Why would you do that?
It is for my own entertainment. I admit it is a bit silly, and not going to be understandable for someone who didn't attend, or have my approach to things, but is something I wanted to do in the last few days. I was waiting for a customer to get back to me about the latest concept I sent off for a crane shirt design, and it rained most of the week, so going out and sitting in a café wasn't on.
It explains the FREAK GUITAR WEEKEND, without actually giving away too much. There is clapping out KONNAKOL, getting confused, listening to guitar exercises disguised as strange music, and philosophy and approaches to creative music and life. There is so much material in the booklet we received for guitar boldly going. I also wasn't going to just reproduce that material, but refer to it in an obscure way, like Clukk being a made up word for rhythm, among others.
2B Pencil and Watercolor?
For the longest time I have had 2 of Hayao Miyazaki's Military Vehicles/Airplane pencil and watercolor illustrated/comic books. Day Dream Data Notes and The Wind Rises. Day Dream has illustrations of tanks, subs, boats, planes and all the crews are pigs, and that "cute" look is part of what I was after too.
I wanted to do something loose along those lines, and last Sunday went out and bought some medium rough watercolor paper and the Japanese brush Miyazaki recommends,
I also discovered that the initial 30 page treatment for LILO & STITCH, that I only just watched as it was the Friday Night TV movie here, was all watercolor illustrations, and just love the look he achieved with that pitch book.
The attraction of watercolor is it is such an uncontrolled medium compared to the vector illustrations I do. A complete change from most of what I do. And just doing the lines in a 2B pencil and leaving them rough and uncleaned up, leaves out all that time consuming cleanup and inking process.
And that is what I was going to do, except a week ago I did this, and painted the alien in Clip Studio Paint using the watercolor brushes it has, and loved the process and result. Fast too!
And didn't have to muck around with water, and the fear of knocking it over in the studio.
So a few days ago I started making notes and sketches in a comics notebook I keep and used my NEXT DIMENSION style characters, as they are just so easy to draw in 2B pencil without working lines, and can still be very expressive.
I also wanted to do a Dungeons & Dragons-ish map in the first panel related to my trip to the Sound Messe from Kyoto to the ATC Hall Osaka. Lots of changing train and platforms, and lots of stairs for a granddad carrying a guitar.
So I did a test page yesterday, very like page 1 here. I downloaded font BLAMBOT Ashcan as being perfect for this. The font is wonky, and has lower case letters and so goes well with the do it in one take, a bit wonky 2B pencil drawings. This style is so I don't have to do any working lines and use an eraser. I did put the crowd scenes together in Photoshop though before painting them in CSP. Even Syd Mead did that.
This Freaky Tale is only 4 pages, and took about a day to think about and do. Leaves space for more stories if I want to do that, such as on the actual guitar exhibits and the like. Or something derived from this.
I have A5 Clear files I put a copy of my comics in. This one now has a larger font, so that at A5 size, I can read it without taking my glasses off, which is what I have to do to read the few years older page on the left here. I really do these for myself, like my music and MUSIC+COMICS.
My post Sound Messe Osaka 2025: May 10 Saturday is a different take on it all.
We can be found at ArtAndTechnology
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