More snippets of wonderful pictures and words too from the recent Tempo Lush Tales of the Tanoox anthology on the theme of positive change.
Contributors also suggested a positive idea in keeping with the theme of the anthology…
SARAH LIGHTMAN & NICOLA STREETEN
Previous works include:
Sarah – Graphic Details: Confessional Comics by Jewish Women
Nicola – Billy Me and You, Becoming of Age
Positive Idea:
Sarah – Graphic Details: Confessional Comics by Jewish Women
Nicola – STOP EATING ANIMALS
Snippet from the Tempo Lush Tales of the Tanoox Anthology Foreword discussing the positive effect of Laydeez Do Comics:
“In a sense, the monthly gatherings echoed the early 1970s feminist grassroots meetings, with the purpose of raising consciousness, sharing knowledge and information. Laydeez do Comics offers a taste of the good things – a supportive community, where contacts and introductions, new opportunities, colleagues, comrades, book contracts and new partnerships, even love await. And the homemade cake we serve reminds us of the comforts of home, of joyful occasions, celebrations in our lives.”
Previous works include:
Nas – Paper Houses
Angela – Circuit Breaker, Yoshitoki is Making Waves, Paper Houses
Positive Idea: Join a mentoring charity to support and guide troubled young people.
centrepoint.org.uk/get-involved/volunteer/mentoring
Art sample from their Tempo Lush tale: Give it a Go
EMMELINE PUI LING DOBSON
Previous works include: Knights of Eve, Wu Wei
Positive Idea: “Effective Altruism” covers a range of projects aiming to help people have a bigger positive impact on the world with their time, money, and energy. A good place to start is givewell.org, which has regularly updated analytical information on which charities bring the greatest benefit
to the most underprivileged communities.
Art sample from her Tempo Lush tale: Malice/Aria
You can get hold of the book online here, or at Gosh Comics.
Another workshop organised by the Cartoon Museum found me in St Thomas’s School in Fulham.
Finally, here’s some of my on the spot doodles explaining various points to the groups.
This is probably my favourite stage of the work. It’s the home stretch and my brain doesn’t have to work as hard as when I do other parts of the process. It’s also cool to see how easily a splash of colour can bring an image to life.
Same goes for the school bus…
Next up I colour the sea monster in Panel 2.
I use the Magic Wand tool to select Miss Faridani’s hair and draw in the blonde streak…
Using the PaintBucket tool, I click on the outline of Lucy’s patches in Panel 4 to change their colour.
I want to do the same to the outline of the sticker on the glass behind her. However, as that shape is connected to the speech bubble above it, if I just clicked on the outline of the sticker I’d change the colour of the outlines for all connecting linework – practically the whole strip.
Earlier when I was laying out the position of each character in pencil, I was very much aware of how the colours of each of them would impact where they ended up.
I carry on filling in the colours of the characters whose colours are determined by the previous appearances in the strip.
For the final panel I decide to colour all the subjects in one colour – a rare bit of mood colouring for the Lucy strip). To do this, I remove the purple I’d already put there, then colour on the layer beneath the linework.
I add a background colour to Panel 4.
Now I want to add some highlights to the windows of the school bus to give it a reflective glassy feel.
Here’s those masked areas without any of the rest of the drawing just to show you…
Now I can select all these areas using the Magic Wand tool, hide the layer with these masks, then add my highlights on a new layer. For this I use the Paintbrush tool with a soft brush.
Below again are the masked areas without the drawing, this time with the white glassy highlights. They’re not naturalistic in where they might fall on the curved glass of the bus. Instead I add them according to what works best over the character positions and existing layout.
Red is good to express danger and emotion, but not sure it works as a background here, so I change the actual subjects within the panel to red rather than blue and drop the background tone altogether.
Right… just a few details to go. I change the colour of the sound effects, adding a white outline around the AAAAAAARRGGHH to make it pop a bit more…
Incidentally, if you’re curious as how much of the colour was done by pointing/clicking within the linework and how much was done with the Pencil tool on a layer below, here’s that lower layer by itself…
Anyhoo, just putting the finishing touches to the colour work. I add white lines to give a metalic finish to the bus and change the colour of the caption in Panel 1, the copyright text and my signature.
So we’re done!
Then one final thing is bothering me.
Lucy the Octopus
Next up, I free the paper from the shackles of the masking tape! This gives me the option to rotate the paper as I ink to reach the most comfortable position for drawing each line and curve. This is even more important when I use a brush to ink as oppose to pens (which I’ve done a few Lucy strips requiring a different style, as well as lots of other work).
Before I get on to the real art, I draw out the speech bubbles in a 0.5 line.
That little arrow I draw is to remind me to fix the mistake with the speech bubble after I scan the work into my Mac (ready to colour on Photoshop). It’s quicker to do this than to use tippex or opaque white paint on the actual paper.
On to inking the actual drawing. Sometimes I do this panel by panel. More usually I approach the strip as a whole and work from the thickest pens down the to the finest. This saves a bit of time by not stopping to change pens so often.
A good rule of thumb is draw things in the foreground in a thicker line than things behind in a picture. That’s why I tackle Mrs Faridani in 0.8 line and will do the passengers behind her with a thinner pen.
I also use the thicker line of the 0.8 pen to give the feeling of weight under elements such as the underside of the monster in Panel 2 and the handle in Panel 4. 
I finish with the 0.8 pen and start with the 0.5.
I continue to work on the first 3 panels…
…until the 0.5 line work is done.
I switch to the 0.3 pen to work on finer lines, including characters further towards the background.
Finally I use 0.2 and 0.1 pens for the finest details, like the tiny passengers in Panels 2 & 5 and the characters in the deepest depths of the background of Panel 1.
The drawing part of the process is complete!
