Pencils Complete!

March 30, 2024

A blue line drawing of a slice of Vegemite toast on a plate and a bite taken out of the corner of it. ‘The End’ is written in the Vegemite.

In very exciting news, I’ve just finished and sent in the pencils for the final chapter of my graphic novel, Oh Brother! This is by no means the end of the hard work (I’ve still got take on final edits and then ink & colour the book!) but it’s a huge step along the way to finishing and publishing my first graphic novel.

Because the book deadlines are super tight, I’m not going to be able to post too much here for next few months. So if you want to keep up to date with what I’m up to (and see more sneak peeks of the book), sign up to my newsletter (link in bio). I send out a little update at the end of each month with some behind the scenes looks at my work and links to any upcoming events I’m doing (pssst, I’m sending out my next newsletter tomorrow).

Alright, I’m going to go nap for a bit now so I’m refreshed and ready to start inking next week! 💪

Oh Brother Prep work, Part 3: Pushing Poses

June 29, 2023

A cartoon character holding up the peace sign with their fingers, leaning back on one bent leg and straightening out the other leg.

Following on from my previous posts about designing my characters and then practicing drawing their emotions, I had one final task: to practice drawing these characters in different poses!

My natural instinct is to draw all my characters in pretty much the same, boring, stock standard pose (standing straight with arms either hanging by their sides or in their pockets if I’m not feeling up to drawing hands). But after years of hanging out with animators, and seeing their excellently expressive and dynamically engaging character designs, something has finally started to rub off on me. I really wanted to be able to show more of the characters’ feelings through their body language (and not just their faces). So when I was practicing the new character designs for this rendition of Oh Brother, I tried my hand at pushing the poses of 5 main characters, starting with myself.

Gina - Pushing Poses

It was really hard for me to start pushing poses (as a naturally stiff pose drawer) but I loved seeing my characters become more loose and energetic the more I pushed the poses. I particularly enjoyed using this exaggerated body language to show the different personalities of the characters. My character’s poses are generally smaller and tighter as I’m a generally anxious and nervous human. In contrast, Callie’s poses (the friend character) are big and wide and open, because she is excited about lots of things and generally more open and welcoming.

CALLIE - PUSHING POSES

Pushing poses with my brother’s character had two extra drawing challenges: 1) He is constantly moving (whether it’s his arms or his legs, small movements and big movements, he never truly stops moving), and 2) He mostly went around barefoot when we were kids. I’ve done lots of playing around with ways to get across all of Rob’s different energies in the still image format of comics. And I’ve done my best to draw feet, which to me are like hands but much, much harder to draw (side note: I have never drawn so many feet in MY LIFE as I have with this book; I’d like to say that I’m getting better but…).

ROB - PUSHING POSES

I think my absolute favourite pose, of all the characters, is the one of my Dad wearing safety goggles and holding a drill in one hand and a hammer in the other. He just looks so silly (which is a side I don’t think people expect when they first meet him) but also focused and business-like (which I think is more a personality trait that people do associate with him).

MUM & DAD - PUSHING POSES

A resource that a friend recommended to me that was super useful was Sherm Cohen’s SpongeBob Drawing tips. It was a good visual reminder about just how far you can push a pose.

As this was new to me and my perfectionism can get in the way of doing new things, I found that it was useful to follow these loose steps when trying to draw pushing poses:

Pick a character.
Decide on a pose.
Pencil it, without worrying if I was pushing the pose “correctly”, just draw like I would normally draw.
Then I’d pencil it again but I would actively think about how I could pull or stretch certain parts of the pose. Can I make an arm higher or a leg longer? Should the body be straight up or can I bend in more?
Finally, the fun part: ink and colour!

Practicing all these poses really highlighted to me that when I exaggerate body language, the characters somehow look more real and the emotions I want to convey to the reader are easier for them to understand. This is what I love about comics! I can show in a drawing how I feel much more clearly than when I use words to try and describe how I feel.

I’ve already started to see the difference in my characters’ poses (both for this graphic novel and other shorter comics & character illustrations). So I will keep practicing this and hopefully it will slowly start feeling more natural to me and I’ll be able to cut out step 3.

Oh Brother Prep work, Part 2: Getting Emotional

April 29, 2023

Following on from my last post about how the designs of the characters in my graphic novel, Oh Brother, have changed over the 7-ish years I’ve been working on the book, this post is about my absolute favourite thing: drawing emotions!

Once I’d settled on the redesigns, I wanted to make sure that I could draw these characters experiencing lots of different emotions but still remaining recognisable, even when their faces were squashed or stretched out of their neutral positions. Drawing emotions is something I’ve always enjoyed doing for some reason, maybe it’s the power behind capturing feelings or emotions (which I can find pretty hard to describe with words but much easier to capture with drawings).

