In this exercise, I am choosing an area of authorial practice and selecting an image from my own gallery appropriate for the practice.  I will identify an audience for my work within the area I’ve chosen.

I went through my work and selected the elements I enjoy the most.  I made notes alongside the illustration to determine what makes the image enjoyable.

Review A

• I enjoy the unpredictable effects of watercolour and Indian ink.  It can result in exciting outcomes and give character to an illustration even though you learn to manipulate and control the medium.
• Watercolour, Indian ink, alcohol markers, coloured pencils and acrylic paints seem to render my favourite artworks.
• I enjoy layering watercolour paints and love the textures of watercolour paper.
• I like the idea of a hand-drawn image with cross-hatching, line weights, and shadows.

Review B 

• When working digital, I like using fabric cut-outs as a fill.
• Creating a vintage feel in digital work using photos of old paper together with layering and blending modes is a technique with a favourable outcome.
• Sometimes I like to draw in pencil, ink in Photoshop and render with watercolours or alcohol inks after printing the image on the appropriate paper.  
• Mixed media gives me the best outcome up to date. 

After looking at reviews A and B, I have concluded that the work I enjoy the most is traditional work usually created with Indian ink, watercolour, alcohol markers and coloured pencils.  I have decided to use traditional media for this project and recreate the areas of my work that I enjoy the most.  I will use my character from “Character Development” in Part 4 in context to a sequential narrative as a comic strip and therefore develop the illustration towards editorial publishing.  The typical audience of the magazine is men and women between the age of 35 and 65 who read to relax.  This comic strip will be published in the “Daily Cartoon” section of the magazine.

I am still waiting for my recommended reading book, Comics, Comix and Graphic Novels: A History of Comic Art by Roger Sabin, but in the meantime, I have resorted to the book; How to draw comics: The Marvel Way by Stan Lee and John Buscema.  David Finch and Ryan Benjamin are the comic artists I have researched.  I have never done a comic strip before, and although my style is not similar to Marvel Comics, I learned a lot from professional comic artists’ methodologies and creative processes.

I started by writing a draft script to establish a narrative and the information I wanted to get across to the viewer.  Once I had a story on paper, I had to decide how to get the information across emotionally and visually.  I divided the story into five sections and then decided on the size of each panel and the layout of all five panels together. I made a list of all the elements I needed in each frame (figure 4 no. 7) and made thumbnail sketches.  I erased and worked with the drawings until I felt I was telling the story in the most interesting and effective way.  I also considered different viewpoint and how it ties in with the narrative.  The first frame is the establishing shot to give the viewer a sense of the figure’s environment; from there, I ‘zoomed in’ to show what happens next.

Once I had thumbnails down with the correct composition, I chose a sketch for each frame and did a reduced sized layout of what I want the finished comic to look like.  This gave me room to still edit things, for example, possible tangents that can develop when panels are placed next to each other.

Once I was happy with the complete layout, I scanned it into Photoshop and blew it up to A3 size.  I used my Wacom Tablet as a lightbox and traced the bigger size directly onto A3 paper.  I then added my line weights and shadows with pencil until the comic was a completed pencil drawing.

I now had a very good sense of where I wanted the shadows or if I wanted to draw attention to an element by using tone.  Now I am ready to ink the comic using brush pens filled with water and Indian ink for my mid-tones and a black brush pen for the very dark areas. 

In conclusion, I have learned how to construct a comic layout and the 180-degree rule to be aware of the details the viewer will see in each frame when changing viewpoint.  David Finch talked about common mistakes and how to establish a good composition for each individual frame but also in relation to the other frames.  I am looking forward to doing my next comic and building on what I have learned in this exercise.