It was chore day today. I shoveled some pine needles and did the laundry, and then spent the rest of the day studying Photoshop. I’ll be using Photoshop more in the future.
I added the mystery mice to the list of heroes. They deserve a spot because they appear in many pages and don’t have a single line of dialog. They’re mysterious because no one knows why they’re in the story. I wonder what’s going on with those guys?
Sketch for front matter
I’ve been staring at this book for so long that I no longer see it as a whole — I see it as a pile of disconnected pictures. I can’t see the forest because I’m always single-mindedly focusing on a single tree. I came to this realization today as I was going to my final proof. As I was reading the book on my iPad, I realized that I had left out the names of the characters. I know them all very well, but anyone reading the book would be scratching their head and thinking, “Who are these people? Don’t they have names? It’s so confusing.”
I decided to use one of the blank front matter pages to introduce the main characters to the reader. The rough sketch above shows them hanging out together. These group pictures are a big challenge for me — managing a composition with 16 arms and legs is tough.
Besides watching The Boys, I’ve been binge watching Alex Tzavaras’ massively instructive oil painting videos. You can watch them on his web site or watch them on Youtube. He’s an awesome portrait painter and teacher. I don’t intend to do any oil painting, but I feel that what he teaches will help me become a better digital painter.
Title page nearing completion…
Today I got may attitude straight and decided to just go for fun. The foreshortened hands I’ve been fretting over are good enough. THe next time, I’ll draw them a little better. My greatest concern is getting the book published by Sep 30 — that’s only nine days away. I still have to draw the cover image and tweak the back matter, then put everything into InDesign, get the ISBN number installed (I still have eight numbers remaining from my set of ten), and push the publish button. One inch at a time works, sometimes slowly, but it always works.
