Saturday Joys

I took my Saturday super easy, where I just practised my skating, cleaned the apartment, finally figured out Davinci Resolve (and how to make GIFS!) and cooked. It was sunny, 20 something degrees and delightful.

Something I’ve been consistently working on is my spinning!

Figuring out the disco spin

I also made one of my super easy and favourite recipes, a miso noodle soup. It really is a soup where you just put all of our left overs in a pot, and add miso, hot sauce and half a vegetable cube. It is so comforting, lazy girl friendly and has been my go to for years.

I’m still in the process of testing colour schemes for my pages. Blue has always been a colour I naturally gravitate towards, specifically dusty, soft blues.

Although I find this blue beautiful, I feel that I’m still searching for a combination of colours that feel right for my pages. I’ve tried adding more colours versus less colours, adding textures versus no texture. The result is interesting, but still not quite it.

A page withe less colour and with printed overlay.

A page withe more colour and with printed overlay.

I’ve also been wanting to get back into roller dance. I took a break from it for a while when I was completing my masters. I’m excited to slowly get into it again, even if I’m a little rusty.

A quick lunch sketch.

The last scone <3

In the last little while, I have been trying to add colour to my graphic novel pages. I have always been attracted to beautiful, full colour graphic novels. So far, I haven’t been able to figure out how to add colour in my own work. My completed pages have mostly been in black and white. I have been researching colour combinations and testing them out onto some sample pages. I can’t say they have all worked, but some are starting to look like something. The challenge is to find a combination that is balanced, and that also reflects the mood and identity you are after for your book. Adjectives that come to mind for the colour scheme I am after are:

Elegant, soft, light, feminine, whimsical, subtle, ethereal, translucent, delicate, precious.

Something that I have also been thinking about lately is the blending of aesthetics from fashion magazines and the graphic novel. I’ve always had a fascination with the beauty and glossiness of fashion magazines, and I’d be curious to find a way to make the pages of my graphic novel have the same look.

Another avenue I wanted to explore was the idea of integrating a wallpaper print into the graphic novel page. The idea is to have a floral foil, that suggests botanical elements, while also melting into the flat colour fills. I feel that this could be an interesting way to add texture and depth to the pages. I tested this on the same page shown above.

Meanwhile at home:

Starting A Blog ~ A way to share my daily comic practise

2024 was the last year of my MFA, where I decided to illustrate a  graphic novel. I needed to develop a workflow that was efficient and effective to manage the workload with my thesis show deadline. The time slots I had available were early in the mornings, evenings, and most weekends. I worked on one to three pages a day seven days a week, with a goal of illustrating over 200 pages for my MFA thesis show. This daily drawing practise was very motivating because the progress was clear, and I felt extremely focused. I did a 30-day watercolour challenge in the spring of 2021 and felt a similar feeling of gratification when working on something every single day. What these experiences have in common is a system where work is put in daily, with an end goal in mind. I realized that I could produce a lot of work, with minimal time when I am consistent. Since my MFA, my drawing practise has significantly decreased. The driving feeling of working hard on something every day slowed down, and I was exhausted.

In a way I was expecting this feeling, but I didn’t find a proactive way to avoid it. Although the progress during my MFA was great, sustaining the workload of the last few months before my thesis show was unstainable long-term. My challenge since then has been: How do I keep my graphic novel practise going, but in a more reasonable and sustainable way? I found this to be a challenge because the time blocks I have available are limited, and I am often unfocused when I am in them. It’s hard to stay excited about something when the progress is so slow, as it seems it will never get done. I then thought of it in another way. Recently, I realized I spend about $100 dollars a month on a coffee every day. A $1.50 coffee twice a day seems so insignificant, but by the end of the month, it turns out to be more than it seems. I then thought to myself, I could do something interesting with that $100. I can take a sewing class, buy a nice pair of shoes and just make my coffee at home. A habit of making coffee every evening needed to be established, but once I got used to it, it wasn’t a thought anymore.  I think my art practise will also work in a similar way. Daily, it won’t seem like much, but by the end of the month, I’ll have something. I want to use this blog as a way to document my progress on drawing a little bit of comics every day. Let’s see how this goes!

Resources I found inspiring:

1) Creative Pepe Talk with Sophie Yanow : https://www.creativepeptalk.com/501-how-to-create-gentle-habits-with-sophie-yanow/

2)The 12 Commandments of Making Comics with Jake Parker: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QevYxOC7TYs

#gentlecomicshabit

Daily Drawing - Morning Sketch

Here is a section of a potential graphic novel idea I have. In the mean time, it’ll just be part of the #gentlecomicshabit exercises I’m trying out for now.

Daily Comic Practice

#gentlecomicshabit