June Report (Patreon)

Happy July, everyone! Monthly report time! Here's the broad strokes: 

We got a completed 17 page lesbian Edwardian smut comic with possibly too elaborate text treatment,  preliminary cover art explorations, a bundle of soft, color illustrations of Libby & Ivy, fantasy girls and anything else that was soothing to draw, and a bunch of drawings of soft things from the sketchbook. I will be including around 6 CSP time lapses in the dropbox rewards because I used it more than usual this month! 

This has been one full month of operating with a more habit oriented working style and I gotta say it seems to have worked out. It was more relaxed, productive and satisfying to do, and the results are there too, with finally finishing up the Gibson Girl project and giving it a name: "Fitting for a Lady." It would be simple to say I just added two pages or so but I cleaned up a LOT of early drawings I didn't like as much.

The text was something I underestimated because of the unexpected complexity. Could I have just used comic sans? Probably. Did choosing to use an unconventional typeface complicate the project? Definitely. As soon as I wasn't using comic sans, then I could use more than one type face, change it's scale, add texture and unique glyphs, etc.

My goal with projects is to see how consistent and stable I can make the process of working on and completing them. I thought with this one it would be enough for it to be in black and white to make it simple, but working in a different style left the door open for all kinds of complexity to walk in. More complexity means you just have to make more choices and that's very slow.

It's a huge relief to have the pages  finished with text, and it's made drawing in the style more fun, honestly. I did this commission pinup for @Greasymeta and their comic project as a result of it. It's fun to translate other characters into this style and it makes me think I should commission folks to do pinups for my books too!

My sketchbook stuff that gold patrons see was all over the place as usual, but predictably kinda anti-Gibson girl, since that's where I've been daydreaming about the next project and making experiments with soft lines and color. This Eileen drawing is a Gibson Girl exception.

There was a little bit of fantasy stuff, some Libby and Ivy.

Some elves, just because. I've been finding a comfortable groove in starting a drawing of a character and then draw them again a few times just to explore them in this character sheet format. I think I'm going to keep going with it.

Also some goofy doodles of Marianne and Penny from Space Express-- I feel a little bad having kinda abandoned this series but I'm proud of the other work I did instead. I guess when you say no to one thing you're saying yes to something else. 

I think of the Space Express work as being much more manga-influenced, lots of smooth curves and soft shapes with gentle colors. Not that my other work is gritty or anything, but the black/white/pink palette goes down like a peach smoothie and the Gibson girls are more like dark chocolate or something rich and complicated. 😅

In the more "finished" illustration category I did a little Gibson style work for fun, because I was longing for the beach.

I know I'm going to swing back to the deeply comforting softness of these other brushes once I'm past Gibson girls, but I'll definitely be taking some of the affectations with me, especially these sleepy eyes.

Libby and Ivy also showed up in my more finished illustrations from this month. And in this fun gold/green palette which was a bit of an accident :)

Also back at the beginning of the month there were still some of these sword and sorcery ladies. 

So now that we're in July,  here's my plan for the time being.

I have a pressing freelance deadline that's going to consume my week so I'm aiming for enjoying next week in wrapping up all the loose ends of the comic, cover art included, though I'll try to keep making bits of daily work on it this week, and we'll see where that leads.

If things go to plan I should be putting this up on gumroad and making a print version as well before the end of the month.

Thank you all for your continued support in helping to make this comic possible! ♥ 

I hope you have a lovely day!
Wint.