6-Commando

Wow.  I’m really beating the crap out of Major Bronniford, aren’t I?  It’s only page six and she’s already been “whraked” twice!  That’s war for you, though.

I was actually hesitant about this page, but I went for it.  I’m not exactly a pacifist, but I do abhor violence, especially against women.  But on the other hand, this is fiction, after all, and as a friend of mine once told me, if you’re going to write convincing fiction, you have to be prepared for bad things to happen to your characters.  And so, poor Sarah got pistol-whipped by a SMERSH agent.  To be honest, that’ll probably be the least of what happens in this story.

Artistically, I’m really, REALLY pleased with how this page turned out.  It’s maybe 95% brush, a first for me.  The hatching technique might be a bit of a departure from earlier pages, but not too much I don’t think, and it brought out the contours in Placeman’s face and the Russian’s hand much better than I’d expected.  There were also a number of mishaps in the process, with that much wet ink on the page – for my fellow artists, I can’t recommend zinc-white gouache highly enough – it’s much better than white-out or poster paint.

At any rate, one thing I do want to mention is that, for those of you in the U.S., there was an interesting news story this past week I commented about on the master page, Vicious Print.  It’s not much to look at, but I’ve been putting little essays of my own up there, and you might be interested to read them.  The most recent one, The Prevention of Art, is about the not-very-well-reported NEA “scandal” that broke in late September, and it’s a story I think may have relevance for comic artists in particular.  I have a pretty libertarian point of view and I tackle politics a lot, so if you’re easily annoyed or riled up by that kind of thing, well… I don’t know.  It’s there.

So another week goes by.  Back to the drawing table!