It occured to me shortly after looking at the design for this update edition of the T&K News Page that I've been focusing rather a great deal on cover paintings recently.  Might as well run with it, I figure!  And so. . .

Paintings.

When I got into this business, part of the attraction was that I'd get a chance to paint.  And since comic books need comic book covers, I end up doing about six paintings a year, give or take.  Now, by the standards set by full time cover/poster artists and such, this is a very small number indeed, and sometimes I regret not being able to focus on it to a much greater degree.  But when it comes time to actually paint, I usually figure I'm lucky because by the end of the process involved with making a cover, all I want to do is put my paints away and not look at them anymore.  This is the sign of somebody who only does something part-time.  I used to feel this way about black & white pages, which because they are the primary activity in creating Thieves & Kings, they have become rather like walking or breathing.  (Albeit, it does sometimes feel like going upstairs at a run.  But painting for me, to carry a poor metaphore, is sometimes rather like doing it on a pogo stick).

Of all the graphic tasks I undertake, I find for some reason that painting is usually the most traumatic by far.  Painting usually leaves me an exhausted mess of nerves.  Here's why:

It has to do with the fact that every brush stroke carries with it a special ingredient called, 'finality'.  They add it to every tube of water color paint you buy.  --If you put a dark color down, then that's it, bub.  If you realize later that you should have gone with pale yellow, tough tooties.  You're sunk.  Water-color stains paper forever, and yeah, you can put down a nice opaque pale yellow guash to cover up a mistake, but it'll never look as perfect and beautiful as the glow of white paper through a thin yellow wash.  Never.

Now, the stress comes from trying to decide whether or not to obliterate a day's worth of beautiful detail work by dropping a dark blue shadow across it just because it might look better.  The exhaustion comes when it doesn't, and you have to fight to recapture what you had before, and the depression comes when you simply can't make it look as good as the first version you decided to obliterate for the sake of a shadow.  --And the damned stinking confusion, the frayed nerves, all that comes because half the time the shadow does look better.  Whoo boy!  Stress, anxiety and exhaustion.  But I do love painting!
 

This latest, which I plan to use as the cover for issue #31, is what I call a ‘Full-Sized' cover.  That is, I was working on a 10" x 15" art board.  All the covers from issues #1 to #15 were done at this size.  After #15, however,  I ran out of time.  Most of my covers since then have been done at a 1:1 ratio.  That is, at the exact size you see it appear on the cover of a comic. When I began publishing six years ago, I had a huge amount of material already done, which freed my time up so that I could be more extravagant than other indy publishers in my

click to see more

Anyway, one of the things I use to increase my speed is the computer.  Because color is infinitely adjustable, all mistakes un-doable, etc., I find myself free to whip through an image without spending ages sitting there with a loaded paint brush drying in my hand while I fret over whether to go aquamarine or tangerine or whatever.  This issue's cover, (#29, which should be hitting stores very shortly,) was done with a MAJOR digital assist.  The chains on the coffin, poor & confused Kimithin, the floor tones were each painted separately and then later combined digitally, while the rest of it was all colored in cyberspace.  Thus I was able to splash outside the lines and not worry, because it all looks the same when you cut everything out and paste it together.  --Some of the shades I nailed first try but hadn't gone opaque enough with the paint, which usually means going over the same parts and losing the spontaneity of the original brush strokes.  In the digital realm, however, this isn't a problem, as you can just say, "Yeah, yeah.  Just make that part look richer, okay?"  --If you make a mistake while painting somebody's face, or you have to change a shadow, or the paint gets dirty with other pigments, or the paper starts to disintegrate. . .  In Photoshop, you can smooth over anything and make it look the way you envision it.  Just a few seconds and it's done.  It's wonderful, and easy.  And I can't help but wonder if there isn't something terribly wrong about it.

Now, don't mistake me.  I do enjoy the act of creation regardless of where it happens to take place.  Computers are great tools.  But it does seem to me that the paintings for which I've had to fight the hardest, (the ones which reduce me in the final innings to lying on the floor of the studio either wishing I was dead, or feeling like I already was), are the ones of which I'm proudest in the long run.

However, there is one very definite and concrete aspect of digital painting which cannot be denied and which I think is a major failing of the medium.  When you roll back on your rolling desk chair and nod in satisfaction at a job well done, the thing you looking at is only a glowing image on a computer screen.  If there's a power outage, it's gone.  There is no original.  Unlike a word processor, printing off a hard copy is not a solution.  I've yet to see a color printer which can perfectly duplicate a painting.  --And if I ever decide to sell the paintings I've done, and yes, I get offers, the digital ones don't even exist in a physical enough manner to do so.  One copy on a disk is as good as another, and so carries no value in the same way a real 'live' painting does.  I really don't like that.  I don't like going through all that effort and only to have a glowing image on a screen which vanishes if I turn off the power.  Or if my computer breaks down.

So to make a long story short, for this latest cover I decided, "Bah!  I don't care about time or schedules.  I'm doing a full sized painting, and I'm doing it raw, right onto the ink lines without even any photocopies to rescue me if it turns out I should have gone with the tangerine!  Argh!"

So that's the deal with this painting.  I've promised myself to do a couple like that whenever possible because they make me feel good.

And that's that.
 
 

-M'Oak
 
 

It's going to be a thick book! 

I Box recently signed a deal with Canadian book distributor, Mother Pickle inc.  Mother Pickle specializes in Canadian indy press, which is perfect because that fits the description around here exactly!  Servicing all the major book sellers across Canada, this makes for an interesting development in I Box's distribution strategy.  (Unlike books sold to comic shops, these copies are returnable!  Oh, what dark wilds are these?)  So far, indicators suggest that T&K will create interest among children and parents.  We'll have to see how this works out.  Stay tuned. . !