I love making an emotion chart for my characters as it really helps me practice keeping the character consistent (something that I think is important for easy reading in comics: you don’t want to be questioning which character is which while trying to enjoy a story). Making these charts also means that I’ve drawn the character’s heads at least 20 more times before I even start on the book (and each time I draw them, it helps me to really settle on their character design).

Here are the character emotion charts I made for the main Oh Brother characters when I first started working on the book (2016) and last year (2022) before I started working on the thumbnails.

2016

2022

Originally my character was older in the book, so I had longer hair. In the new version I have my beautiful early teen hairstyle (short, not-as-cool-as-I-wanted pixie cut).

2016

2022

Rob, although technically older in the original version too, didn’t change as much in design. Although, being younger, I gave him a softer, rounder face and nose.

2016

2022

Mum’s hair has and always will remain elusive for me. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to draw it accurately. I claim that it has a life of its own.

2016

2022

Dad’s design remains similar (he’s still got that sandpaper stubble) but because the book is now set when we were all younger, I was able to pay homage to what I thought of as my father’s most defining facial feature, his moustache (something that he had for most of my childhood but has now been without for much longer).

The only character who doesn’t have an emotion chart to compare is Callie, who is a new addition to this version of the book. Since doing this emotion chart for her and working on the pencils, I’ve decided to not give her a fringe (but I’ve kept pretty much everything else the same).

I’ve always enjoyed cartooning (in comics and animation) because you can really push how you draw emotions to clearly showcase how a character might be feeling or thinking. I find it much easier to connect to these more exaggerated characters. I’m also the kind of person who practices pulling faces in every mirror or any reflective surface that comes my way (often practicing how my smile looks - so I know what my face feels like when my smile looks right and I haven’t got mirror in front of me to check).

I love these little emotion charts; I find them super helpful to refer back to as I’m working on a project. I would recommend making them for your characters too (even if you’re not working on a big project and it’s just for fun). But be warned: you may find yourself pulling the faces you’re trying to draw!

Oh Brother Prep work, Part 1: Building Character

March 29, 2023

Four cartoon drawings of a young boy (my brother) from four different angles. He has his fingers in his ears and is wearing a pink tee shirt and pink track pants.

I’m deep into penciling my book at the moment, working hard to hit my publisher deadlines, but I thought I’d share a look at the prep work I do for a story. This is stuff I do before I start working on the thumbnails (roughly drawn comic script) and often even before I start working on the written script.

The first thing I do is, unsurprisingly, draw the main characters. The reason for this, of course, is so I have a reference to what the characters look like, so when drawing them repeatedly over the 250+ pages of story I can keep them consistent and easily recognisable for readers. But I have to admit I used to hate doing turnarounds (drawing your character from multiple angles) and would usually only draw a character once in one very straight, boring pose. Back in 2016, when I first started working on Oh Brother, this was what my main characters looked like:

Black and white drawing of four people. Mum (short, curly hair, teeshirt and jeans) is covered in paint and holding a paintbrush. Dad (short spiky hair, jeans and woollen jumper) is holding a laptop and a hammer. Rob (short straight hair, rugby knit top, shorts and bare feet) is holding a can of coke and a picture book. Gina (bob-length hair, jeans and sleeveless top) is holding a sketchbook and a satchel bag.

As you can see, my style has changed and refined itself a bit since 2016, although the main elements of the characters are still there. My brother and I were also adults in this version of Oh Brother (which was told from my adult perspective looking back at my childhood). The biggest shock to me is that I hadn’t started drawing crosses in people’s ears yet (which is now my ear squiggle of choice).

As the years went by, and many versions, edits and rough penciled comics later, the way I drew my family had changed, including drawing everyone younger because the book was now told from my childhood perspective (hence why Dad has a moustache in the picture below - he shaved it off by the time I was an adult). By 2020, I was working with my agent, Annabel Barker, to pitch my book to publishers. Here is the family redraw for the pitch:

Four cartoon images of a young family standing on brown carpet. Mum (in purple colours) and Dad (in blue colours) stand behind Rob (in a pink jumpsuit, fingers in his ears and chew toy at his belt) and Gina (in red colours and with a pink birthmark on one leg).

After Oh Brother was picked up by a publisher, it quickly became clear that I needed to revisit my character reference sheets for this new version of the book. Not only because how I drew had changed so much since starting the book in 2016 but also because I had added a whole new main character for this version of the book: Callie, Gina’s best friend.

Four cartoon drawings of a young girl (Callie, best friend) from four different angles. She is standing straight and has long brown hair and is wearing a green tee, blue jean shorts, gold sleeper earrings and white sneakers.

Callie is an amalgam of a few of my real-life friends and their experiences with Rob, so I was able to create an entirely new character design for her (although it is loosely based on a few friends). As the newest character, she has changed the most as I’ve worked on the thumbnails and pencils, purely because I’ve drawn her a lot less than the other characters. (But, to be honest, my style is wobbly at the best of times anyway, so there is always some healthy shapeshifting in my characters.)

