FOWP Andrew Bolt Column: Physical Injury

Becuase inking is relatively mindless, I've been able to sit down and go at it until my neck is cramp, my eyes are unable to focus on anything I can't reach out and touch from where I'm standing and my arm starts spasming.

One of my fingertips I guess it would be my index finger on my left hand, I'm a lefty by the way feels more or less constantly like it's just been jammed in a door. For the first three days of inking I had taken to jamming a wad of cotton under the elastic tape I use normally for taping my feet together whilst in the long distance trainign mode.

And by that I don't mean literally taping my left foot to my right foot, but taping my muscles onto the underlying bone structure and taping over the raw open weaping blisters that I get whenever I return after an ugly hot summer like this past week.

This is because the bone in my thumb I rest the pen against, which is really crucial for operating both chopsticks and pens was fucking sore. Now I don't feel anything at all there, so I hope I'm just forming calouses all over my hand for this.

I did not encounter any discomfort like this when pencilling, even though gripping the pencil is the same.

I really want to finish up the inking because the inking is really boring. I do get a sense of satisfaction after I do a page and look at it and it actually looks like a complete fucking picture, but overall the process isn't adding that much.

I'm glad it will be a black and white production because I couldn't take another phase of colouring in. Because then I'd insist on learning about lighting which I should be tackling now.

I saw a book in boarders to da called 'rendering in pen and ink' and it was the 60th anniversary edition. That said it was also $60 and would take me longer than a university degree to complete all the exercises in it. But my interest is piqued, I really do want to go and learn how to be a proper comic artist and inker.

Thus far I'd choose the pencils over the inking any day. I'd also career wise choose writing over pencils any day. Because I figure I could do the rough composition for any money shots, but believe me, it is so much easier to write 'people are panicing, running from the beach while police run in the opposite direction' than it is to draw it. But it's easier to draw it than it is to ink it also.

Particularly when inking is also like proofreading for comics. Whilst drawing I kept thinking 'should I go over that? no I'll fix it up in inking' as if I was ignorant that the inker would be me.

I didn't anticipate how annoying this would be. I can be in a trance like state and churn out 5 pages in one sitting, then suddenly discover that I have to draw up a character over the top of some rough geometric shapes. Suddenly I have to think, a very different type of thinking from tracing (which is mindless) and shading (which is thinking about light, texture and motion) I have to think about scale, anatomy, position, rigging and emotion.

All of these things I fuck up in my shoddy amatuer ability, but that just means I spend more time thinking about them than I would a pro who actually knows what to do, has studied anatomy and what not.

Anyhoo, this stage is productive, I'm getting between 10 and 15 pages done a day, I'm up to 65, which means hopefully I'll be on page 80 tomorrow. Then fingers crossed I can finish up 100 tomorrow and hit Harvard's scanner again on tuesday night. I have a double page spread to do for 74 & 75 which isn't even pencilled yet, but thankfully I have reference, and inking is one area where landscapes can become easy because you can go abstract and rely on texture.

And I'm sure Andrew Bolt will dislike FOWP, but it would be an honour if it generated enough interest to pass under his nose and have him say 'smells like shit'.