Draw/Redraw

I've hit a bit of a rough patch with the book I've been tentatively titling as Drown. There has been a lot of redrawing. Right as I near completion of a page, I will begin to feel that it is not working. I'll continue on because it's best to see a page in it's finished state. Then, when it's finished, I hate it, and I just feel like I have been wasting my time.


This page is within a section where a circus ship has been capsized in a storm and all the crew members, circus performers, and animals go crashing into the ocean. With this page, the black of the undersea section just felt too heavy in comparison to the above water section. Also, the above the water section is a little unclear in terms of what is actually happening. There needs to be a splash of some sort.

And so, the fix:


This one will rely much more on computer coloring to bring out depth in the thin clean lines.

This next draw/redraw situation is in a section where the heroic pair have been swallowed by a fish and descend into its stomach, and the problem here is the clean lines. They are far too thin and uniform. They don't really show any movement or life. On the previous page, the clean lines worked because it was crystalizing the moment of the elephant plunging into the water. This page is shouldn't be that clean though; it needs a little more action in the lines.


Which basically means switching up the tools and using a brush instead of a technical pen.


These are just two of a number of drawn and redrawn pages, and one of my brains likes to think that it is just problems with the individual pages, but another one of my brains thinks that drawing and redrawing is a sign of a deeper problem, which is that this project is currently directionless, and that the lack of focus within the overall work is seen in a lack of focus or clarity of thought within the individual pages.

I think I've jumped into this one a little too soon. I also think that one of my brains was very happy with the results of Hedra and wants to create another. That brain insists on duplicating the Hedra process, one in which I really did just jump in and start drawing, and so I felt I should do the same with this project.

However, the lesson for my brains to learn from Hedra should not be to view it as cookbook recipe template. It is simply that I should do whatever I want in whatever way I want to do it. Let the project dictate the form. Attempting to copy what was done before, even if it is something done by myself, is death.

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