 11, that is. Hope you like it--and you're ready for more!
I'm continuing the art style, layout plan and page size (768x1024 pixels) from the first chapter. I still think the graphic novel would be so much better if I could repaint everything in between, but...time, time, time.
New to Saltwater Witch, or ready to read more? Read it here.
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I'm working on a special edition of my book Nanowhere--amazing that I started writing it 7 years ago. I'm doing a bunch of illustrations, some maps, and other material--including some new character studies below. Also working on a handful of limited edition custom bindings with my daughter Chloe--I'm going to give or raffle these off. More on this, including some radical design pics when I have time.
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I couldn't wait. I spent part of today sketching and painting a couple things for October 8, Cephalopod Awareness Day. Here's one:
Just so it's clear that I wasn't totally slacking off over the weekend, I'm posting a bit from a series of comic/manga/graphic novel tutorials I'm creating—as much to help me learn more as to share anything I have learned with everyone else.
This is a new story--still under the sea, but with a character from Sea Throne. I'm starting from scratch, with a new drawing book, new style, taking this one step at a time, and documenting each with video and drawing and story building.
Looking at Youtube and all over the Web, there are a bunch of drawing tutorials—so I'm not going to tackle that. I'm also probably at the stage with drawing and painting where I'm learning more than I could ever teach.
One thing I can contribute is the storytelling, taking an existing story, breaking it up, doing the storyboarding, going through the steps, making tutorials out of the processes I've been using for a couple years with Saltwater Witch.
Please send along suggestions, anything you think would be cool to cover in a tutorial.
I want these tutorials to work and appear somewhat polished, so I'm putting some planning into them (yeah, I know, that's unusual). More on all of this later in the week. I'm expecting to post the first one next weekend.
In the meantime...some panels of the opening scene in the works, with the first two showing my main character Nikasia and the style I'm going with for art, characters, and color.
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I'm planning to launch into a pretty heavy two page Saltwater Witch spread this weekend, made up of several panels with Kassandra sitting comfortably on the edge of a very high building. I did some sloppy planning for most of it, but here's one of the more finished ones, a sketch I did at lunch today--not going to use this one, but I do like it. I originally had her arms outstretched like the bird's wings above her.
Saved out the painting in progress for the last panel from Saltwater Witch.
Final:
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A quick painting to explore plate armor
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Sketched this on my iPhone using the Brushes app, going for something a bit fun...although the shark is looking right at you!
.In-progress video:
Finished up painting another mermaid this morning--in the Brushes app on my iPhone. This one's a little manga-ish, and have I mentioned how much I love the layering features in Brushes? I don't think I'd be able to do shading anywhere near as subtle without layers.
Are you a Brushes user? I'm wondering how many use a stylus? I bought one, used it for a couple paintings, about twenty minutes and have never picked it up again. I'm doing all of these drawings, sketches, paintings with my fingers. Took me a bit to get it down, but I use the tools--brushes sizes, textures, undo, layers so much that I just couldn't work with the stylus--holding it and constantly shifting to change brushes, transparency, paint colors--all of this is so much easier with your fingers than with the stylus.
Here's the video:
SF & fantasy author of Seaborn, Illustrator of steampunk cities, software engineer
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