Four cartoon drawings of a woman (my mother) from four different angles. She is standing straight and is wearing a purple sleeveless top, blue jeans and purple sandals.

Speaking of shapeshifting, the character - or should I say element of a character - that I (still) find the hardest is my Mum’s hair. It doesn’t seem to matter how many times I draw it, its shape eludes me. This was also when I started confirming which colours I would associate with each character (again for ease of reading and knowing who is who).

Four cartoon drawings of a man (my father) from four different angles. He standing straight and is wearing a blue tee with a high collar, blue jeans and and dorky white sneakers.

The character I found easiest to draw was my Dad. We look pretty similar (facially) in real life so when cartooning Dad I basically draw myself with a moustache and spiky hair. When I’m not paying attention, I draw my freckles on Dad instead of his stubble (and vice versa!).

I find Rob a fun character to draw but also really tricky. The way he holds himself (in real life he is constantly moving) is something that can be really hard to capture in still cartoon images. But it’s a fun challenge to try to get across his actions in the comics. For the new turnaround, I had to find a way to clearly show that he had his fingers in his ears from the different angles (which was harder than I thought it would be).

Four cartoon drawings of a young girl (me) from four different angles. She is standing straight(ish) and is wearing a red tee, blue jean shorts and and red sneakers. She has a pink birthmark on one of her unshaven legs.

By the time I decided to redo my character design sheets for this version of the book, I had gotten over my dislike of turnarounds and embraced them as a good way to get to know these new versions of the characters. I wanted to be able to draw more interesting angles and scenes in my book (and not just talking heads - which is my natural instinct), so I needed to know what my characters looked like from multiple angles.

But I didn’t stop at just turnarounds! In my next blog I’ll get ‘emotional’ and start playing around with drawing a full range of facial expressions for all of my characters.

Into the Comics Mines

February 6, 2023

An illustration of Gina holding an iPad, paper, pack of pretzels and a cup of tea and wearing a sash of pencils and a cap with a candle melted to the brim. Gina is looking unenthusiastically at a cave made from comics pages. The cave has signs stuck to it that read “Welcome to the comics mines”, “Danger RSI Ahead”, “Turn back and back up your harddrive” and “Beware of papercuts.”

Hello dear friends! This is it. I’m about to go into the comics mines for the next 6 months (approximately). What does this mean? It means that I will be working 5 days a week on the book with 1 day a week aside for admin & running workshops. Because of this fairly inflexible and tight work schedule, until the book is in the hot little hands of the publisher (approximately August) I will be taking a step back from posting online. This is to help me focus on getting pages done, as my brain starts fritzing out if I have too many projects to juggle, and social media posting in particular takes a lot of my brain energy powers.

📰BUT I will still be sending out my monthly e-newsletter to keep you updated on the book and share sneak peeks at anything else I can manage to squeeze into my spare time (I predict these things to be mostly sleeping, many cups of tea and watering the garden). I love sending out my newsletter and it makes me real happy when folks sign up - it’s the best way to let you know what I’ve been up to.

Oh Brother thumbnails finished!

February 1, 2023

SO

I realised that I never posted about finishing the Oh Brother thumbnails, and it was such a big step towards getting the book done that I wanted to share how I got there. Last year I spent most of my studio time working on re-drawing my Oh Brother thumbnails for my publisher. When my book got picked up by the publisher, I had written the whole book in script form (although the last 100 pages were a hot mess), drawn the first 250 pages in rough pencils, and inked and coloured the first 40 pages or so. Originally the book was written from the point of view of me as a 25-year-old (which was how old I was when I started writing the book) with non-chronological flashbacks to my childhood growing up with my brother. But just from talking to various publishers who were interested – this is before I signed my contract with Penguin Random House – it became very clear that whichever publisher I worked with would need me to re-write the book to be from my point of view as a kid.

CHANGES

Because of my drawing style (which is such a big part of how comics stories are read), the book was going to be sold as a middle grade (aimed at approx. 8-12 year olds) graphic novel and because the book was bought by four territories (Australia, UK, Canada and the US) it also needed to fit into certain publishing parameters. For example, the main character needed to be 12 or under so the book would be put into the middle grade section (and not the YA section) in bookstores in America. I was asked to change certain words and phrases (e.g. op shop to thrift store) and change iced coffee to a non-caffeinated drink (soda was suggested but I landed on milkshakes), things like why I was starting high school in year 8 needed to be explained, I couldn’t mention sanitary pads without explaining periods and I was asked about changing Vegemite (one of my brother’s absolute favourite foods/hyper-fixations) to peanut butter. I pushed back on the Vegemite change (and some of the other Australian wording changes); instead I leant into using asterisks* to explain things that might be confusing for international readers (anyone outside Australia). I really wanted the book to feel like my childhood growing up in a beachside South Australian suburb.

