I’m approaching the end of this book by drawing the last few pages first. Knowing how the book ends gives me a landmark and helps me focus on putting one foot in front of the other.
Besides doing the painting, there’s a lot of hard work left. I have to put in the dialog bubbles and then put all of the images into InDesign. I’m looking forward to pushing the Publish button by the end of August.
We’re having one of our rare 100+ degrees days. Nacho the Pug is having a hard time dealing with it. My solution is to wet him down thoroughly. I’ll take him for a very short walk this evening.
The picture is a section from a TRI-X negative. What I love about it is the grain. This is a straight scan, with no processing.
By “the usual chores”, I mean vacuuming and laundry. The unusual problem is a slow drain that caused some overflow with the basement washing machine stand pipe. A visit from the drain cleaner guy is in order.
Other than that minor annoyance, I’m having a great 100F (38C) day.
These odd-sized pages have been combined into a two-page spread
Over the 18 months I’ve been working on this book, I’ve used several painting programs besides Clip Studio Paint — Krita, Photoshop, Procreate, and Rebelle. What I didn’t think about when I used those programs was getting the page size right. It didn’t occur to me that Clip Studio Paint EX can only combine pages into two-page spreads unless the pages are exactly the same size and resolution.
I’ve accumulated twenty pages with the wrong dimensions or resolution. Some pages were A4 size and 350 dpi, when they should have been 11.40x9.00 inches at 300 dpi. I spent the day changing nonconforming pages to exactly 11.40x 9.00 inches.at 300 dpi.
Some of the pages, like the example above couldn't be scaled without loosing content. I had to resize those files by scaling them up or down, resulting is some blank areas at the top and bottom. I first scaled the image to 11.40 inches wide, then changed the canvas size to 11.40x9.00 inches.
I’ll have to rework all of the pages that were imported at the wrong size. I could have avoided that extra work if I had been diligent about adhering to the project page size set in the StoryIP) -> Page Manager.
It’s been another live and learn day.
I spent the day adding a texture overlay to all of the pages. The image on the left doesn’t have a texture overlay.
After adding the texture layer to 70 pages, I learned what it feel like to be a robot. The up side is that I’m a robot in service of my own project.
To add the overlay,
import the texture file;
move it to the top of the layer stack
set the opacity to 70%
set the layer mode to “linear burn”
As always, when I write “final version”, I mean “at this moment I’m finished with it.” I may decide to rework the page at any time.
In other news, a 36-frame roll of Kodak Portra 400 costs $27 dollars. How times have changed. When the email arrived that Portra was back in stock, my partner waited a few hours to order and got the message “Sold Out”. The early bird gets the Portra.
Almost finished with the page…if I leave the background simple. Drawing Momma’s hand holding the plate took most of the day. I had to create a reference picture of myself carrying a plate. The gotcha is that I have five fingers and Momma has four. Three fingers under the plate looked weird, so, taking advantage of artistic license, I put her thumb under the plate.
It’s ironic that I always add the “self-publishing” tag to my posts 365 days a year, when in reality, I publish a book only once a year.
Momma’s right arm is a work in progress
I’ve decided that the Ringmaster and the Clown really don’t need to be in the birthday cake scene. They’re out. Instead I’m going to show Momma Burro serving two pieces of cake. The challenge is to draw her right arm carrying the cake high, at chin level. I looked for reference pictures of waiters and waitresses carrying food, but I couldn’t find pictures taken from the angle I need. Tomorrow I’m going to photograph myself in the pose I want.
Today I cooked up a big pot of vegan stew. With all of the right spices and veggies, it resembles beef stew.
With two new-to-me cameras in my possession, I’m going through the process of testing the very old (70-years old) shutters to see if they’re working correctly. I know that they’re opening and closing properly — that’s not always the case with old cameras — but I need to know exactly how fast the shutter speeds are if I want to get consistent exposures. To do that, I photograph a gray card at every shutter speed, changing the aperture so that each shot has the same exposure value. In theory, each exposure will create a negative of the same density. The only way to know if all is well is to check the negatives when they return from the lab. If the shutter speeds are way off, the gray card won’t be gray — it will be either too bright or too dark, depending on whether the shutter speeds are too slow or fast. With vintage cameras, the shutter speeds usually get slower with age.
The chores were the usual: laundry and vacuuming. In other news, I love my film cameras, the Nikon F3, the Leica IIf, and the Rollei 35. I have digital cameras that I like, but film cameras are the ones I love.
