Category: Drawing

One Eye Closed

The squireIt’s time to move on from this first page of the Waterton comic, but here it is at last. I feel that I’ve overdone a scene that should have been given the lightest of touches but, having worked out the staging and the details, I can always come back to it later, when I’ve had more practice and I’ve developed a house style.

page 1I don’t think that it harms to overdo artwork occasionally, you need to feel free to experiment, so I’m glad that I’m not up against a tight deadline.

I was surprised how difficult it was to get Squire Waterton to look as if he is winking at the reader. Although I’m always thinking in terms of scenes from a movie, a single drawing represents just one moment, much as I try to relate it to the next or the previous frame.

A wink depends on the recipient of the gesture seeing the start and finish of the movement. One eye kept closed indefinitely doesn’t have the same meaning, but in a single drawing, it’s difficult not to give the impression that an action is frozen in time. A freer style might suggest the the movement was in progress.

Beatson; Girl with a Book

Gladys Joan Bell, 1924My mum, Gladys Joan Swift (as she was then), looks about six in this portrait, so it must have been painted around 1924.

signaturecanvasIt was painted in Sheffield by Charles Beatson (1864 – 1949). He painted historical subjects including a Portrait of a Cavalier. In those subjects, I can see the influence by of Dutch painters and I think there are hints of that in this portrait, that’s if you can get past mum’s 1920s party dress!

The canvas is 3ft x 2ft 6 inches. There’s no makers name on the back.

book

mumbook2I’d love to identify the book that my mum is holding. It might be there to add a splash of colour but, even so, it looks like a particular title. It’s possible that my mum had brought a book with her to the sitting but I think that it’s more likely to be a prop, something Beatson was able to put his hands on in the studio.

When I invert and stretch it in Photoshop, the illustration on the back cover looks like a woman reading from an open book to a boy.

Gladys Joan Swift, oil painting by Charles Beatson.One of my mum’s favourite books was Alice in Wonderland. In her final illness, in January this year, when she was confined to bed in a nursing home, she asked me to look out her childhood copy of Alice and to bring it in and read it to her, describing to me just where I’d find it on the bookshelf. I’m sorry that I didn’t get around to doing that before she passed away but between the two of us we managed to remember a few of the lines from the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party.

Talking Hats

conversationwild eyesWe’re back to that staple of Victorian melodrama, gentlemen in top hats in rapt conversation. As a contrast to the businesslike surveyor (on the left) I’d originally had Waterton going hatless but then he looked too much like a canal worker so I’ve imagined him in threadbare coat and battered hat.

Battered hats are more fun to draw.

WatertonThe script calls for Waterton to look wild-eyed so I’ve been trying different eye-shapes to get that across. I’m thinking of castaway Ben Gunn prattling on about Flint’s treasure or the Ancient Mariner stopping one of three to tell his tale. But Waterton is playing a practical joke on the surveyor, so he can look amused as well as manic.

With that in mind, I felt that his thumb and finger gesture looked as little too precise in my pencil rough. I was concentrating so much on this gesture that I gave Waterton five fingers!

conversation

eye and handAfter struggling with the final artwork in my last frame, I decided to work out everything carefully in my roughs. I even thought about the direction of the shading.

Even after producing the elaborate rough above, I felt that I needed to tweak the eyes, and as I’ve mentioned already, the hand.

Once again my light pad has been in use again and again throughout the day.

On the Banks of the Barnsley Canal

canalsideI’ve got there at last with my introductory frame for the Waterton comic and I enjoyed finishing off adding the colour this morning. There are a few things that I’d change if I’d started again but my main consideration is to tell the story as clearly as I can. This packs in the necessary elements. Time to move on to the next frame.

The Ragged-Trousered Conservationist

first roughCharles Waterton was a hands-on conservationist so as he set about turning the grounds of his ancestral home, Walton Hall, into the world’s first nature reserve, visitors sometimes assumed that he was a gardener or labourer. In the first frame of my comic strip, a railway surveyor mistakes him for a tramp but when I put the meeting in its location by the Barnsley canal, he looks more like a bargee.

Barnsley canal

Sitting on the Fence

sitting on the fencesitting on the fenceHow do I make him look more like an idle bystander? How would that come across in his body language?

Instead of standing on the towpath making a mock-deferential bow, I try him sitting on the fence. And instead of having him wear a shirt and a waistcoat like a bargee, I give him a battered top hat and a rumpled tailcoat.

Waterton could climb trees with ease right into his 80s but I’m struggling to make him look at ease while sitting on the top rail of a fence. Barbara suggests that no one is going to look comfortable sitting on a fence so why not have him reclining on the canal bank?

