David Malki! posts smart advice for convention goers.

(His Wondermark! books are also some of the best internet-to-print conversions I’ve ever seen. So worthwhile.)

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 am 85 percent done with Furlough three.

35 pages are penciled, inked, and corrected. One is penciled and will be completed tomorrow – first thing, I hope. The covers are penciled and need to be inked and painted. I need to finish scanning, to do digital correction, to letter. This will all be done by Sunday night. It’s going to be a busy weekend, but it’s exactly the right amount of work. Far from insurmountable.

I’m going to do a process post in the next couple of days. My method evolves with every project, and it’s with great pleasure that I see my techniques evolve and see, immediately and vividly, what I’ve learned from previous projects. This time, I’m bringing the lessons from Sausage Stew (varied line widths), my pages in the upcoming Bloor anthology (drawing larger, shrinking down), a couple of art shows (revision), and months and months of high-volume drawing to these pages (a more refined style), and I’m thrilled to be able to see it. My biggest hope for my newest project, whatever it may be, is that it’s the best thing I’ve made so far.

I also love seeing the tools and materials other people use – cartoonists are greedy to know what nib, what brush, what ink, and I’m no exception. Hope Larson included a note about her materials in Mercury, and I was elated. I wish everyone did that. So I will here. I’ll also post all the steps that went into the covers too, since I actually have several versions of sketches for that. I meant to show the evolution of a page, but I wanted so badly to just get things done that I never scanned any of my in-process pages. You’ll get the idea anyway.

Tonight will be the second night in a row I’ve been up til six am. Tomorrow may well make it three. Sunday night, I upload to the printer. And then next week… next week will be the miscellany week. I’m going to replenish my zine inventory, make fun little things to sell, package the print sets I’m making, create new and prettier table signs (inspired by the lovely ones my ECCC tablemate, Chris Furniss, made), rehearse my display, and… oh yes, work my day job, try to get enough sleep ahead of the show, and pretend at normal life a little bit, since I haven’t been lately.

I want to jump right into Furlough four, because I have some good momentum going right now. But I’m going to take at least a couple weeks off post-ECCC. My dreams are modest. I want to sleep and read, to get more exercise, to go out to dinner, to watch more movies, to have a few days where my fingers aren’t stained with ink. But then it’ll be back to it, because the thrill of finishing this, of completing what’s basically a graphic novella, is too thrilling to dodge for long. I’m already thinking about what to do next. I want something fantastical – I want to draw tentacles and more cartoonish faces and more outlandish people and places. I’ve joked for a while that my next story will be about amoebas vs. cubes in a featureless white void, but it’s becoming more of a joke than it was for a while. (I’ve been envying the simplicity of xkcd, all the while knowing that I embroider things far too much for that style ever to work for me.) I don’t know what’ll be next, but I’m so excited for it.

Fewer words and more pictures tomorrow, I promise. That’s also a good summary of the day I hope to have.

See you on the other side.

I’m working on a sketch of a Marvel character.

Well, I didn’t experiment much in college. Guess I have to get the weird stuff out of the way at some point.

Here my work, on the wall.

And here’s the entire photoset on Facebook (don’t worry, it’s public). Included: copies of Furlough and How to Be Creative, for sale! And selling! Exciting!

It’s there through March 9. Go see, Seattlelites.

And documented:

So that’s her. Furlough 3, in her two-fifths-complete glory.

I’m a listmaker by nature, and I must say, my lists for the next three weeks are hilarious. (Sometimes hilarious is an upbeat synonym I use for “freaking unbelievable.”)

The Fantagraphics and Cafe Racer shows went great. I didn’t take pictures, but some of my fellow Bureaucrats did. I’ll post some later. I sold some comics that night, and that might be even more exciting: my comics are currently being sold at Fantagraphics. Woot!

Enough chatting, time to work.

And you should come out and see it. I have a piece in the show (as well as three others in the series at our ongoing show at Cafe Racer, along with a ton of other great art – seriously, both shows came together so well).

Here’s my piece at the Fantagraphics show:

Sweethearts #1, 5×7, ink and watercolor. One of a series of four. The other three of which I’ll post over the weekend. I signed it after I scanned it.

Pssst… I finished penciling Furlough last night. I’m going to start preliminary inking tonight – mainly panel borders, as I’m tired as hell and probably shouldn’t try to do anything in the way of nuance until I’ve slept for about twelve hours. I’m going to do a post in the next couple of weeks about my process for this one, since it changes with every project. This version involves two kinds of non-photo blue lead, drawing at 150 percent of the finished size, and (of course) ye olde inkpot and nibs. Plus I’m becoming a more confident penciler, so I’d rather like to show you that anyway.

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.

For information about Like-Like, the show at Cafe Racer, look here.