This Week on Comic Tools: Things you should read

I think I have the only blog dedicated solely to the kind of information I post about, but I'm certainly not the only one posting about their tools and technique. And thank goodness for that, because the gaps in my knowledge are so big a drunk oil tanker pilot could careen through them without being in danger of hitting the edges. I love following artist's blogs not only to see their art and keep up on what's going on with them, but also because every so often they'll post a tip or tutorial, and very often they'll fill in those holes just a little bit more.

One of the hugest, most glaring gaps in my knowledge is ink wash drawing. I know how to work in Guache and watercolor, but ink wash is something I know nothing about. So when Comic Tools reader Andrew emailed me requesting an entry about ink wash drawing, I lit up the Comic Tools signal in a plea for help from the readers. And boy, did it pay off! Reader's Raluca and Sarah left great information from their experience in the comments for that entry, and then Mark linked me to the greatest tutorial I could possibly imagine, a 14 page exerpt from a larger text titled "Famous Artists on Wash Painting. " It's exactly the kind of hyper-detailed, excessively specific, sort-of-bossy old-fashioned art tutorial writing that I bade my writing for Comic Tools off of. Comic Tools is, in fact, a pale, crappy imitation of exactly this sort of thing. Mark, if you're reading this, I want to kiss you, and probably so does Andrew.
Andrew, I give you Part one and Part two of the ink washing lesson. Click on all the pages to make them larger. And Mark, bless you, sir, you are a scholar and a gentleman. I notice that the site the tutorials are posted on asks for donations- if anyone has the money, you really ought to toss them something for making these resources available. I'm going to root around their site when I have more time, and I'll very likely find more there that I'll want to link to here.

A problem that plagued me for years, and which still gives me some trouble, is knowing how to shade ink drawings. Where to put blacks, and why? The amazing , made this 3 page handout for his inking students explaining just that. I had been planning to cover some of this on Comic Tools, but there's no way I could have done this good a job. Here's a link to Cho's original post. Go and thank him for making this available to everybody.
As long as I'm talking about Cho, I want you all to look at this sketch he did:

Makes you want to cry, right? Look How well-planned the blacks and whites are. Note how he hardly uses lines at all to describe forms, just light and texture. Look how unfussy yet neat his mark making on the brick is, how he changes it to fit the lighting. Look at the drybrushing he uses on the wooden fence and the overhang on the roof and in the clouds in the sky, how it gives the drawing softness and texture. This one sketch is like 30 Comic Tools entries rolled into one sublime expression of skill and control. And he calls it a "sketch." God damn you to hell Cho, you extraordinary son of a bitch.

Here's something that every single cartoonist should have handy. Hell, they should have it memorized. It's a guide to photocopying, silkscreening, and offset printing by Ron Rege Jr., Dave Choe, Brian Ralph and Jordan Crane. You can download the PDF by going here: www.reddingk.com/img/reproguide.pdf. Whether you make minicomics or professionally printed books, no professional should be running around without knowing everything in this guide. Absolutely mandatory reading.

Another piece of mandatory reading is the infamous critique Alex Toth gave to Steve Rude. Rude sent the penciled pages of a Johnny Quest story to Toth, asking him what he thought. Toth let him know. Some see Toth's intense, brick-by-brick critique as being angry or hostile. Quite the contrary, Toth thought Rude a good artist, and respected Rude enough to take quite a lot of time to look at Rude's work very, very carefully. He saw Rude being lazy and taking shortcuts, and as Toth said right at the beginning, Rude was too good to be that bad. Toth's voice should be the internal monologue in our heads, pushing us out of laziness and into greatness, calling us on our bullshit, loving us. The last page of Toth's critique is the purest expression I've ever seen of exasperation at wasted potential. Toth wants to see the work he knows Rude CAN make, but doesn't. He is saying to Rude, GET UP. BE WHAT I KNOW YOU CAN BE. BE GREAT.

If you've ever wondered when you should bold text, or when to use a double dash versus an elipsis, or when to spell versus write out numbers in comics, then you should read this nifty guide to Comics Grammar and Tradition by Blambot's Nate Piekos. It answers all these questions and more, and contains tips from people such as master letterers Todd Klein and Clem Robins, and Dark Horse editor Scott Allie.
Josiah Leighton wrote a post recently the got linked to pretty heavily, wherein he went panel-by-panel and described exactly why Jeff Smith is an amazing fucking cartoonist. It's kind of like the Toth Crititque or Steve Rude except good. But what I wanted you all to see was his summarizing paragraph, which may be the most concise, correct guide for how to frame a shot I've ever heard:

The lesson here, as I believe Smith so eloquently demonstrates, is follow your gut when it comes to framing shots. Imagine you are in the situations you have cooked up for your characters, and think about what you’d be looking at. If you’ve just reached the top of that mountain, you’re not going to be checking your shoes for dirt. Take in that scene. Would you even notice the wallpaper when you’re dining with a woman that beautiful? Show your reader what you would see, and only what you would see, through your eyes. And don’t think twice about moving that camera.

