This week marks the half-year point when I first started drawing pages for Shattered With Curve of Horn. In celebration of that fact I wanted to let you in on a little side-project I’ve been working on. Here are two pages of a short-form, black and white comic called “Greasebucket,” that I’ve been drawing for the past few weeks.
I can’t remember who said it…it was some film director, but they mentioned that when they’re working on a feature-length film, they always stop at the midpoint and make a much smaller project, like a short film, just to sort of “reset” themselves and give them the oomph they need to get through the rest of the primary project. I like this idea a lot.
“Greasebucket” has come to be my sort of counterweight to Shattered, in that it is very stylistically and thematically different, thus it gives me a lot of perspective on Shattered that I might not have if I were working only on the long-form graphic novel.
Not only that, but working solely in black and white, as opposed to planning for eventual coloring, is a whole other challenge that I’ve really been enjoying. Black and white is entirely binary, forcing the artist to choose which of his two colors he will use to represent something. Without tone or hue this creates constraints on the artform which in turn can lead to breakthroughs in storytelling. The old adage about setting up boundaries to set oneself free really holds true here.
As for the fate of “Greasebucket” and the rest of the story? You’ll just have to stay tuned!
