Comic Report #118.2 - One For The Road (Patreon)

Okay, so!  It's near the end of the month and I'm near the final pass of this comic page, I believe I can have it done by the end of tomorrow, or more specifically early Sunday morning.  Right now, though, it's my responsibility to report to you my progress on this task, so let's take a quick look where we're at right now.  I'm expecting I can knock out the rest of this first pass tonight, and then tomorrow I'll go through the backgrounds, post the textless page and then get the final thing up for a Sunday morning read.  

I noticed a painting technique I think I either hadn't been using or hadn't consciously been using recently, when painting in color, to apply a kind of halo of saturated color in the shadow planes bordering a very bright highlight spot, and I've thought about how to apply that to my monotone painting.  I found myself doing less meticulous blending and more solid color fields in recent years, so I think applying this technique to that style will work out well.  I've been trying it out in black & white by blocking in my value shapes and then representing saturation as a darker value around the edge of the highlight field, inside the shadow plane.  It makes sense when I think about it but I don't think I've been intently doing it that way as much as I should.  I'm doing a little experimentation with it on this page, but next page I'm gonna try applying it a lot more.  Next page is gonna be a fun one to paint, so that will be good.

Tomorrow will be Background Pass day, and I don't foresee this being too big of a hassle to paint.  The biggest problem for me will probably be the last set of panels, where the depth of the shot is framed by the flowerpots moving into the foreground.  I've got Pat running back and forth to provide a relative sense of scale but I'm gonna have to stay vigilant and make sure I don't make him appear too small or large next to the pots while also making sure they look like they work in the perspective I'm going for.  Working on Pat is a thing for tonight, working on the pots will be a tomorrow thing.  

Once this page is done I'll get to move onto the next scene and continue the falling line of dominos towards the final scenes of the comic.  I think I've alluded to that before, now that it's started snowing in the comic, and that it probably won't be super soon that I get there, but things are moving towards a planned goal line.  Thanks for sticking with me, I think what's coming up is going to be a lot of fun.  You'll probably be hearing from me again real soon, so until then, take it easy out there.