Judge Parker Process

 In cleaning off an old UBS drive I came across a layout for an old Judge Parker strip from my first few months on the strip back in 2010. I the beginning I used to do a small layout for the Sundays, then blow it up and trace it off on my light box and finish the pencils, inks, etc. This is the way I worked on a lot of my comic work for decades. This allowed me to easily make changes and adjust things, at one point I even used an art-o-graph to do this. This way of working allowed me to see my whole composition and layout smaller; the bigger a drawing the harder it is for your eye to see the whole composition  at onetime without moving your eye.  If you have to scan your eye it is hard at times to compare the whole composition and see if it fits together the way you want.

This is still an effective way to work, a good way to work and sometimes on other projects I still work in this fashion.

 This was also a great way to work out perspective grids smaller as often the vanishing points extend way beyond the edge of the paper.

In the five years I have been working on the strip I have become a lot more comfortable and confident and long ago abandoned working out my compositions as I did above--now I just wing it--go from the gut. I see it in my minds eye and blast it down on the board. If I don't like something I just erase it and start over till I get what I want. This keeps the creative process more live and also speed up the whole process by eliminating the tracing or transfer process of my layout. Deadlines are always a constant issue on the strip and even a hour out of one part of the process can add up and ease the pressure. This week it was all pretty much just Neddy and Abbey talking heads, so expressions were the big key here. Attractive faces and good angles, not much else at play here, just enough of the environments to show the location. Color was a big thought from early on, I kept the blacks to really only local color of Neddy's hair. I wanted the color to feel the the sun flooding into the kitchen in early morning. You'll see this Sunday in full color at the end of July