Barefoot in the Park

fence roughWaterton liked to walk barefoot which helps identify him as a dishevelled tramp-like character but to look down at Waterton’s bare feet as well as up at the tree tops of the park beyond that high defensive wall means that I have to fall back on that old cheat used by illustrators, rubberised perspective. It’s not so much of a cheat though because, if this was a film, which is the way that I keep thinking of it, and this was a panning shot, the perspective would keep changing as the camera tracked across the scene.

final rough

Yes, Waterton has ended up looking like Willy Wonka, but I think that this version tells the story more clearly than my first rough. It also leaves plenty of space for the three speech bubbles that we need in the space between the characters.

Main Title

titleI’ve added the lettering to my opening title frame, which brings things together. I can decide later whether I want to stick with these colours and whether I want to introduce hand-lettering for the captions. As the script has yet to take on its final form, it would be wise for now to stick with a computer generated font for the speech bubbles.

Watercolour Ripples

oar

palette
Nickel titanium yellow, gamboge genuine, permanent rose, cerulean blue, French ultramarine, indigo. I later added a touch of burnt umber for the oar.

I sometimes get the feeling that, rather than drawing a comic strip, I’m acting as production designer and storyboard artist for a big budget movie of The Life of Charles Waterton.

I’ve been watching period dramas such as Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, which is set in the same period and was filmed in Yorkshire on locations that included two Georgian streets in Wakefield which Waterton would have known.

The BBC Films 2012 version of Great Expectations included costumes and scenes that would have been perfect for my comic strip. At the climax of the film there’s a scene on the Thames which had me thinking about the dawn procession of boats across Walton Lake which was arranged for Waterton’s funeral.

In today’s illustration – a premonition of Waterton’s funeral – I tried to suggest dawn light on eddies in the water. The gradation of watercolour from lemon yellow to indigo called for some forward planning. My Winsor & Newton watercolour box didn’t have enough divisions in the palette for all the colours, so I moved on to another box for the French ultramarine and indigo.

Cross-hatched Headline

defence logoWith so many drawings to do, it might seem counterproductive to lavish a few hours on the title for my comic strip, which I could have added in minutes in Photoshop or Manga Studio but it helps me establish the mood of the story. I’ll probably modify it later but this will suffice to set the scene.

The inspiration for the blocky lettering comes from the Channel 4 series Amazing Spaces Shed of the Year. Their freehand, cross-hatched logo suggests the blockiness of a shed and its homespun design. I’m going for a Victorian feel in my illustrations, so why shouldn’t I try cross-hatching my lettering.

Waterton campaigning against the enclosure of Heath Common, January 1844.
Waterton campaigning against the enclosure of Heath Common, January 1844.

I was also thinking about the posters that Waterton had printed for his campaign to save the last open spaces available to the people of Wakefield.

The starting point for my title was a typeface called Superclarendon Bold, which I’ve squared up as a visual metaphor for the wall that Waterton built around his nature reserve in a heroic attempt to save it from poachers and pollution.

Waterton's signature from a letter dated 1859 (see below).
Waterton’s signature from a letter dated 1859 (see below).

We’ve discussed using a font or handlettering based on Charles Waterton’s handwriting throughout the comic but I think that would give the story an elegant period flavour, introducing a hint of Jane Austen. I’m aiming at something more robust and chunky.

scarbro 1859

Like so many of us from the West Riding of Yorkshire, Waterton liked to spend his holidays at Scarborough.

Polishing up those Roughs

cravat rough

throwing away the cravatAs so often happens, I feel this rough drawing of Charles Waterton for the comic project is more lively than my finished, cross-hatched illustrations. I hope that I can bring a bit of this freedom into my finished work.

When I think of roughs I think of layout paper, pencil and shorthand sketches but it’s a big jump from those to the final artwork. You can easily lose the initial spontaneity.

At college our tutor Quentin Blake said that he preferred to get away from pencil on layout paper roughs as soon as possible and start working on whatever paper and in whatever medium he was going to use for the final artwork.

In two revised roughs for my poachers page, I decided to draw in pen and watercolour so that I can drop scans of these roughs into the almost finished page. It gives me and my writer a much better idea of how the finished page might look.

poacher page

gatesrough

As you can see from the drawing of the park gates, layout paper soon cockles under a watercolour wash, so I might start using cartridge paper for this kind of halfway to finished rough.

I often find myself thinking of my comic strip when I draw from life, for instance the lime trees foliage today had me thinking of how I might make the backgrounds to the scenes in Waterton’s park look convincing but not overworked.

lime leaves

The Poachers’ Panels

poachers framespoacher pageYou can’t see how the page will work until you drop the artwork into the comic strip panels and add the speech bubbles. But there isn’t a lot of dialogue on this action-packed page.

The layout still needs some attention. The central circular panel needs to be larger and I’d like the knife to be breaking out of the panel but for now this version will serve as a rough cut.

The main lessons that I draw from working on this fight sequence are;

  1. Be bold
  2. Be relaxed
  3. Learn a bit more about Manga Studio (the program I use to add the borders)