*My inner Terry Pratchett fan wasn’t mad about this.

A collection of some of the *Oh Brother* scripts and thumbnails from over the 7 years working on the book.

The biggest change that I had to do was making the story chronological and giving my character a narrative arc. Initially I didn’t really want to do this, partially because I think 8-12 year olds can read non-chronological vignette-y type stories but probably also because I was afraid I couldn’t write a chronological narrative. I’ve never felt confident in my ability to write narrative, I’ve always considered myself a character-focused writer and plot just sort of happens as a side effect (this is why I love autobiography - story/narrative is generally already in-built). My solution to this narrative problem was to create a friend character (called Callie), who is based on a combination of a few of my close friends (and their experiences meeting and interacting with my brother). The personality of and interactions I have with Callie in the book are based predominantly on one of my very best friends from high school (they know who they are). And one of the things I actually enjoyed about having to re-write the book was to get to include their beautiful energy and show my love for our friendship in my story.

First sketch of Gina and Callie together.

FEELINGS

With all these changes needing to be made, I had to go back to the start and outline, script, thumbnail and draw the whole book again. Obviously I had the original book I’d already made to use for reference but it really felt like I was starting from the beginning. I’m not going to lie, it was pretty hard to sit down and re-write the book. On top of having to revisit some tough memories, I also had to weave in a whole new narrative about myself & my amalgamated friend. I felt weird (and still do a little) for creating this fictional narrative, even though it is based solidly on experiences, interactions with friends and feelings I’ve had. It definitely felt like I was lying to the reader. But now that I’ve finished writing this version of the book, I think that it is a much better book for the changes and I hope that people will see the emotional truths in the narrative sections that aren’t 100% accurate (not that any memory can be 100% accurate ‘cos our brains re-write over memories all the time!)

Current scanned and printed thumbnails on top of their original drawings.

STEPS

Here are the steps that I have gone through to complete this new version of the thumbnails:

(1) Outline
I had never written an outline before, so I wasn’t really sure exactly what needed to be included (and I’m still not sure). I ended up with a 3 page text document that explained who the characters are, highlighted some of the major story beats, and outlined the narrative journey and ending for the characters. I received a 3 page document from my editors with suggestions and things to think about when I moved onto the . . .

(2) Written Script
This was initially quite hard for me, as I haven’t written many scripts for other people to read. For my mini comics I usually settle with a dot point list of story beats or just go straight to thumbnailing out the story, as I’m more of a visual thinker/writer. I gave myself the goal of writing 5 pages a day (3-4 days a week, basically whenever I could get studio time outside of other work). This helped me to break down the daunting task of re-writing the script into manageable chunks (it was still pretty hard though). What I did enjoy about the script stage was the puzzle solving of taking the stories I already had from the previous version and working out how to fit them in the new version of the story.

I wrote the script in Pages (Apple’s word doc program) because it’s free and I already had it. I set up the pages so each page of the word doc related to a drawn page of the comic and formatted it so I would view two pages at a time, so I’d get an idea of where the page turns would be, which are super important for a comics story flow.

The text itself was written kinda like a film script with each panel numbered and followed by the dialogue or brief description of what is in the panel. Like this:

Once the script was done, I sent it off to the the editors for feedback. I mostly have contact with my Australian editors (who take all the feedback from the UK, Canadian and US editors and collate it for me to read). It’s such a great opportunity to have so many eyes on my work but, heck, it’s suuuuuper daunting too. I found feedback on the script initially overwhelming and needed a little break before I took it on board and starting applying it to the . . .

(3) Thumbnails
After I gave myself a brain break from the script feedback and reminded myself not to take it personally and that my editors don’t think that I’m a terrible writer (which is what my jerk-of-a-brain naturally jumps to thinking), I was able to see how useful a lot of the editors’ feedback was for my book and start to put even more of those story puzzles together (I can’t emphasise enough how good it feels in my brain when I make good story connections that I didn’t see before!).

Some original pages of thumbnails. Ink drawings with limited texta colour and some whiteout.

One of the main pieces of feedback I received on the script was that I needed to cut out about 30 pages of story (minimum) to hit the maximum number of pages the publisher could print. The printer that my publisher uses prints pages in groups of 16 - so that means the page count has to be a multiple of 16 within a specific range of page count options that are average for the type of book being published. It was the hardest thing having to cut out scenes that I’d had in the book from the beginning but didn’t really fit in this new version of the book. The one I’m still the most sad about is the Vegemite Parrot story.

My amazing partner Owen formatted a thumbnail template with guidelines so I could more easily draw up panels (which is my least favourite thing to do, my panels are often wobbly at best). There were four comics pages to each sheet of thumbnails. I drew the thumbs about a third the size of the final printed page with a uni-ball ‘eye’ fine pen (and colour-coded some of the characters so it was easier to tell who was talking). Then I’d scan the pages in, cut them into individual pages and hand them back to Owen (with a plain text doc of the script) and he lettered the thumbs digitally so that they were readable.

