tonycliff
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Off-Day
🕑 Added 2021-12-16 19:33:57 +0000 UTCToday: talk about drawing hands; highlights from recent pencilled pages; George Saunders makes me feel like a million bucks; a happy progress update; and, though I am not inclined to believe in things like "off-days," sometimes you gotta call a spade a spade.
On Tuesday, I Twittered, "Just re-drew the same hand SO MANY TIMES that when I finally got it, and it was too big, I enlarged the rest of the character."
Below, the offending hand.
I did a few passes without reference. They failed. I erased and re-drew that hand four times before taking some reference photos. I re-drew the hand using reference probably five more times before taking more reference photos, from a slightly different angle. After three more re-draws, I ended up with the results above, which work for me.
I spent at least half an hour, maybe forty-five minutes getting that hand right, and it DID end up bigger than I wanted, so I re-drew the rest of the figure slightly larger, taking maybe a minute and a half.
Why are hands so hard? I assume they're like faces: we're so familiar with them, we look at them so often and they're so important to our functioning in the world, that even though they are made up of nonsense shapes and occult geometries, our proto-brains deep in the darkest holes of our ape-minds know them so intimately that the slightest "off-ness" is immediately detectable. See also: "the uncanny valley," e.g. the CG The Rock-scorpion from the end of The Mummy Returns.
This is where stylization comes in handy, I suppose, but the stylized look for DD is not especially stylized, so I stand here stymied.
EDIT: please watch the Netflix series VOIR, from Tony Zhou and Taylor Ramos of Every Frame a Painting. Specifically episode no. 4, "The Duality of Appeal," which tackles a very difficult-to-talk-about aspect of character design. Keep an eye out for the brief scene where they subtly rearrange Sailor Moon's facial features to show how very easy it is for faces to look "off."
ANYWAY, that's just one example from a day full of drawings that looked consistently wrong. I was drawing characters at the wrong size relative to one another, I had a few faces that refused to look on-model, and there were a few facial expressions I just could not get to look right, no matter how much I wrinkled my nose at myself in the mirror.
A POSSIBLE EXPLANATION: earlier in the day, I bought new, much brighter lightbulbs. Perhaps I've been having off-days all along, but I just couldn't tell? (I have checked. The previous pages look fine.)
Let's see what was working, though…
^ This was the last drawing I did on my off-day, and the one I like the most. It came together quick, I like the gestural quality to it, and the expression does what I need it to. Maybe it is because it is a self-portrait.
^ This last sequence introduces this smug piece of garbage, who is both great fun to write and great fun to draw, and I hope that makes him fun to read. In some ways, also a self-portrait.
^ In this sequence, he is always, consistently, pictured right next to a horse's ass. I believe this is what is called subtext. As ever, I worried it was too on-the-nose, but then I remembered back to my similar worries about naming the captain "Lear," and decided there is not much to worry about.
On a related note, I have been continuing with my George Saunders reading. In the stories he dissects, he points out some structural patterns that—if I were writing that short story—I would think, "no, that's too obvious." But of course, while in the middle of reading those stories, the patterns register exactly the way they're supposed to: they are effective without drawing attention to themselves.
So I hope it is with that horse butt: effective without being too obvious.
^ Maybe I only had an "off day" relative to the days before it, when drawing seemed to come easily, and the results were good. This page is from yesterday, a day after my off-day, and I think it's one of my favourites. Not only that, but I drew it almost straight-ahead, with little planning, only the loosest of under-drawings. It took twice as long as its neighbouring pages, but it feels good to me.
Maybe it's just a reminder that if you notice an off-day, please also take time to recognize "on-days."
More Saunders.
All I want for Christmas is to finish this book (A Swim in a Pond in the Rain) before it is due back to the library, and it looks like it's not going to happen. I'm a slow reader. But on the most recent chapter, I had a very valuable experience re: intuition, a recurring theme in the book.
Saunders presents Tolstoy's short story MASTER AND MAN. I read the story. It was exceptional, but there was note that didn't ring quite true for me. I couldn't put my finger on what it was, exactly, but I'm used to that—this is a familiar feeling to me, somewhere between "I feel like I don't get it" and "something is not quite clicking here." This has been my whole English-class experience since forever.
After the story, Saunders performs a dissection. It is fascinating and illuminating. I learn some things about writing, and I feel a new admiration for and insight into Tolstoy. Neat. I have new respect for the story, though I can't shake that unnamable aspect that bumped me. Again, business as usual. In the past, this is where the recess bell would ring or we move onto a new topic, or I get my essay back with a "B+" grade, and I plod onward, a little better-off, but incomplete.
But wait—Saunders starts a new section, "Afterthought #4." I won't spoil the specifics, and I don't need to, because this is what was important to me: Saunders identifies that, "yep, there is a false note in this story," then explains what he believes it is.
My hair is blown back. I tumble Buster Keaton-style backward over my chair.
