Author: hamishmacdonald

In Toronto I spoke to a social media expert — a coworker’s fiancée. Now, I’d usually snark at the suggestion that anyone’s got a clue about social media, except that she makes her living just by liking stuff on Pinterest. (Yeah, this is a job in 2014.)

She suggested that I share my process online. I’m not set up to make videos, but this morning — from the Tesco’s cafe — I documented in photos how I go about making a drawing these days. So here’s that (forgive the quickie Comic Life treatment):

I’ve decided to do a hundred hours of drawing before my birthday — just an arbitrary goal, based on a conversation I had with my friend Lisa.

When I stayed with Lisa and her family in Toronto, she was in the middle of doing 100 hours of ukulele practice — an hour every day — even though she’s already a professional musician (her Dixie/Bluegrass band, Dirty Dishes, is a lot of fun). But she wants to get better. So, in true Suzuki Method tradition, she’s showing up, setting a timer, and putting in the time — and has witnessed her skill with the instrument take a leap forward.

So, yeah, I want that with my drawing. One challenge has been knowing what to draw when I’m looking at the page. I like doing diary comics, but I’m not going to progress if I just keep drawing me all the time, so — again, taking my lead from Lisa, who had a grid of exercises to choose from, I’ve made a list of different things I want to practice (gesture lines, charater anatomy, composition, animation…). Yesterday I got an app that spits out random story prompts for writers, and I’ve started using that to conjure up images to work on:

(I did another drawing that was a total hash — which I’m allowed to do in practice, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to share it!)

I’m also trying to give my days a bit more definition, ’cause they’d become kinda saggy, with some work done, then me getting lost in the afternoon.

I didn’t really intend to focus on books this year, because there’s really no multiplier there (the effort that goes in is disproportionate to what comes back, which is usually nothing). Still, I’ve got an Ikea cabinet full of paper — paper I don’t intend to take across the Atlantic — so I want to use my couch-time to stitch together all kinds of books just so I can get that paper out the door in some sort of hopefully desirable form.

I started last night with some old postcards and cereal boxes, making them into gift-boxes and notebooks. Here’s one I made for myself out of a granola-box:

This puppy is proving very helpful: a “saddle-stapler”:

I gave my long-reach stapler to the charity shop (they get a lot of good stuff from me!), ’cause I just couldn’t set a staple reliably with it. I’d line it up so carefully, drop my hand — bang! — and… crooked. With this thing, the spine of the booklet sits right on the metal arch, so it’s impossible to miss.

That this is so much easier makes me more inclined to produce stuff.

Speaking of producing, it’s time for some copywriting…

Last night, Craig and I were sitting on the couch, triple-screening (each with an iPad, plus the TV on), and I had that pressing feeling that this was one of those moments that could either slide into brain-mushy nothingness, or be an opportunity to get out, be alive, and enjoy this place.

I asked him, “Want to go for a walk?” I could see him go through the same mental and physical process of summoning the energy and will to live that this would involve, but he said yes.

We walked further along the coast than we had before, and discovered an absolutely huge colony of sea-birds screeching at each other, nestling on tiny cliffs, and swooping down at the water.

Here’s the whole set of photos on Flickr. (It starts with Craig’s pictures from Wick’s Harbour Day, which he took part in.)

Click to embiggen”¦

My big challenge in trying to draw clean lines has been finding a way to get the teensy-tiny fine-line details I need yet produce the variable-width outline that features in all the comics I adore (such as this Spirou example — please ignore the casual racism that seems to be a feature of Begian comics; what I like is the artwork).

The challenge is that I started cartooning very young, according to what I saw, so I’ve always drawn “at size”, where the received wisdom is that for commercial art you’re supposed to draw at 150% then scale it down. But I can’t do that now because all my sense of proportion and feeling is based on drawing at size.

I’ve tried every kind of marker, nib, and brush, trying to get the right look and feel, and this morning I finally stumbled upon a solution I love, using things I already had in my pen-roll (which I also made — here’s a bunch of sewing instructions for these).

First I “under-draw” with a mechanical pencil filled with non-reproduction blue leads.

