From the Desk of George Rex
A blog for my silly thinkings, ponderings, musing and other miscellaneous “-ings”.
A pink background with a red ink drawing of three kids in a trenchcoat, hat, glasses and briefcase. The two kids inside the trench coat are passing candy to each other.
Here’s a little t-shirt design I made for the Comic Art Workshop 2023 fundraiser. I had a lot of fun drawing one of my favourite tropes, Three Kids in a Trenchcoat. I’m really loving the pink & red colour combo at the moment. I want all my clothes to be pink and red!
Cartoon Ky + George drawn like paper dolls on a digital sketchbook. They are surrounded by all their favourite stuff, snacks, bubble tea, hats, musical keyboard, sketchbook.
It was my good friend Ky’s birthday a few months ago and I created this silly little drawing of us inspired by one of our video call chats. We’ve been buddies since high school and I miss her terribly (as we’ve not lived in the same state or country for almost 10 years now).
But Ky always knows how to cheer me up (as demonstrated by the mail I received recently from her, a lovely letter and some french language mini-comics from Canada (current residential location) including one by one of my fave indie artists Cathon. I’d never mentioned Cathon to Ky, she just knows what I would love instinctively. 😌
Ky and I are both pretty different but also oddly very similar. We have on more than one occasion turned up to events wearing the same thing (un-planned) a thing that still fills me joy thinking about. Our differences definitely bring out the best in me, encouraging and supporting me to do things I wouldn’t always do by myself.
Here’s to all the people in my life (and yours!) that are wonderful and supportive and just get me (or you!). You are all very lovely. 💕
A borderless, un-pencilled, comic drawn in thick black pen on pink paper. The comic is of my brain and me talking. The brain is saying “You always make the wrong decisions! You are selfish! You are useless! You should work harder.” I grab the brain out of my head and say “Hey. It’s okay. You don’t have to be perfect. You are allowed to rest. Your productivity is not your worth.”
A little comic I noodled out of my noodle a few weeks back. I kept tossing up whether I should redraw it and make it a cleaner, tighter comic. At the moment I’ve decided not to.
Sending love and strength to all those who also struggle with confusing their productivity with their worth.
A cartoon illustration of a round grey spider knitting a web and wearing a pink tank top and shorts with a star and a heart patch sewn on. They are wearing red pointy glasses and red sneakers.
Here is my newest addition to my collection of George Rex ‘Cool Creatures’ Stickers. I’ll have the sticker version of this spider (along with all my other vinyl stickers) with me at the @papercutscomicsfestival market day next Sunday (in one week!).
Can’t make it to the festival? You can grab one from my online shop here.
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.
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.
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…).
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).
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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!
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!).
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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:
Example of a page of my script.
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.
Some original pages of thumbnails. Ink drawings with limited texta colour and some whiteout.
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.
Some original pages of thumbnails. Ink drawings with limited texta colour and some whiteout.
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.
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!
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.”
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.
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).