In the future (whether I’m working on personal projects or with a publisher) I think I will merge the script & thumbs stages, as I found that I edited script pages a lot as I adapted them into comics (when I realised that a certain angle might not work as well or I needed more space or panels [or less!] for a particular scene). I think going straight to thumbnails would reduce the amount or at least some of the type of feedback I'd get from just a script version.

When I finally finished the thumbs, I uploaded them to Dropbox and emailed through the link to the editors, which was super underwhelming. I really thought it would feel good to finish everything but just sending off the link really didn’t do much for me. What did get me excited about finishing the thumbs was when I printed out a physical copy of them for the Comic Art Workshop (which I attended in November 2022). Holding the 270 pages of comics in my hand made a HUGE difference in how I felt about finishing the thumbnails. It felt like I’d actually made a book (obviously there is a lot more to do still, but holding the printed copy made me feel better about all the hours I’d spent working on it over the past year).

Gina is smiling, wearing a pink t-shirt and round silver glasses and holding the printed copy of the *Oh Brother* thumbs next to her face.

After completing the thumbnails, my next step was to get the book ready for . . .

(4) Sensitivity Readers
The final step for the thumbnails was getting them ready for sensitivity readers (a sensitivity reader's job is to read a manuscript and make sure that the story is sensitive to marginalised groups - for me, specifically the autism community). To get the book ready, I needed to go through my editors' feedback on the thumbs (which was minimal as most of the major story feedback was at script stage) as well as re-read the book (again) to try to cut down even more text on certain text-heavy pages. My editors will also do copy edits (probably more than one) on the book, making sure all the text meets the publishing house’s style guides.

As someone who hates re-reading their work and is not a succinct storyteller (I always want to over-explain everything, like right now!), this is a particularly hard but essential part of the writing process for me. As well as making these edits, I also created a 3 page comic introduction (page 1 pictured below) to the story and a little afterword (which explains more of what happened after the story in the book finished).

A page of pen sketch drawings that introduces Gina and things that she likes to do.

The editors gave me some really good feedback for tightening up or clarifying some of the plot and I think I managed to catch a few things that I would've kicked myself for later, if I'd missed them. So even though re-reading my own work pains me, I know it's the right thing to do.

What’s next

While I wait for the sensitivity readers’ feedback and initial copy edits, I’m going to get stuck into my pencils. The amazing Owen has done it again and has helped me set up templates for my pencils (which I’m going to try to do in Procreate for ease of editing and convenience of being able to take with me wherever I want) and a page count tracking spreadsheet (to help keep me on task). I’ve got to pencil the whole book by the end of April, so I’ll be heading into the comics mines and probably not posting (or generally leaving the house) much. Wish me luck!

Bonus

If you want to read about how I went about thumbnailing Oh Brother the first time (it’s a quite different!), you can read my I’m All Thumbs post from 2017.

Drawing Buddies - January Challenge

January 27, 2023

Above: Roof Rat by George Rex based on Jake Holmes’s Roof Rat.

Above left: Roof Rat by Jake Holmes. Based on the Highway Rat by Julia Donaldson, illustrated by Axel Scheffler.

Above right: The Highway Rat by Axel Scheffler.

This year my screenprinter & illustrator pal Jake Holmes (jaketoothandnail on instagram) and I have decided to be drawing buddies. Each month we will take turns to decide on a drawing challenge that we will both undertake over the course of the month. Jake already has his own goal of drawing for at least 30 minutes every day, which he’s been doing for the past couple of years, and I’m trying to do that too this year (that’s 30 minutes of ‘free’ drawing, on top of my Oh Brother work!). The monthly drawing challenges we come up with are more to help us have a guideline of something to draw, if we’re ever stuck for ideas. I’m hoping to use these drawing prompts to challenge my skills, particularly in areas that I’m weakest (perspective, adding backgrounds, light and shadow, pushing poses to be even more animated).

Above left: Jaunty Space Man by George Rex based on Jake Holmes’s illustration “Homecoming”.

Above right: Jake Holmes’s original illustration “Homecoming”.

The January challenge was set by Jake. It was simple: we scroll through each other’s instagram account, pick some characters that the other had already drawn & posted, and then redraw the characters in our own style. My aim was to do one a week throughout January. I tried to pick a range of different characters and then push their poses and add backgrounds (if they didn’t have them already).

Above left: Tina Papanikolas by George Rex, watercolour illustration.

Above right: Tina Papanikolas by Jake Holmes, based on watercolour illustration by George Rex.

Jake ended up drawing a version of one my favourite characters I’ve created in the past few years, Tina Papanikolas, who (along with her new best friend Tori) solves mysteries and crimes happening in their neighbourhood. I love Jake’s version of Tina, particularly how he captures her cool mesh skirt (I get to live out all my fashion dreams through Tina). My version of Tina that Jake based his off is one of the few watercolour illustrations I did last year, when I was trying to get a handle on different mediums.

