This month I began working in a new format - miniature paintings!
A miniature of Mt. Elbert in Leadville, Colorado
Another miniature of Mt. Elbert - about 3 x 3 inches
Myst!
These mini paintings take about as much concentration or more as a larger painting, say an 8 x 10. Decisions just have to be better and more precise.
I'm still working through painting my memories, many of which involve video games from the 1990s - up next is a painting of an Arcology from Sim City 2000. Here is the underpainting and the original Arcology:
On the other side of the studio I have been finally working on something that has been in my to-do pile for months - lettering my comic, Tilted Sun.
I'm accomplishing the lettering project in Clip Studio Paint (Formerly known as Manga Studio). Although learning Clip Studio Paint took a few painful failures for me and several Googlings of how to get text to work the way I wanted, it's been worth it. (I might try illustrator for this too, soon?)
All in all lettering has made the comic more real. I've set up about 60 pages of the comic so far without any words, just scribbles of notes of the words that I wanted to use. Ironically this has worked to make the images more expressive - the images were working almost like a silent film until now.
The font I am using for the comic, Sequentialist, which is a pretty rad font!
The first part of the comic also took different turns than I expected - I had most of it written out but then decided to discard a lot of the first, second, x drafts, in favor of what felt better, or indulging "what the comic really wanted to say".
It continues to take me a long time to work on this comic because writing and doing art for and lettering a full color comic takes many hours of thought at different levels. Oil painting feels like a break compared to it. It works for me to spend time on both, especially since paintings emerge into the world as physical objects, and the comic just lives in screens (for now). So, painting is the day-by-day mini reward that helps me keep going through the comic.
All in all October was a solid month and November is off to a great start! Thanks for stopping by on the blog, and catch you soon!
