First sketches of the new year

Over the last few weeks I went back and tagged all my old entries with artwork in ’em (or all that I could find) as memories, using the keyword art. Looking back over them, I noticed that I like the fine-line and crosshatched work a whole lot. (And that I did a first-drawing-of-the-year post last year too, and only two days in.) This sparked an impulse to work larger than I have been recently, to move back up to a 9x12 pad from my Moleskine (or maybe even to 11x14). So I picked up a hard-bound sketchbook at Pearl. Pearl-branded, but with Canson’s imprint on the back. Turns out the paper kinda sucks, too soaky, the ink spreads out too much. On Friday I did a sketch of Melorne at a desk in an office cubicle (prep work for the first Vasty Deep strip, which I’ve got almost all scripted out), and it just sucks.

While gaming Saturday I dragged the book out again and did some ballpoint doodling. Ballpoints are admirably paper-agnostic; you can get decent results on real crappy paper. The downside is that you won’t get the really dark blacks no matter what paper you use. Still, it’s a good tool for just cutting loose and getting ideas out onto paper. You can move seamlessly from light, tentative lines to firm, dark lines without having to change tools.

( Some ballpoint doodles )

Hm. Y’know, with a web comic, there’s not much reason not to go with something quick and simple like ballpoint, if it works. I can always take it into Photoshop, boost the contrast, and dab color behind it:

( Ballpoint girl with color )

Anyway, I picked up a Canson spiral-bound sketchbook at Hudson County Art Supply today. Better paper than the other one, almost as good as Strathmore. I also discovered that Strathmore makes hardcover sketchbooks (both spiral-bound and actual books), but they’re tough to find around here. I can order them from MisterArt.com if I need to.

"The world now demands a maturity of America that we may not be able to achieve."

From Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence
Rev. Martin Luther King
4 April 1967, at Riverside Church in New York City

Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. I speak for the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home and death and corruption in Vietnam. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as an American to the leaders of my own nation. The great initiative in this war is ours. The initiative to stop it must be ours.

This is the message of the great Buddhist leaders of Vietnam. Recently one of them wrote these words:

"Each day the war goes on the hatred increases in the heart of the Vietnamese and in the hearts of those of humanitarian instinct. The Americans are forcing even their friends into becoming their enemies. It is curious that the Americans, who calculate so carefully on the possibilities of military victory, do not realize that in the process they are incurring deep psychological and political defeat. The image of America will never again be the image of revolution, freedom and democracy, but the image of violence and militarism."

If we continue, there will be no doubt in my mind and in the mind of the world that we have no honorable intentions in Vietnam. It will become clear that our minimal expectation is to occupy it as an American colony and men will not refrain from thinking that our maximum hope is to goad China into a war so that we may bomb her nuclear installations. If we do not stop our war against the people of Vietnam immediately the world will be left with no other alternative than to see this as some horribly clumsy and deadly game we have decided to play.

The world now demands a maturity of America that we may not be able to achieve. It demands that we admit that we have been wrong from the beginning of our adventure in Vietnam, that we have been detrimental to the life of the Vietnamese people. The situation is one in which we must be ready to turn sharply from our present ways.