From when I first started thumbnailing Furlough 3, I knew I wanted the first page to be a single large image, a pinup in a way I hadn’t really worked with before. My artistic tradition started with drawing in the margins of notes in class, so drawing larger has been intimidating to me. I’m getting over it, fortunately.

In ways, the making of this cover is much like the way I drafted the rest of the book. Thumbnail in pencil, light sketch in blue pencil (a nearly devoured nub of a thing whose brand was sharpened away sometime in the last month), a more solid sketch in blue pencil (Turquoise Prismacolor drawing leads in a Koh-I-Noor Technigraph lead holder, HB but feels harder, so it makes me make more defined lines when I use it), and finally the inked drawing itself, done on fresh bristol over a light table.

The rest of the book is ink right on top of my penciled photo-blue lines, but page one and the covers, I did with the light table.

So here’s my rough sketch, based on the thumbnail I drew back in November or so.

Unlike some other pages, this image doesn’t date to when I originally wrote the script in late 2009, but it’s been pretty solid and consistent since I started editing the script for this issue.

Here’s the first, rougher pencil.

I darkened it in Photoshop so you could see what the hell I was talking about, but in person, it’s definitely lighter than pencil two.

As you can see, it’s much much tighter. I did take a photo reference for this, which I am not posting. No no no. It was really helpful, though – I would’ve never guessed that the center of the ribcage would stick out like that when someone was in this position. It also made me miss figure drawing, which I need to get back into. It helped when I was drawing this issue, and I didn’t go nearly as many times as I’d have liked.

I did two inked versions of this. The first had some freakish head stuff going on, and I messed up the couch cushions, so it is currently in my building’s recycling bin. This one is delightfully less mutated. Here, I’ve added the email screenshot inset and the lettering.

Rather lovely, no? I’m really happy with how it came out. It feels like the culmination of a solid month-plus spent drawing and doing little else. I inked with Higgins Black Magic Waterproof Ink (I’ve tried others and always wound up pissed off or disappointed), a Hunt 102 nib, and the larger silver kind that isn’t an A, B, or C something or other. I just tried to Google it and had no luck, so I’m just going to hope you know what I’m talking about.

So that’s page one. There are 35 others in Furlough 3, which is going to be an actual, physical object by Friday, which you can buy from me this weekend at the Emerald City Comicon. (Table M-27! Stop by! Bring friends!)

This week will be another mad rush of preparing, but after the slog of finishing this comic (which concluded with an 18-hour spree of page completion, lettering, and questioning the value of human life), it all seems like the easiest cake that ever did cake.

I’ve penciled 29 of 36 pages (whew). I originally planned to finish this weekend, but I inked five different pictures today. They’re for the shows my illustration group is doing toward the end of the week. That ate most of the evening, so the grand completion of penciling didn’t happen quite as I’d like. It’ll work out ok, though.

To warm up tonight, I made this little… thing.

Yes. Well.

I’m going to pencil a page or two, go to sleep, do my day job, and then tomorrow evening… more. More and more and more still, all the way to the Emerald City Comicon.

And this is my warm-up drawing.

This is approximately how I feel right now. My sock doesn’t have a hole in it, though.

My comics and illustration group is holding two Valentine’s Day shows this month, because we are wildly ambitious, and because a single building’s walls are not enough to contain our artistic greatness.

The first is at Cafe Racer, and it opens Thursday, February 10th, 2011. Better, prettier information and flier to come once these things are in my hot little hands.

The second is at the Fantagraphics Bookstore. It’s called Lovesick, and you can see more, including the rad flier drawn by one of our number. It takes place Saturday, February 12th, as part of the third anniversary of the Georgetown Art Attack.*

I’m working on some complementary pieces, and I think I’m going to aim at making them into a set of prints. Here are a couple of my wee sketches for these.

I’ve been doing a fair amount of drawing lately. I’ve passed the halfway point of penciling Furlough 3 (AT LONG LAST, OH MY GOD, IT’S HAPPENING), and I’m doing a lot of other art too. Other art. Sounds a shade sinister when put that way, no? Here’s a pencil drawing I did at my art group last week.

So that’s me. Day job work + exercise + comicking + the occasional gulp of air – adequate sleep = the life of Breanne Boland, urban sophisticate and gal about town.

But you should have a larger life, one that includes going to galleries for fabulous-as-hell art shows. I hear it’s nice; report back.

*Doesn’t it sound like I’m inviting you to a vigil? I’m not, though.

And I’ve been having weird and vivid dreams lately. Here a pencil comic version of one I had last week. Click to embiggen.

Like I said a few days ago, I’m working on a mini for the Bureau of Drawers. I’ve finished the primary drawing for it. Its tentative title: Sausage Stew.

This is the first really concentrated drawing I’ve done since I finished Furlough two. As such, my attention span could use some work; I’ve found my mind wandering. And when my mind wanders at a time when I have a pen in my hand, it usually wanders to the margins of what I’m working on.

To wit:

Next post: more Stew preview, and possibly even information about how and where to acquire the amazing anthologies that my cartooning group just keeps creating. We cannot be stopped, you know.

Post script: I find it funny that, even when I’m doing precisely the kind of work I want to do, I still drift and draw in the margins, much like I used to in math class or meetings at work. I cannot be stopped, you know.

