Gibson Girls (Patreon)

I think these are the ladies I settled on. Eileen O'Malley, tall, freckled and eager, a little bit more  

Prudence Taylor, the tailor (I'm kinda into these cheeky names right now, I guess), a little more put together, mature, and the absolute object of Eileen's affection. 

I think drawing character sheets are a little bit folly for me because I'm very bad about staying on model. Especially with this project I'm hoping to keep things a little bit loose because that seems in the spirit of Gibson drawings to flitter between absolute refined detail and really simple gestures.

One thing I'm hoping that will help keep things under control is basically giving myself two brushes I can switch between. I know if I can constantly resize  my pen, the line quality will be all over the place, so I've set aside these two brushes (third image) that I'll switch between. I don't want to abuse my wrist with tons of lines, so I may end up using a bit more flat fills in this where it makes sense to do so.

That's partially why I've designed the characters the way I have. I want Eileen to be generally brighter, whiter on the page than Prudence, who's dressed a bit more dark and severely just so that when they overlap and tangle I'll be able to use one to silhouette the other.

In the past I have always struggled with pre-planning too extensively because I feel like it just derails the project and adds pressure to the process of making the final thing. Having a bit of reckless abandon, jumping in and making things up as I go has worked out well for the most part. Sometimes I have to go back and correct things that are especially egregious continuity errors but I am going to try to embrace expressiveness rather than accuracy with this project.

Now onto drawing pages! I hope you enjoy seeing things develop this month!

<3 Winton