I really like how Jake uses light and shade to bring his characters to life, and redrawing his characters this month has really pushed me to think about how I use light (or don’t) in my illustration and comics.

Above left: The Gang by George Rex based on Jake Holmes’s cool teens illustration.

Above right: Jake Holmes’s original illustration of three cool teens.

These Jake characters were the most like ones I would normally draw and I had a lot of fun trying to show their personalities through their poses. When I showed Jake my version, he said that he’d been inspired by how I draw characters when creating the original drawings. I thought that was pretty neat.

I had a ton of fun redrawing Jake’s characters and it was a great way to get into the habit of drawing every day, because I knew when I sat down to draw that I didn’t have to think about what to draw, I just had to have a quick scroll through Jake’s instagram and get inspired. So far this year I’ve managed to draw every day for at least half an hour and it feels really good!

Above left: Cheese Wizard by George Rex based on Jake Holmes’s Cheese Wizard illustration.

Above right: Cheese Wizard by Jake Holmes. Jake originally drew this character based on a prompt by me!

It’s been really interesting drawing so much that I notice little habits of mine, like how I generally love my pencil sketch but then hate the inked version (and the flat colours even more). But when I start adding in shading (and highlights) or textures, it all starts coming together. When it’s just inks and flats, it looks okay but it’s kinda like looking at a haircut halfway through, it’s almost there but it hasn’t got that pizzazz of a final drawing.

It’s my choice for our February drawing challenge but I haven’t decided what it will be yet. But I’m looking forward to it and seeing what we both come up with (it’s always more fun to do a drawing challenge with a buddy, it definitely helps to keep me more motivated).

Noodling around with ink wash

December 21, 2022

A while back I rediscovered a heap of ink wash pens I’d made back when I thought I would really get into using brushes and ink. I’d decided to start off with brush pens instead of jumping straight into using regular brushes (which seemed tricky and impossible, and still does a bit!). I took three refillable reservoir watercolour brush pens and filled each of them with varying ratios of ink. One pen was mostly water with just a bit of ink, another pen was 50/50 water/ink and the final pen was all ink.

Three brush pens with refillable reservoirs. Each pen has slightly darker ink than the one before.

I tried them out for a bit but at the time I don’t think I really liked the messy line I was making (after exclusively using fineliners my entire illustrative life) and couldn’t push through the uncomfortable perfectionist talk my brain was giving me, so I gave up on that inky brush dream. Recently, however, having used a bit more watercolour, I was curious about trying these out again, but treating them more like shading tools (and keeping those strong fineliner lines I feel confident with. Baby steps!). I mostly used the first two brush pens (the one that is mostly water and the 50/50 one). But I wanted to make sure that the scene I was drawing felt like it should be in B&W, so of course I landed with a fairy private detective in a film noir-style setting. Here are the steps I took to create this piece:

Step 1: Sketch it out

Using whatever scrap paper I had lying around, I sketched out the design loosely. As I wanted to practice my perspective (my nemesis) as well as using only shades of grey instead of colour, I had to draw this scene a few times to get it as close as I could to what I wanted. I was struggling to decide if I wanted it to be in isometric perspective or a more real perspective. I feel like I kinda landed somewhere in between.

Step 1: A rough pen sketch of a pixie sitting in a private detective’s office. The detective is a fairy.

Step 2: Pencil and Ink

Now that I’d come up with a game plan, I popped over to our light table and, on a fresh piece of paper, pencilled out the scene again (using the sketch underneath for a guide). I then turned off the light table and inked the pencilled drawing. You can see where I’ve (not particularly successfully) tried to start marking in where I think the light might fall.

Step 2: A tight drawing of the pixie and the detective fairy. You can see some lead pencil marks under the clean simple inked line work.

Step 3: Final Inks and Ink Wash

I wasn’t super happy with how I inked the scene the first time, so I actually inked it again on a fresh piece of paper (getting out the light table again and using the pencil/inked drawing for the guide this time). If you look closely at Step 2 and 3 you can spot the minor differences in the line work (and some things that are missing!).

Once inked (with a fineliner), I erased the pencils and added in the shading with the ink wash brushes. As someone who generally just block colours everything, it was an interesting experience figuring out what to colour in and what to leave as a highlight.

Step 3: The same scene of the pixie and detective fairy but now it also has ink wash added to give depth, shading and indicate where the light source is coming from.

Although the line work is still a bit wonky, the perspective isn’t perfect and the lighting is…fine, I’m pretty happy with how this turned out in the end. I particularly loved the texture in the picture that came from using paper with more of a rough tooth (I usually use the smoothest of paper as I hate the feeling of my fineliners on a rough paper).

