Brian Moore's Sketchblog

I spend a lot of time thinking about process. How to make my art more quickly without sacrificing quality, how to organize images and tools. Comics can be very labor-intensive—layout, researching, penciling, inking, lettering, and so on—so another element to think about is how to keep the whole process fun.

I look at the work of some of the artists I admire—Joann Sfar, Lewis Trondheim, Eddie Campbell—and their art looks like it was a blast to make: elastic, playful, but with solid draftsmanship behind it. Of course a prized artistic skill is to make it all look effortless, no matter how much the artist sweated over it.

The panel on the top left follows my first stab at a working process for The Sweetened By-and-By: working out the lettering and balloon shapes on tracing paper, penciling a rough sketch in the space that’s left, inking the balloon shapes and panel lines on watercolor paper, lightboxing the pencil rough onto the watercolor paper, doing a finished drawing in ink, and finally painting. I also scrubbed out the wash on Atom’s suit to make it look shabbier (and to try to improve the contrast with the background), and added some colored pencil on the suit and wall to give it some texture. Whew!

After all that I needed a break, so I went directly to the next panel and brushed on some paint. I tried to suggest some forms with quick daubs of ink. And then I went in with the pen to refine the drawing. Then more black shapes, and a few more washes. Then some additions (dots, highlights) and corrections (the two barstools at left) with white gouache and ink. Much less regimented than the previous panel, and more fun. The downsides: I didn’t plan out the lettering, so I spent time drawing art that is destined to be covered by a balloon. And the drawing, though it was fun to do, isn’t as rigorous as I would like.

So my goal now is to hit a happy medium between these two approaches. Maybe I’ll only do a very rough pencil guide on the watercolor paper, and mostly improvise with the pen (as I did in the bottom right panel.) Or put down a few washes after the balloons, but before picking up the pen. We’ll see. And that will be what keeps it fun.

Ink and watercolor on really cheap paper.

I wanted to make note of the light and shadow pattern of the elevated tracks. At left: Atom in a corner of a restaurant, on the corner of the watercolor paper.

Time for a splash of color on the blog. In the bottom pic, Atom’s probably trying to figure out what/where that light source is.

Inspired by my recent visit to the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art. The background is watercolor and ink, with pasted paper on top.

I highly recommend visiting the Museum – it’s an attractive, friendly space with three galleries (currently showing: Tommy dePaola, E. H. Shepard, and Carle), a library of children’s books, and an art studio where kids and adults can make things. And probably my favorite museum bookshop ever. In addition to a vast array of picture books, they carry mammoth art books like Kramer’s Ergot 7, the Sunday Press collections of Little Nemo in Slumberland, Little Sammy Sneeze, and Sundays with Walt and Skeezix, as well as a smattering of other comics work. And right down the road you can buy dark chocolate peanut butter cups. Well worth the trip.