Then I use a Platinum Carbon Desk Pen filled with Platinum Carbon Ink — a great combination, because the Carbon Pen is designed to never clog, despite the Carbon Ink being waterproof (which matters later when I colour my drawings with watercolour washes).

The Carbon Pen gives me a consistently strong fine line. Unlike all the felt-tip pens I’ve used through the years, its nib doesn’t smush no matter how hard I press. Funny, too, that this pen is cheap as chips, unlike all those expensive technical pens I’ve kept trying and hating.

There are only two problems with the Carbon Pen: 1) It doesn’t flex at all. This is good when I’m doing my fine detail work, but it means that my outlines look thin and weak. 2) It’s too long! Out of the box, it’s like one of those pens they have at bank counters on a chain with the vast cigarette-holder end. So I sawed mine off.

The Carbon Pen is in the middle here:

What I would normally do next is go back over the outside lines with my regular writing pen (the very pocketable Kaweco Lilliput with a better nib from a Tombow pen in it). This gives the characters more weight and makes them pop out from the background (on the rare occasion that I actually draw a background).

The problem with this, though, is that the line is — well, in Zen they talk about “first thoughts”, those fresh insights we have that we then quickly cover over with our socialised, conditioned, more acceptable responses. It’s like that with lines: the first line you draw has life and flow and intention to it; the second is tracing. It’s wiggly, it’s hesitant, and — horrors! — it can deviate from the first line, creating little gaps between them, as you can see in this drawing:

The two other pens above are ones I bought recently from Fountain Pen Revolution, a manufacturer in India. The Dilli is on the top, and with my order they sent me the Serwex (on the bottom) for free!

I’d read about the Dilli on another cartoonist’s blog, but its flex nib was too heavy for fine details (like eyes), so I put it aside, using it just to hand-written letters (because it gives cursive writing a lovely Spencerian thick-and-thin character). The Serwex, though — the free one! — proved to be my favourite pen for lettering comics.

(I also have a medium Lamy Vista for bold letters and a broad Lamy Nexx for really big letters, as well as a brush pen filled with Carbon ink for doing large, wiggly features like panel borders.)

What occurred to me this morning was to just do the fine details with the Carbon pen but leave the outlines alone, then do them with the Dilli’s flex nib.

[*Cue Hallelujah Chorus*]

If you look again at the first drawing, you can see (I think) how much cleaner and clearer the outlines are. I’ve been under-drawing anyway since my passion for cartooning has rekindled this past year (and gosh, does under-drawing improve the integrity of a figure), so with that guideline in place, it really doesn’t matter at what point I do the outlines.

So there you have it. If you persisted through all this, you’re either a drawing implement geek like me, or else a very patient person. Thank you!

My productivity role-playing game is up and running! Tonight one of my guys even got decapitated by his evil twin.

Gosh, I’ve been upstairs at my desk for hours this evening. How fun, that I’ve been wrapped up in playing a game I made instead of spending it in other people’s stuff.

I just started to explain how this all works, but it’s far too involved to get into just yet! Suffice it to say that the characters are fuelled and rewarded based on points aquired from my real-world productivity, and their shadow-opposites are equally powered-up by the demerits I get for goofing off when I’m supposed to be doing something important.

My pal Patrick helped me initially think through how this game could work, and the doppelganger bit was his contribution.

And now my head’s been cut off.

A journalism student working for the John O’Groat Journal interviewed me yesterday, and his article ran today. Looks like I’ve hit the big time!

(Click the image for a full-sized view.)

I’ve been working long hours on turning my time management boardgame into a role-playing game — which is admittedly very geeky, and has been a lot of work, thinking through and creating all the various pieces for (and I’m still not finished), but I want to make the payoff for all my discipline and time-keeping more fun.

The other game ended up giving me more things to do, which I hardly needed — even if they were rewards. “Go for a walk” is not a treat if it becomes just another to-do in my schedule, but slaying some evil thing is foolishly fun, and I can tie it all back to real-world rewards.

This game also feels like the kind of creative outlet that a novel or a comic would be, but it’s easier to get behind because there’s actually a point to doing it.