Anyway, that’s it! I really enjoyed working in greyscale and it really highlighted to me how little I know about shading and light. Lots to practice! I would love to do more ink wash and refine those skills for sure. Maybe I should make a whole comic about this fairy detective (or at least paint some keys scenes from a possible story a fairy detective might go through)?

Oh Brother Update 2022

November 10, 2022

Back in 2016, I started work on a project I thought would take me a year (hah!). This project was to be my first graphic novel: a memoir about growing up with my brother (who is autistic and has an intellectual disability). My goal was to create a book for 12-year-old me, a book that reflected my experiences and feelings and would’ve (hopefully) helped me feel less alone in those feelings and experiences.

From a technical comics-making point of view, I thought it would be pretty straightforward. I’d made lot of mini-comics by that point (but nothing longer than about 40 pages) and I’d made lots of autobio comics before, even some about growing up with my brother. I already had in my mind a lot of the experiences I wanted to share, as a lot of them I already openly talked about with my parents and friends (they had become family fables such as the “Vegemite Parrot story” or the “Pad-peeing incident”. And I’m a pretty quick drawer, so I thought once I got the story down, the rest would be a breeze!

Spoiler alert: It was not a breeze.

I found that not only was there a steep learning curve in making a 300 page graphic novel vs a 30 page mini-comic (let alone watching my drawing style evolve and refine over that first year of working on the book), but there was also a steep emotional learning curve. Working on these stories meant that I relived a lot of my childhood experiences, and some, particularly stories about times when my brother would attack me, were a lot harder to relive than I expected.

Where I’m at right now

After years of working on the book in my spare time, or when I got the support of a residency or fellowship or grant for a more concentrated period of work, I was lucky enough to be approached by my now agent, Annabel Barker. With Annabel’s help (and that of another agent, Dan Lazar), I was able to talk to several publishers that were interested in working with me on the book. And in early 2021, Penguin Random House (PRH) picked up the book in a deal that means it will now be published (ETA 2024) in four territories (Australia, Canada, UK and US).

Although it is super exciting to be working with such a well-known publisher, it’s also been quite nerve-wracking to think that this book that I originally assumed I would be self-publishing is now to be published by one of the major book publishers in the world.

There have been a lot of changes that I’ve had to make while working with PRH (more on that in a future blog post). Last year (2021) and this year (2022) I have been working with my four editors (one in each territory) to re-write the script and thumbnails (the rough comic drawings). It’s definitely been a challenge re-writing something that is so personal to me (and so complex). I would be lying if I said I’ve enjoyed having to make big-ish cuts to a project that has lived with me for multiple years. But saying that, although the book is quite different now, I think I’m starting to feel proud of the type of book it has become.

So far this project has taken: 6 years, 1 scholarship, 1 fellowship, 1 grant, 2 mentors, 2 residencies, 3 peer feedback sessions, 37 blacking pearl pencils, 2 agents, 3 publisher rejections, 3 publisher bids, 1 publisher, 4 editors, 4 territories, 3 versions, 24 therapy sessions, 1 brother, 2 parents, 1 million cups of tea and 1 ongoing case of imposter syndrome.

I’ll be doing more posts soon about the re-writing process and how my art has evolved. But if you’re keen to read more about my early process with the book, check out the Oh Brother tag in my Blog Posts Archive. There are quite a few posts there (although these are from 5 or 6 years ago and I haven’t recently re-read them, so I’m not sure how similarly I feel now — I’m not ready to re-read them yet).

Also, for those who are curious about all the steps I’ve taken with Oh Brother over the years, here’s a timeline:

Timeline of making Oh Brother GN

2015

The idea for the GN starts forming
Created short comic stories about Rob and me that were published in Voiceworks and the comic anthology Australia
Took part in Comic Art Workshop residency on Maria Island (but workshopping a different memoir comic)

2016

Put aside other memoir comic to focus on Oh Brother
Received the Colin Thiele Scholarship for Creative Writing through Carclew
Worked with Mandy Ord & Pat Grant as mentors
Kept a weekly blog about the process of working on the book
Finished pencil draft of part 1 (approx. 100 pages)
Created a comic about growing up with Rob that was published on The Nib
Printed an Oh Brother mini-comic sampler

2017

Received the Ian Wilson Memorial Fellowship from the May Gibbs Children’s Literature Trust
Finished pencil draft of part 2 (approx. 150 pages)
Quit my day job at the ABC
Took part in Comic Art Workshop residency on Jogjakarta (received feedback on the pencil drafts of two-thirds of the book & the script of the final third)

2018

Dead year. Kept trying to tackle editing the final section of the script but struggled to get anywhere
Cried a lot
Did some other things. Probably
Spent 6 weeks in Melbourne working with 100 Story Building
Spent 9 weeks travelling overseas

