the making of rimbaud strip number two

notes and panel outlines - i make lots and lots of notes regarding various ideas for casual poet strips. especially ones using historic figures as stand-ins. in this case, i was using arthur rimbaud. everything rimbaud says in this comic was taken directly from his writings, be they poems, stories, or letters. i do condense, and sometimes restructure their sequence, but what he is depicted as saying is always based on fact. however, it is also carefully chosen to mirror my own thoughts or experiences. when i get close to the drawing stage of a particular strip, i like to rule out and ink in the panel borders first. it makes me feel like i've completed something, and also helps me start visualizing the pacing of the page.

pencils - sometimes i will do thumbnails of a page in my sketchbook, but most often i like to just dive right in once the strip has been written. i start by blocking out the lettering, so i know how much space i have left to draw in. this also allows for one final round of editing the text of the page. as i'm putting down the lettering, i think about what will be happening visually in each panel. i then pencil everything light and fast. lately i have had a lot of monologue based strips, so it is important to me that the characters perform some sort of action - for this strip since rimbaud is still out and about in the countryside i settled on catching a falling leaf.

inks - again, i start with the lettering and word balloons. like the panel borders, this gives me a sense of completion. then i go through the page and ink in the characters, and finally the backgrounds. once the pencils are erased, any inking mistakes are retouched with a whiteout pen, and its off to make a reduction at the photocopy place so i can fit it on my scanner to color in on photoshop.

correction: i noticed after coloring this page that i incorrectly placed rimbaud's wound on his right hand. in fact, he was shot in the left. many apologies for this error.