Robert Wilson IV

I took up inking with a brush one year ago when I started drawing the first iteration of Black. I feel like in the last two weeks I am actually starting to figure out how to use it. I am no where near where I want to be. However, it definitely gives me a sweet (albeit fleeting) moment of satisfaction to see how far I’ve come in this last year.

Oh yeah, this is page 3 of my short zombie survival story. More to come shortly.

The above pages where for a pitch I did for the Popgun anthology that Image comics publishes. Unfortunately the pitch was rejected because they felt it was to similar to an existing story. This was pretty disappointing for me, and I have a hard time not beating myself up about that kind of thing.

I have reacted to perceived rejection in two pretty opposite ways throughout my life. The first was to indulge in my hurt feelings, take my ball, and go home. The second reaction was to pour myself into my work at the expense of everything else in my life. I made a lot of progress artistically in these periods of artistic hermitude. However that isn’t a healthy or sustainable lifestyle.

Now, I’ve decided there’s a much healthier and more productive ways to handle these things. I’m finishing the story regardless of the outcome. More for myself than anything else, but I also want to share it with you. Hopefully something will come of it, at the very least I will be better at drawing comics.

So what is the point to all of this? Discipline. It isn’t fun, but the results are indisputable. For me discipline means running every day with my dog, planning date time with my wife, and planning a work schedule for myself and sticking to it. This is especially important on those days when I get home from work at 6pm and don’t feel like drawing (most days). I want to make a name for myself in comics but I realize now that that might take some time. I am becoming ok with that. I have the passion, I just have to stay disciplined.

This is a drawing I did for my local comic shop’s Free Comic Book Day auction. I did it in about an hour while watching Lost, which I am still addicted to. Zap it up.

I decided that my 6-month -old pages of Black were no good. Well, not no good, just not as good as I could do today. This is true to an extent; however, if all I do is draw the same 22 pages over and over again I am shooting myself in the foot. I might get REALLY good at drawing those 22 pages, but will I be a better artist? Maybe, but not nearly as good as if I had drawn 44 original pages (instead of 22 pages twice).

So the point is, I LOVE Black. I have an unreasonable passion for a story that I came up with, and I want to do everything I can do to make it as succesfull as possible.  However, I gotta just do it and move on. Black is not the only or even best idea I will ever have, and the idea that is your baby that you are waiting on to be “good enough to pull off” isn’t your only or best idea either. Let’s get our work done and move on.

Here is a big version of the image above.

After the flats are done I go through and decide what the actual colors are going to be. In this case the pallate is a little brighter than what I normally do but I was specifically asked to include rich hughes purple, pink, green, and blue.I added 3 or 4 gradient layers and some texture as well as the text and that is pretty much it. For a picture of butterfly wings I am amazingly happy with the outcome. (Side note, the names were changed for my friends privacy)

Some friends of mine asked me to design their wedding invitation recently. The main requests was that it have butterflies and be very colorful. I almost immediately thought of having a kind of abstract bowkay of butterfly wings. I was pretty heavily influenced by James Jean’s recent art show Kindling which had quite a bit of imagery using flower pedals and butterfly wings.After I drew the original and scanned it I digitally add flat colors. This step doesn’t reflect the end product but is just used as a guide for where to add color and to make sure that there aren’t two wings of the same color next to each other.

I started working on Black again. My tentative plan is to draw one whole issue (about 22-24 pages) and then either pitch to a few publishers as a creator owned book or just self publish (If anyone has positive experience with a specific publisher let me know).

Being Intentional is my theme for the year. I realised that I get really distracted really easily which leads to me starting a lot of things and finishing almost nothing. It isn’t a very satisfying way to live and I bet that there are a few of you with similar struggles. This is where the whole intentioinal thing comes in. I can’t work on my comic 8 to 10 hours a day, every day. However, I can work on it every day, So that is what I am setting out to do.

This little mini comic is based off of a Minus the Bear song (I will leave it to you to discover which one). I made it for the GBX anthology zine but I haven’t heard what is happening with said anthology, so who knows. I am quite happy with how page 1 and 2 turned out. I think pages 3 and 4 are kind of empty visually, although I am not sure what I would ad.

I am pretty happy with this page. I used black. I zoomed out. I drew two different types of cars. Can you guess what the cars are? Feel free to use the previous page as reference. Anyways comic work has been going slow because my job is eating my lunch and I have been fixing my house up.

This little short is for the GBX anthology zine assuming that I finish by deadline, which I feel like I will. However non-paying work is at the mercy of my plumbing not exploading on me again.