2019

Started therapy for the first time, turns out most people don’t cry all the time
Co-organised the first Papercuts Comic Festival
Took part in Comic Art Workshop residency on Dangar Island

2020

Contacted by Annabel Barker (literary agent) through website
Signed on with Annabel & developed a pitch for publishers
Annabel brought in Dan Lazar (New York agent) to help with the American side of things
Sent out book pitch to publishers and waited to hear back
Had phone conversations with various interested editors from different publishers in US and Australia
Received Independent Artists and Groups grant from Arts SA

2021

Three publishers put in offers for the book
Accepted PRH offer!
PRH took forever to send through a contract (four territories even within the same publisher don’t often talk to each other)
Started work on re-writing the book, creating a new story outline (making the story more narrative) and taking away the adult perspective of the story
Received PRH feedback on the outline, which was as long as the outline itself :/
Wrote a new script
Co-organised the second Papercuts Comics Festival (and was totally burnt out)

2022

Received script feedback from PRH in January (four months after submitting script)
Feedback was extensive, with the major notes being that the page count needed to be reduced (and some elements needed to be adjusted for the American audience)
Started tackling thumbnails
Had to renegotiate the thumbnail deadline several times because taking on the feedback turned out to be harder than expected
Completed the thumbnails!
Will take part in Comic Art Workshop residency at Yarrangobilly Caves
Received Professional Development grant from Arts SA to attend Comic Art Workshop
Currently awaiting feedback from editors about thumbnails

Experimenting with Watercolour

October 27, 2022

New BFFs Tina and Tori sit in their pyjamas, eating lollipops and reading comics on Tina’s bedroom floor.

I know that my last post was all about how I’ve been slowly moving towards working entirely digitally (which is really useful when working with clients and editors and I’m having to make lots of tweaks and changes on a project), but I think working so much on my iPad for work-based illustration and comics has pushed me into wanting to try out different mediums when making fun illustrations for myself. In particular, I’ve really been keen to get into watercolour.

Tina is wearing her favourite clothes that make her happy, showing off her multicoloured scarf and green tile skirt.

I’ve tried delving into watercolour a few times: I’ve tried plein air painting, I’ve asked friends for tips, I’ve watched YouTube videos. I aways thought that if I just found the “right” set of watercolours that it would all make sense and I’d be able to paint the images like I could see them in my head. But what has really stopped me in my tracks every time I’ve tried my hand at watercolours is the fact that I’m just not that good at using them straight away (not that there is any reason why I should be naturally adept at watercolours). So I kinda give up before I give myself a chance to really learn how to handle them.

My watercolour tribute to Mr Tod (the kind-of-a-jerk fox gentleman character from Beatrix Potter’s book).

With some (possibly unfounded) optimism that this time would be different, for my birthday this year I treated myself to the Kuretake Gansai Tambi watercolour set. I’d seen a few mates use them online and they looked quite different to other watercolours I’d tried before. And they are pretty lovely to use, almost more like a gouache so the colours are more opaque (less see-through) than other watercolours. As I’m so used to working in smooth flat digital colour, I find that that the washy-ness of watercolours makes my attempts look not like my own art. (Although I love this look in other people’s work, I’ve found I don’t love it for my work.) However, when I started playing around with the Gansai Tambi’s more opaque pigments, I found them really pleasing to use and like I had more sense of how to handle them. Plus, the colours are delightful and warm my soul.

Kuretake Gansai Tambi 48 colour watercolour set (includes a really great pink and lilac as well as boss metallic colours).

Although I’m enjoying watercolours a lot more this time, it does feel like I'm back to basics and having to learn how to make art yet again. But I’m really excited about learning new art skills and how to control and use watercolours so they can help me create more interesting works. This time that I’ve delved into watercolours, it feels like a puzzle to solve instead of me just failing at something I “should” be good at. My brain feel like it clicks into gear and wants to make the images in my head appear on the page in front me.

A fancy-looking anthropomorphic dog with a moustache wearing a red dressing gown stands in front of an old and full bookcase. They are holding a bone in one hand and an old-fashioned smoking pipe in the other.

After chatting to another friend, they mentioned I should try using coloured pencil on top of the watercolour for more detailed things, which I loved when I tried it out with this fancy dog in a smoking jacket picture (see above). I haven’t really tried all the possibilities with pencils & watercolour yet but I’m keen to see where that could go too. Sensory-wise, it feels really nice to draw with pencil over the watercolours.

Scully, junior “repawtor” for the *The Fire Hydrant,* sits, bored, at their desk waiting for an exciting story to break.

I love the flexibility of working digitally but nothing draws me into a work more than if it’s traditionally watercoloured or coloured by pencil (particularly if you can see the mistakes or wobbles the artist has made). There is something about the hand-made nature of it and the textures of the paint on paper that speaks to my soul. Maybe one day I’ll be able to make a watercolored picture book. I do not think that I will ever watercolour a whole comic though. That way madness lies.