Bend it like Jack Hamm

Another recent job. The client here was operating with limited bugetary resources (i.e. no money), but he provided me with some great photo reference, and I wanted to experiment more with the brush markers. I figured since he was only paying me for pencils I could mess around a bit and he'd still get more than his money's worth.

I just let the pencils be part of the final drawings here. I like the stray sketchy lines because you can see the energy of the drawing as it happened.

Doing comics in the 90's I used to try so hard (and fail miserably) to emulate the super-polished, super-anal ink lines that were popular at the time. As I go on I'm less and less enamored of that "finished" look. Anymore I usually prefer looking at people's sketches rather than their finished work, because the sketches are alive and raw and real. I wonder if that's a function of getting older. Or just getting tired of seeing the same thing over and over. Or just realizing that I'm Not That Guy.

In any case I'm really comfortable with this style and I'm curious if it would translate into comics. God knows I can work faster this way. If I ever get my "Macbeth" book off the ground maybe I'll do it like this. I figure the audience for comics that look like advertising marker comps is roughly as big as the audience for Shakespeare comics, i.e. nothing, so I have nothing to lose.






































































Edie sometimes gets bored in the car seat and starts fussing, and you have to sing some horrible children's song to quiet her down. If she likes the song she asks for an encore ("Ah-gain?"). And another and another. If you try to sing a different song she cuts you off ("Noope") and you have to go back to the one she likes.