Leftie…

When you work at your drawing table 24/7 for two weeks straight, you will eventually experience some discomfort in your drawing-hand and arm…

So, clever as I am (!) , I figured I should get my left hand to work for me as well as the right one. That way I can just change hands when my sweet miss rightie is all worked out!        

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(I really like that smiley, its “thumbs-up-smiley”, if you couldn’t see that.)

 

On the train between Malmö and Stockholm I began my mission towards Leftie-perfection.

Theese are the first pages. Straight out of my sketchbook.

Writing text was harder than drawing.

The lines when I drew got all scratchy-like. Need to work on getting them fine and steady instead.

Looks better than I expected at least! And considering this was drawn on a bumpy train I am actually quite impressed with the outcome!

Now I’m all of a sudden set on drawing a short comic with my newborn baby, my darling, miss leftie.

I will watch her grow and evolve, becoming steadier and steadier, and soon enough she will be speaking fluently in the language of the lines.

 

 

Pretty cool text about ME… saying I am Doucet-esque, but sunnier! check it out! Do it! YEAHYEAHYEAH!!!

http://www.underthehaystack.net/?p=1370

Three takes, couldn’t choose, so I’m giving you all. All of meeee, why not take aaaall of meee. Can’t you see I’m no good without YOU!

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Better but not done

Okay, so I took care of what was wrong with the second page and added a third page. Still need to re-arrange the panels on the first page though. And give the inking some extra finesse too.

 

Unt now! Second page. Very different from the first version. Much better, but I still need to get some background in the last panel… the dirty panel. *blushing*

Aaaand now

*drum roll* 

Third page!

The text is still the same, just spread out on more panels.

No! It’s not the same! I actually made a few changes in the text when I re-drew it.  Should probably translate it all over again for you guys…

Hey, tell ya what! I’ll fix what needs fixing and then put it up with english text in the panels!

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Am I a good girl now mommy?

I had my first meeting with Stina Hjelm, one of my mentors on this journey to creating the most magnificent book in the world, yesterday. She told me to take a break from the actual drawing of the book and just draw the characters over and over again until they had become a muscle memory in my hand.

I drew and I drew and I drew aaand theeeen I just couldn’t help myself so I made a two-page comic. It isn’t finished yet though, but I thought I’d show you guys how far I got this first day anyway.

Right now I’m thinking of re-arranging the first and second panel. Have it begin with the bathroom-panel instead. Also I will probably move the text around a bit too in this first page… It should read:

 “When I was little and did something good”

bubble: “Oh my dear! You’ve been such a good girl!”

“my mother said I was a good girl“

“When i started school I got a teacher who was very pretty…”

“and kind of strict”

“I hurried through my school books” “checked of excercise after excercise”   “read”   “wrote”   “calculated”

“Just to hear those words”

bubble: “Oh, would ya look at that! finished already? What a good girl!”

Ahhhm… the second page has some… sex. hrm. It’s kind of awkward to put it up here I guess, since I allways nag on my mom about not reading my blog… ahm… so OM DET ÄR MAMMA SOM LÄSER DETTA SÅ KAN DU BARA STRUNTA I RESTEN, OKEJ? DET ÄR INGET ELAKT OM DIG, DET ÄR BARA LITE PINSAMT.

Got some smudge on the nether part of this page. Sorry, will fix a lot of things before it’s done… But now: translation!

“Now I’m all grown up”

“Grown-up”

“25 years old”  “When mom was 25″   “she was a mother of two”

“Me”

“I still just wanna be”

“a good girl“

“The best thing I know is when I’m with a man…”  “and he says…”

bubble: “That’s it, good girl. Mmm… you’re such a… ah, yes… gooood girl“

“Then I get crazy horny”

“Which is kind of sick”  “that my sexual impulses”  “can be traced back to me wanting to be a good girl for mommy”

“But who’s not kind of sick?”

