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Imitation comic:

This specific project took about 45 minutes. This coming from my tendencies as a perfectionist. It also took a long time because I couldn’t quite figure out what to write a comic about.

This comic wasn’t incredibly hard to mimic because I had a brush pen. I imagine using a pencil or a regular pen would leave this imitation looking a little off. The only thing I really had issues with were the noses. I say this because I am used to drawing realism and... well.. come on.... WHO HAS WEIRD LITTLE ROUND NOSES LIKE THAT?

The simplicity in this comic is not deceiving. I was interested to find that (as I was drawing to replicate) Hobbes stripes are not this same in every comic. These strips are almost like quick sketches. Once I understood that as an artist I was able to create his style more easily.

My Evolving process PART 2:

Okay, I drew Fire… but now I’ll talk about what mediums I used.

One of my favorite places is Japan in Epcot. I could spend hours in the japan gift shop buying things I don’t really need. In fact I have splurged on non-essentials quite a few times there. One of my favorite impulse purchases I’ve ever gotten is a Japanese brush pen. The pen has painters ink infused to it. It feels similar to painting with a more strictly performing brush. I bought this and never used it. I decided that for the adaptation project I would finally make use of this pen. I used it to fill in the black spaces within my comic and to paint smoked realistically.

Markers are something that I’ve learned need to be used with caution. Markers are a harsh contrast type of color. It is for the strength and abrasiveness of this medium that I only used it in one part of my comic. I used marker to really illuminate the importance of Montag (the main character of Fahrenheit 451) meeting Clarisse (the female protagonist). These characters themselves are in white but the background colors are harsh and unforgiving.

Colored pencils are my god sent in art creation. These utensils have all the same qualities of a normal pencil except they add a new tone. Drawing a character in black creates an unassuming line. Drawing a character in blue brings an immediate tone to the line. It is for this reason that I utilized colored pencils to thinly define the tonal elements I wanted to convey. Colored pencils creating a feeling more real and forgiving than markers or paint.

Looking back I really wish I would’ve tea stained a couple pages or at leased used watercolors a bit but I wanted to try something different with this piece and this is just knowledge to work from for future endeavors.

My Evolving Process

SERIOUSLY, HOW THE F#*K DOES ONE DRAW FIRE?

The only time I’ve ever lit a match, I threw it in the sink because I was scared when it lit on fire. Due to my arthritis I cannot manage to use a regular lighter and actually start the flame. I am not a boy scout and therefore do not posses the ability to start a fire by rubbing sticks together. I am not a wizard so I cannot magically start a fire. All in all, the ability for me to see fire as a visual is incredibly difficult if not impossible. Fahrenheit 451 is a book centered around fire. I am supposed to adapt this book into a comic and ultimately draw fire. You may start to see my problem, when you can’t see fire: How does one draw fire?

When trying to figure out how to draw fire I had to look to the Internet for information. My search history is now a conglomeration of searches like: Fire drawing, video of fire, firefighters, fire. I fear that I may have not only improved my artistic abilities in this task but also my name ranking on an FBI list of arsonists somewhere. My biggest conclusion was that people draw a horned spire and outline it in orange or red to draw fire. It is usually a full fire that feels like it’s boasting about it’s size. I didn’t want the fire in my comic to feel like this. I wanted my fire to be elegant and transparent. Fire isn’t a set in stone object its ever-changing and malleable. This decision to complicate the normal standard for drawing fire further complicated my question: How do I want to draw my fire?

I decided that my fire wouldn’t just be a color fill it would be a series of colored lines. This artistic style would make the piece look like it was dancing, the fire became it’s own entity on the page. The commanding focus of the fire made me decide that the rest of the page should depend on the light of this flame. The page would be a bas color of black and the fire would make the picture appear from it. Instead of black lines to draw I used red and orange to show how this fire illuminates the setting and the story itself.

How does one draw fire?

However the heck they want.

Possibilities for the adaptation project:

HOW DOES ONE DRAW FIRE?

That is my general motive going into the adaptation project. My suggestion for the adaptation list was Fahrenheit 451 and for the sake of my ego I had to see it through. This specific book is one that sends me into a frenzy of big brother scare I thought that would be awesome to adapt into something more. How does one portray fear and sci-fi in the comic form? How does one draw fire?

Fahrenheit 451 is a piece required of most high school students, and yet most don’t read it. Instead they have a lively chat with a friend named spark notes. Students who would probably actually love the text are turned off by the fact that it is in fact text (Page after page about burning page after page). For the future teacher in me, this meant a productive challenge: make a text more accessible to the adolescent viewer. I wanted to explore the idea of making literature something easier to digest and comics seemed like the form. I wanted to take the spark from spark notes and kindle a student’s interest, just another step to figure out: How does one draw fire.

The final step to take into account when looking at my decision to adapt this text lies in my personal love affair with art. I like to challenge myself as an artist. Every week in class I try a new technique in comic creation. Sometimes I try out a new animation style, sometimes it’s a panel arrangement, either way I like to promote growth. I’ve never successfully depicted fire so I saw this as an opportunity to test my skill and attempt to figure out the answer to the question: How does one draw fire?

For this task, I decided to diagram/map out my tattoos. People always ask me what they're about and I figured this was a way to keep them at 'arms length'. This piece explains the spontaneity behind some of my pieces and that not everything is huge decision. There's a stigma behind tattoos that they all must mean something or hold an incredibly deep significance..... Honestly sometimes you get a girl tattooed on you because she has a cool pet wolf.

Discovery task 8:

For this assignment, I decided to draw my experience at Joysticks video game bar. I incorporated the aspect to aspect transition. This piece was a combination of observation and wordplay. I wanted the comic to be both visually stimulating and entertaining to read.