Ink: verb
1. To make penciled lines permanent for purposes of artwork.
2. To make amazing lapses in perception crystal clear in ways that pencil cannot convey.

Still working on Furlough two here, and it’s still going pretty well. However, on Friday, I discovered a magical bit of perspective-based fuckery that I simply must share with you.

I use reference pictures and occasionally get a mirror to try out postures and do other little checks and balances to make sure that my little drawn peoples never look too mutated. However, sometimes, well, it takes STARK BLACK LINES to make something perceptible. Observe:

For a moment, I was happy – oh, those fingers turned out pretty well. Then… well. It made me think of this:

We’ll, um, fix that in post. Yes.

In happier art news, here’s today’s warm-up sketch:

Based on a couple of couples I saw last night. I hope their dog has wire-rimmed glasses too.

P.S. We are currently at 424 for the spam count. I cheated a little and closed comments on my most frequently spammed post. 76 more and I’m going to get to start illustrating Abraham Lincoln quotes posted in Russian.

Seriously, you guys, look:

I finished penciling page 35 yesterday, but I wanted to do a wee bit of inking before I went to bed. So that’s where we are.

Last issue, I was basically sprinting toward the Emerald City ComiCon*; this time, I’m trying to be more leisurely, to experiment and perhaps lean on the perfect side of “Done is better than perfect” a little more.

I did notice differences in the way I work, while penciling. I’m having that feeling of, “Wow, walking up this hill is easier since I’ve been running on the treadmill so much!” Things that freaked me right out on issue one – backgrounds, some furniture, other non-human things that needed to be drawn – were easier, occasionally to the point that I didn’t give them any special thought at all beyond, “Wow, this used to be hard as hell.” It is extremely satisfying to see things getting better and easier, and to be able to shift my attention to other things I need to work on.

*Almost every time I write this, I start to write “Emerald Coast ComiCon,” and I have to correct myself. I’ve lived in two different places that label themselves the Emerald Something, which creates some weird confusion on my part. I do it when speaking too sometimes, earning me some very weird looks from people.

First off, a note about my goings on: I’m going to be at the Stumptown Comics Festival in Portland, Oregon this coming weekend, April 24-25. I honestly do not know if I’ll have a table, but I’ll definitely be wandering around there at least one day. I’ll update when/if I know more about my having a flat surface on which to hawk my wares.

Now then: I’m working on Furlough issue two – and reworking. I wrote the full four-issue script before I started thumbnailing issue one, but I knew there would be changes as I went along. You can’t look at a story for so long without having some new ideas.

Well, for this one, I opened my existing issue two script (which I hadn’t looked at since December) and went, “Oh, shit – nothing actually, um, happens.” It was all in-between scenes as it brought the story closer to its climax and conclusion. Necessary, but as a separate bound volume, it would not exactly have been scintillating stuff. So I’m working around that, moving some issue three things to issue two, and adding some new stuff too.

I love editing, although it’s a little harder with this because it’s my own. Behold:

Historically, I’ve had a little bit of cart-before-horse syndrome. I’ve made myself completely hold off on thumbnailing this issue until I get the script right. But back when I was writing the first draft of all four issues, there were panels and scenes whose layout and look were established even then. And now that I’m going over it again, pen in hand, I can’t resist putting a few things on paper.

So: progress. This script ran a little long (nine pages (!), compared to issue one’s five), but I think it’s what the story wants. As all artists are merely slaves to what the muse gives us, who am I to balk?

I officially started penciling Furlough tonight. I meant to do it forever ago, but I got completely bogged down in the editing process.

“Why,” I asked myself, “is this proving to be so damned hard? I’ve been writing stories since I was 12, I’ve written a metric fuckton in the last decade, so I shouldn’t be so stuck on a 20-page comic script for a four-issue comic.” (That’s my current estimate, incidentally.)

Well, I figured it out. Yes, I have written a metric fuckton. What I haven’t done oodles of is, um, finishing things. Finishing them and taking them through the editing process and watching it necessarily mutate as you show it to other people and hammer out dents and make it into something real that can survive daylight. Workshopping? My degree might as well be in that. But finishing something and making it right? No.

I’m there now. I thumbnailed the entire first issue, and I penciled the first three pages tonight. That’s the vicious, thrilling schedule: three pages penciled or inked each day through March 7. Why March 7? Because the Emerald City Comicon is March 13th, and I will have a completed issue of Furlough for it, if I have to draw til my fingers bleed and stay at my desk until my eyes dry out. So: three pages per day. OR BUST. Lookit:

From page two.

Amy Martin told me that a convention would make me get things done. She should’ve cackled maniacally afterward, like a movie gypsy delivering a prophecy.

I also posted more zines on my Etsy store. I had to refresh my inventory of the Creativity Zine and the Surreal Moments zine (exciting!), so I added a couple other smaller ones I made for swaps, but with an eye to other people as well. One’s just text, which is funny to me; it feels so weird to make a zine entirely on the computer. Like I faked it or something. The other is, um, the opposite of that. Wholly handwritten, done in one draft, and possibly done while being influenced by a fair and welcome amount of tequila. It’s a screed, make no mistake, but it’s a screed that looked just fine to me the next morning.