Hey guys… I just noticed that it has just a liiittle too much information in the last panel… Will probably have to spread that text to a third page. It’s way too heavy to have it all squeezed together like that. It just messes up the whole rythm of the reading-experience.

Yepp, I have a lot of fixing up to do on this comic… Will probably get back to you with the result when it’s finished!

Love and kisses to all of you readers, and to your neighbours, and your spouses, and to your friends, and alsooo… waaaaiiit fooor iiit…. waaaaiiiit foooor iiiit… to your enemies!!! haHA!  

A journey back in time

 

Today I finnished this page. It will be in the beginning of the book, connecting the prologue with the first chapter. The prologue takes place in 2008 at Bokmässan i Göteborg. Then my story will take you back to 1997 where I am 13 years old. The year when my wish to get away from it all eventually took me on a journey through a strange enchanted world. The model industry.

I wanted this page to work in both the swedish version of my book as well as in the english translation, so inspired by my lovely mentor Julie Doucet I chose to do it bilingual. Does it work, you think?  I like it. It’s kind of educational, isn’t it?

Love and kisses to you all! May the force be with you.

This is where I create the most magnificent book ever!

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A closer look at the original drawings from my first comic

Of course the ones I love the most are the drawings of the Bella-character. Can you read the text around her? It’s supposed to be the babbleing  of the blond girl. Like her voice just chatters on and on and fills up the whole room with meaningless talk.

Here you see how I drew a two-panel sequence with only her eyes moving slightly. To give the feeling of boredom. Haha, totally unaware of what I was doing though! I just kind of went with the flow at the time. This analysis is purely a post-construction (is that even a word? There’s a word in Swedish for it, efterkonstruktion, but I’ve never really heard it being used in english…) . Hm.

Ah! And now my favourite! I made her sit with her finger up her nose when I sketched this one.

I love how the arm and hand are long like that. Very beautiful. And the slow kind of floating feeling of the hands pose. And those eyes! To die for for sure! Mmmm… lovely.

My very first comic!

Okay, so this isn’t exactly what it looked like.

I had to try and recreate the format of the panels from memory, ’cause I only saved the original drawings, not the printout or the digital file with the finished page.

You see, the way I went about making this comic was to draw each panel on an A4-size paper and then run them through my scanner and then finally pasting them together in photoshop, resizing them to the suitable size. And as a finnish I used the paintbucket-tool to emphasise the bugger on the blonde girls cheek.

Why did I start drawing comics? Well the beautiful darkhaired lady with the grumpy face above was my inspiration actually.

She is Bella.

Isabella Rodriguez.

One of the most inspiring people I’ve ever met in my life.  She put graphic novels in my hand and taught me all the basics about the artform. It was like being reborn. 

Her face is so strong, with that marked jaw line, those full pouty lips, that interesting nose… I only wanted to draw Her, all the time. Tell stories with Her.

Oh! She was my muse! I didn’t reflect on it at the time, but she truly was!

When I finally went about making a real comic (the one above) I used her and myself to create the characters for it. Of course she was to be the raw, cool and intelligent character. I, on the other hand, became the stupid, girly and painfully annoying blonde. Just to clearify though, the above sequence never actually took place. We were the best of friends. And still are, for that matter. 

I love you Bella. Thank you for all that you’ve given me.

Quitters never win & Winners never quit!

The first days of this new school term I have been kind of manic. Stayed at my drawing table until 05.30 the first day and then went in for an all-day-all-nighter the day after that too. Which of course resulted in a minor crash that made me oversleep until 15.00 on the third day. -.^ 

But as we say here in Sweden, “Det gäller att smida medan järnet är varmt!” How does that translate..? ahm aahh… hold on… (asking me lurvley mates) T. Wadbro saves the day and gives me the right translation! “Temper while the steel is still hot!” Thats’s the saying I was thinking of. Anywhoo, I almost finished the first page of the prologue and started working on the second page too. I scanned it in blue-pen so you can see a portion of my workprocess.