art process: zimbits
Like everyone who lets even a little bit of the comic @omgcheckplease into their life, it has completely swallowed mine. Over the course of a few afternoons I made this color pencil drawing. For anyone into this kind of thing I took some photos of the process and I'll do a little walk through below the cut.
I didn't go to art school (or college at all) and I don't remember much terminology from the few art classes I've taken since high school so just pretend I'm using all these fancy words and references to old masters etc. [also, my omgcp sideblog is @jack-manpain-zimmermann]
At left is the Leyendecker piece that I used as reference for the gesture and mood of Jack and Bitty respectively. It's a stolen moment of joy for Bitty, and a baffling one for hockey robot Jack. Bitty's smile is soft and tentative and Jack's appears mostly in his eyes widening slightly at the burst of effusiveness.
Ignore Bitty being foreshortened due to the camera angle. I started blocking out the shadows in each: Bitty in a vibrant apple red and Jack’s sallow Canadian paleness.
---Jack.
White skin in full lighting gets a lot less pigment on the paper but has no fewer colors than more melanin. Jack spends the majority of his life indoors and has never lived further south than Massachusetts. Most of his blue lying deep under the skin shows through with some close capillary red over cartilage and bone.
The red around his eyes is also intentional. A lost year following a medication overdose and rehab combined with a naturally intense disposition has made this guy permanently on edge. The little guy wrapped around his waist helps with that eventually.
Jack's nose could probably do with being a bit bigger based on Ngozi's comic version of him but his most defining features are all here. The geometry of hooded brow, cheekbones and sculpted jaw. Those bright blue eyes defined by kohl eyelashes. Oh Jack, so very pretty.
Sadly I forgot to photograph the pencils used in Jack's hair. It's a combination of ice blue, violet, browns and black. Based on his coloring I've reckoned that Jack has dark hair on the inkier rather than browner side. I wouldn't reckon it would lighten in the sun even if he spent more time outside.
---Bitty.
This is a bit of a jumble but the top two are processes and the colors used for Bitty’s skin while the bottom is his finished hair and skin combined with the pencils used for his hair.
Ngozi blows my mind with the way she sketches and shades her characters with such deliberate intent over this protracted format. Bitty is our POV and the main character so by the time we've known him six months (in comic time) he is fully fleshed out and visible. While Ngozi doesn't have him agonizing or self-hating for his cherubic looks she does highlight the frustration Bitty often feels about his baby face. He clearly likes being cute and is at home in his smaller non-musclebound body, which is refreshing to see in a gay male character. He isn't internalizing any toxic feelings from his community about needing to be buff or being ashamed of behaviors and preferences that are very wrongly labeled as exclusively feminine. He just wants to look his age, lift a bit more in weight training and have a bigger butt. He's even fine with not being able to grow facial hair to any significant degree.
So Bitty's skin is definitely soft and has a healthy well-fed glow. There's so much of Georgia within and without him that I ended up making him a peach. Unlike Jack, he has no sharp edges or sense of weight to him. Fan fic writers across fandom describe Bitty as a warm, glowing presence who warms every space he inhabits. In this moment he's warming cold and remote lunar Jack.
(Technically Bitty is a blonde. I make no apology for deciding that Bitty's hair turns a strawberry blond in Massachusetts weather and spending his days on the rink or indoors.)
This is their skin after balancing them out against each other a bit.
---Clothing.
Jacks’ crisp linen white shirts. Made famous throughout the series due to his lack of an undershirt, suggestion of chest hair and wearing them with a casual sartorial grace. I straight up copied the colors for the white shirts in Leyendeckers’ painting at the start of this post.
Jack’s giant top-shelf ass. I mean errr uhhh yeah the dress trousers are going to be picked out for him and expensive. No flat poly-blend colors here.
I studied Ngozi’s Samwell Red closely and I hope I got close. It's very New England with the forest green hint in the shadow but brilliant crimson in the light.
I didn’t get a picture of Bitty’s shorts but they were very simple. Lilac, lemon, a coating of taupe and slate to define the folds and lines.
To finish, here’s a closer detail of their faced and hair. See?? Bitty’s still a blond kinda! Jack’s eyes are a less scary blue when put in color context!
This was a joy to make and if you haven’t read Check, Please yet then trust me it’s going to light up your life. I hope I’ve done a fraction of justice to the charm and depth of these two characters.