The hardest part was deciding whether or not to bring myself into the comic, so I made myself a tool in the depiction of the bar.

Discovery Task 7:

For this assignment we were asked to depict a conversation... so I stalked some elderly folk. I tried to play around with a less photo realistic style and stick to basic shapes and I like how it turned out. I also edited on a blue filter because I felt like this conversation could use it. The blue helps reiterate the hilarity established in the mundane.

This is a depiction of my 2016

In this comic I chose to personify a very dark time in my life that shaped the nature of my entire 2016.

Possible topics for my final project:

- living life as a half Mexican woman

- Death as a character

- Anxiety in a comic depiction

- The real Florida vs tourist Florida

- Why I hate the beach

- A comic of my most passive aggressive moments.

- What it is like to live away from your parents

- Dating in the 21st century

- My dreams and how they interact with my reality.

- Annoying things that happen when you have tattoos

Journal 2: what to steal

I find that more often than not I absolutely despise “artsy” films. I have trouble admiring cinematography that tries to hard. The same far away shots that obscurely show what is going on paired with the over exhausted light flare just feels not genuine. I was surprised to find that I found such beauty within the translated in the Japanese comic in the “Best American Comics” book. The comic has minimalistic scenes with small text areas. I say “areas” because the comic doesn’t play by the conventional rules of text boxes. The text hangs freely in the air of the comic. This technique makes the text feel less like a dialogue and more like a narration. This is something I would consider employing in my pieces in the future. I feel as if this text strategy would take my comic to a new sophisticated level.

It is difficult not to make yourself or a character the center of your comic, this comic manages to be successful without showing a single face. Each panel is an aspect to aspect. I imagine if the piece wasn’t made carefully the aspect to aspect rout could leave a lot to be desired but in this case the shots of inanimate objects gives all focus to the reader’s imagination so the narrative becomes interactive.

I plan on ‘stealing’ these techniques when I take on a more serious topic. Using less assuming panels and text boxes will place more importance on the text itself. The text will stand out and the panels will mainly function as a source of setting and tone.

Journal 1: The process.....

I will probably write about you. If you make even a remotely important impact on my day, I will probably write about you. My writing process is one that effects every facet of my life. I walk through every experience thinking of possible stories to take from it. Every person is a headline in a piece. This same process carries over into my comics. The only difference is that I pair an image to the writing with comics.

The time it takes to create a comic differs with each assignment. If I have an idea the minute I see an assignment description the comic can be done in thirty minutes flat. The time I spend on comics is relatively short because as an artist I don’t enjoy over exhausting pieces. When I paint or sketch I do not devote more than an hour to the work because then there is more time to overthink. Overthinking is an especially dangerous venture when it comes to comic creation because the beauty of some comic work is the nature of it’s simplicity. Comics tend to convey more in a more attractive manner to the viewer.

Choosing my crafting materials depends on what I want to convey. For the most part my final product is based in black ink. Color in the image has varied for every assignment. In my first comic that was about me, I chose black and white because color wasn’t really a necessary element within the narrative. In my aspect to aspect comic I chose to do watercolor. Watercolor helped better carry the heavy message within my political piece. The fluidity of the material depicted the transparency of emotions that I wanted. In my latest comic I just used marker to color. The comic was an adaptation of a trump tweet and color was just a tool used to make the character of Captain planet more identifiable in my piece. The color was blocking and unforgivingly bright in comparison to the watercolor, but here I was also mirroring a bold Trump stance.

Each comic is made on sketch paper simply because my pen won’t bleed through and It offers a little more space to work with than regular paper does. Being the indecisive uncertain person that I am I tend to write out the comic in pencil first. I would rather have the room for a fixable mistake than to ruin a great comic by drawing a wonky eye. My lack of faith in my artistic abilities also forces me to fill my iphone camera with pictures of the same comic throughout the process. The most important thing for me to document when drawing the comic is the before and after color. Far too often have I ruined a painting by adding color. Having the before picture allows me the ability to forgive a coloration mess up if it does happen.

Overall, text writing and comic writing take about the same amount of time for me. In both areas, or all areas for that matter, I am a perfectionist. My attention to weird details such as diction or how heavy a line is do not give the chance at a short allotted time. Both processes tell a narrative, just in different ways. Each narrative is equally important to me, so it only makes sense that they take the same amount of time to create.

Discovery task 5: Illustrate a Trump tweet

For this task I scrolled through Donald Trump’s twitter for about an hour and came across quite a few tweets that were worthwhile. I say worthwhile because it is hard to comprehend that someone would genuinely think these thoughts. This piece was my interpretation of playfulness mixed with political commentary.

Discovery task 4: Photo Comic.

For this assignment we were asked to display an emotion via photo comic, I chose to explore the feeling of confusion and abandonment when someone doesn’t respond to you. This comic took me out of my comfort zone. I am more than used to art and drawing to convey a message, but sequential photos are something I’ve never tried before. This comic took me about 2 hours to create. Those two hours were mostly spent toiling on the ground trying to figure out what my comic should be about, only about thirty minutes were actually productive.

(you’ll probably have to click it to enlarge it big enough to read)

Discovery task 3:

Wordless comic

For this assignment I used the aspect to aspect transition. I wanted to also test using the comic medium as a means of political commentary. This piece took me about 30 minutes to create mainly due to the nature of detail involved with Obama’s face. I wanted a more realistic depiction of him.

I also made a point to use watercolor because it mirrors my emotions about everything more than acrylic paint or markers would. I displays a certain type of fluidity and transparency that almost feels as if the page is crying.

Aspect to aspect seemed like the most fruitful option because it felt the most powerful. Each piece of a puzzle silently coinciding to form the same idea,

my full header photo

Discovery Task 2:

My antisocial tendencies displayed through my dislike of babies, and their ability to be overpowered by my love of dogs

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