Helene
📝This archived post is originally from my old comics focused Wordpress blog from 2011-2019. That site was a space to publicly commit to learning the art and craft of cartooning and self-publishing.
These posts are full of a naive enthusiasm that though at times embarrassing, I'm proud of. I hope you find them useful in some way.❤️
Helene was created using bibliomancy.
As per my instructor, Jason Lutes’, request.I cracked open a French dictionary three times. Every time, I chose the first word on the page and used that word as turning point for the story 2 pages in, 4 pages in and 6 pages in. This assignment at the Center for Cartoon Studies marks the moment that I actively began to pursue the use of oblique strategies in my comics making process.
The words I got were the following: -to discover the world -to take flight
- journal
While working on this comic I was studying Dupuy and Berberian’s pacing. They use predominantly tall, narrow panels on a 3 tier grid. Because of this, their comics end up focusing on particular, seemingly unimportant moments. Though they’re often times depicting mundane events and arguably frivolous social dramas between their bourgeois characters, a reader can’t help but be hooked by their masterful pacing. The have an incredible handle on depicting city life.
Helene documents my first attempt at watercoloring a comic. This was done before I began daily watercolor practice. As such, there’s a coloring by numbers feel to much of it. I watercolored this using a light box, which presented an extremely unintuitive situation. The resulting colors were extremely light and often times to subtle. Because of that, I went in and worked like a dog in Photoshop to get the flow of colors to be more bold and dramatic.