As he explains the shortcoming, everything becomes clear. Yes, that is why that passage of the story seemed weird. Yes, that is why I wonder about some of that character's behaviours.
Saunders completely validates my strange feeling. Imagine the opening night of an opera, and at the final curtain, all the important cast members have received their standing ovations, when unexpectedly, a cart full of long-stem roses is wheeled out and presented to one of the background singers—some homely-looking piece of human ambience—and the spotlight focuses on that ordinarily-unseen performer, and the crowd bursts into a torrent of applause, confetti rains down, fireworks (somehow) light up the inside of the theatre, and the rest of the cast prostrate themselves before that background singer to the sound of Handel's Messiah.
I present this lumbering metaphor to you as a way of saying that I feel like I have new trust in my reading intuition as a tool, something that, over the last few years, I felt as if I had been losing. I don't know if I'll ever be able to identify specifics as well as Saunders, but for the time being I'm happy to have reinforced my faith in my ability to know when something does and does not ring true. Considering all the talk about "intuition" we I've been throwing around lately, this is very valuable to me.
Progress!
I got to the end of Chapter Two! I need only to loop back to the start (remember: I try not to ever start at the start), finish the first five pages, and Chapter Two is completely pencilled! HUZZAH!
AUUUGHHHH THOSE GREEN BARS! :DDD
Next Week:
I think it will be fun to look back at what has been done during 2021, including (but not limited to) getting into the details of what, specifically, your patron contributions have meant to me and to this project.
Pretty soon we'll reach the shortest day of the year (in the northern hemisphere, at least—hi, Doug in Australia). I'm always excited to see the backside of that jackass (the shortest day, not Doug). However you celebrate (or mourn, or whatever) this time of year, I hope you are comfortable and secure. For my part, I will be eye-deep in eggnog.
TC
Comments
Tony Cliff
You know, that whole sequence is quite a few pages of a lot of talking heads and emoting figures. Maybe my brain was trying to tell me, "you need to change it up!" so that when I got to the page that involves a lot of running around town, it was a relief. I feel like this is A Thing for me: I lean heavily on sequences of Characters Who Are Acting. I feel like it would be wise to vary things. But I have wondered what I would do differently (specifically in this sequence) and have come up short. Maybe when it has time to rest, and I come back to it during inking, I will be able to more clearly see room for improvements.
Tony Cliff
Hmmm re: "not working on a conceptual level," that is interesting. Though, I would think that would be more relevant on higher levels of the process, versus little things like drawing a hand or getting the perspective right or whatever. That hand was very much a case of "this just doesn't look right," and I knew it COULD look right, because I had a photo of my own hand, Looking Right. That will be a good thing to remember, though: if a small part is giving trouble, pull back and ask whether the larger composition could be reconsidered. The first thing your comment reminded me of was "Oblique Strategies"— https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oblique_Strategies — a series of cards, each of which "offers a challenging constraint intended to help artists (particularly musicians) break creative blocks by encouraging lateral thinking." Though again I usually think of this approach alongside early-stage birds-eye steps in a creative project.
Tealin
I am a firm believer in Off Days. Thankfully they happen less frequently now than they used to, but they always come along at the worst time. Any number of things seem to trigger them, be it amount of sleep or change in weather or just something demanding too much background RAM. But they rarely last too long. Something I've noticed, and I wonder if it's true for you – when I'm really struggling with a page, or even a panel, quite often it's because it's not working on a conceptual level. I grind and grind, trying to force it to work, when what it really needs is to be re-thought. I'm canny enough to this now that when I'm having this sort of problem I'll stop and think "is this the right way to be doing it?" and if I can solve the wrong approach, then the new drawing comes very easily, even if it's a more "tricky" drawing technically. It was very annoying when I really struggled with a page, and it wasn't until I posted it on Patreon that I got feedback that both identified and solved the conceptual problem – of course, I couldn't have NOT drawn it, I had to post *something*, but it was a bitter moment of "so that's why I was struggling so much." Have you found anything similar?
Fergus Maximus
Hey Tony, to my amusement, when I looked up the word to check the spelling, I learned that—notwithstanding it's common usage—from Doug's and my point of view, you're antipodean!
Tony Cliff
I wish you both (and any other antipodeans (good word)) the sunniest of days!!! <3
Douglas Holgate
This is all just incredibly wonderful and important stuff Tony. Love these insights. Beautiful work as always. Will have to see if I can track down a copy of A Swim In A Pond in the Rain.
Douglas Holgate
Hello Fergus! Here we are just absolutely basking in the glow of a steamy southern backside down here right now!
Fergus Maximus
Thanks, Tony, for the insight into your process. You have inspired me to seek out and read George Saunders' book. Hopefully this time I might actually do that! And "Hi" to Doug from a fellow antipodean. Let's luxuriate in our long warm days while they last.