If you're not reading Josiah's blog, you should be. It's a comics course for free. I've paid for classes at SVA that taught me way less than any one of these articles on action in comics.
Go and pillage his blog for everything it has to teach you.

For years I used photoshop without knowing about any of the key commands. My room mate Erika Moen eventually clued me in to them. Don't be embarrassingly ignorant like me. Here's a nifty little guide to photoshop key commands. They will make your life easier.

Craig Thompson linked to my interview with him, and when he did he posted a photo of this great thing he has on his brush to help with his hand pain.
Craig is often posting process sketches and before-after pages to show his process, and anyone who likes Comic Tools should peruse his old posts and add his blog to their reader.

That's all for this week! Come back next week when I talk about How to get the Perfect White Out Consistency.

Lettering Day!

Lessons from two SVA alumni:

-Exaulted letterer Todd Klein has a website, with some lettering and design instruction. It covers hand and computer lettering, and even includes a lesson on balloon placement.

-If you didn't think Matt Bernier was insanely dedicated to lettering before, check out this incredible pen hack:



So, to explain what you're seeing a little better:

While sifting through the immense piles of junk left behind by my late grandmother, we occasionally come upon something worth keeping, and one such item was an old fountain pen that my grandfather got for his years of service at Central Maine Power.

As you can see in the picture titled "original configuration", it was a basic plastic fountain pen. The nib is enclosed on the bottom and top by plastic, which the ink creeps down through to supply the nib with ink. The piece securing the bottom of the nib is actually a tapered plug of plastic that fits inside the larger tube that makes up the front of the exterior body of the pen and which hoods over the top of the nib. The inner plug has ink channels which suck up ink into the pen when it is filled. Going further back into the pen, we find a needle thin plastic tube that regulates the flow of ink into the ink chamber created by the gap between the plastic plug and the outer shell. This is to prevent blotting. This tube sticks out of the front section of the pen and into the rubber baggie. The rubber baggie is where the ink goes. Like an organ, it is protected by the outer shell of the back of the pen. On the side of the outer shell is a lever which, when pulled down with your thumbnail, causes a metal foot to squish the little baggie against the side of the pen, squeezing out the ink inside. Releasing the lever allows the bag to re-expand, drawing ink into the pen. This is how filling, or, if you prefer, squirting of the pen is achieved.

Now, I do have specialty fountain pen ink. But  it's too thin to make good lines for reproduction, and I wanted to use the pen for lettering. So I put in india ink. It said it was suitable for technical pens, so I figured I'd be okay with clogging. BIG mistake. As I found out, and then later read on every website that discussed fountain pen care, the lacquer base in india ink will seize a pen permanently. But I was unfazed- I've saved brush pens that were clogged, so I figured that a fountain pen could not possibly be as big a challenge.

My first barrier to entry was the bagie, which was glued on. I had to remove it to access the inside of the pen. I carefully loosened it and slipped it off, leaving it to soak in hot water after rinsing it. Then I removed the little tube, using a needle to drive out the solidified ink blocking the way. Then I spent two hours cleaning out all the gunk that had filled the ink chamber. Now it was time to reassemble.

The glues in my house were not suitable to re-seal the baggie, and all my attempts leaked ink. I needed another plan. I was staring at the end, wondering how to stick this crumbly old rubber baggie back on, and then it hit me: the opening looked very close to the size of my brush pen ink cartridge. I thought it might just work, because of the special properties of brush pen ink. The Japanese were the first, and as far as I know, only to have developed waterproof india ink with such finely ground pigment that it won't clog a brush pen. I thought that perhaps it might work in a fountain pen. I grabbed a cartridge to see how they fit. The cartridge was too small. But cartridges taper to get wider at the back; what if I cut the back off and stuck it on that way? I looked like it would just work. Even though it meant losing a cartridge if it failed, I tried it anyway. (I left out the ink regulator, because india ink is thicker, and I'd actually found the pen a little too dry even with wetter ink.) I had to jam it on so the plastic whitened a bit, but it worked. It formed a perfect seal, it drew beautifully, and one week on and it hasn't clogged at all. Furthermore, it's easier to clean, and it refills with cartridges. And the lines are waterproof. The only downside is that I had to lop the back end off the pen to get the cartridge to fit, but an ugly stalk is a small price to pay for the best pimped out pen I've ever used.

-Matt Bernier

According to a NY Times article from a few weeks back, Tony Millionaire uses "store-bought fountain pens he tweaks with a pair of needle-nose pliers." Perhaps hacked fountain pens are the wave of the future?

And while talking to Matt, he gave me the best reason I've ever heard to get as good as you possibly can at lettering: As lettering usually makes up a good third of your page, if your handwriting or lettering sucks, your page sucks by at least 1/3 before you even draw anything. So letter good!

And to round out the day: Achewood on Comic Sans.