five string serenade - page 18 - go walkin' down there (page 1) 



here came a big switch in styles, and page sizes. all of the work in five string serenade to this point was 11 x 17 folded in half in a large booklet, drawn at a very large scale indeed--pushing 18" x 24"! don't ask me why. but, evidently tired of lugging these huge pads around with me, i began drawing at a much smaller scale, and producing the minicomics that made up this collection at a folded half 8 1/2" x 11" size.

almost at once my hard angular lines disappear: and a lighter, sketchier--'mousier' i am also told--style emerges, while the wash doesn't quickly reappear, a growing reliance on an almost pencilled look emerges.

the pencilled look is often criticized. many people seeing it on the web are happy to dive in and tell me that if only i had inked it (!) then it wouldn't look so unprofessional. lights as eminent as jeff mason and salgood sam have been happy to tell me this: my defense that, hey, it's my comic, and hey, my established style, have been rewarded by stony silence; both of 'em, i think, believed at the time that i was some thirteen-year-old snot-nosed kid refusing to take advice from his betters.

but hey, ya know what? i ain't, and plainly i'm not here to make friends or to suck up. this is what i do, and while 'real' indy comics artists can sneer, i might point out that the phrase 'real indy comic artists' has not a little in common with 'real grocery baggers' or 'real deli sandwich makers,' or 'real copy jockeys,' or 'real bookstore clerks.' no one in the 'real world' gives two bits for us, and someday we'll all be dead anyway.

so, having condemned myself to professional failure again, the first, and very uneventful, page of 'go walkin' down there' . . .


 


 
. . . lies . . . lies . . . lies . . . half truths . . . 

Posted: Fri - April 22, 2005 at 05:49 PM             |

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