(A diary of the making of this chapter, which begins with the first day’s work at the bottom, and moves up)
March 13: summing up the last 6 months of work.
Yes, six months later, and I am still working on chapter 4. The slow pace partly because of interruptions and creative blocks, but also because this chapter turns out to be the longest so far, and I run into certain problems. And I’m still not finished with it!
So I’ll bring this up to date, starting with page 2, which I completed in late September. Pencils:
Inks (still just inkwashes, the line work remains pencil):
Page 3. I went through several versions of this, over the last couple weeks of October (MICE season. A pencil version that I abandoned. I don’t really remember what I didnt like about this. The placement of the figure, maybe?  
More pencils:
And the ink washes added to that version:
Again, five months later and I’m not sure why I wasn’t satisfied with this. But, apparently, I wasn’t. The shape of the skirt is a little blobby, maybe that was it. Anyway, here’s the final version. Maybe I’ll end up using the previous one, I don’t know. I got options!
Onto page 4, which was pretty simple, just one try (11/2/17):
September 20: Page one, at last!
After the slow process of the last few chapters, I’ve resolved to be more spontaneous, and allow myself fewer “re-do’s.” Here’s the first page, drawn in one try, without any additional rough versions. I changed the composition from the rough I’d done for the mockup, from this: 
To this, the pencils for the final page:
Before diving straight into the washes, I did a little digital experiment with tones, just to see how it might look, leaving the ground white and darkening the gate in the FG almost to black:
Good enough, so I did the same thing with washes. I made some other changes first. I added the professorial figure with the cane, on the right, to reinforce the academic setting. Then, digitally, I adjusted the lettering on the gate a little, because it felt out of perspective to me (by the way, that’s Latin for “knowledge is power.”) Final page:
Looking at it now, I think I might digitally darken the washes, and erase the pavement lines, to leave the ground a solid white shape with darker figures against it — more like the digital-tone version above. That’s more of the graphic look I’d like for this.
Continue reading ““Lunatic” process: chapter 4″ →
After the last chapter ballooned to 34 pages, I decided to compress my story-telling for a while. The next section is transitional, showing the character’s college career, as she knuckles down and studies hard. I knew that it would be showing her studying long and hard in the library, and I decided it to do it in only 3 images, a progression taking place over a few hours.  I chose to draw the same scene 3 times, from the same vantage point, a bird’s eye view of the library, with the character far below, close to the center of the image.  The changing positions of the characters, and the changing light, tells the story. I have some ideas how I will add tones/shading, sticking to my principle of changing techniques or materials in each chapter.
