Comics and Block Printing

AKA, "This was easier in my head"

Hello!

The leaves have changed and fallen, so I figure it’s time for another newsletter.

I came into the fall in full swing, but as the days got shorter, I got less and less productive. I took on two projects that I thought would be quick and easy, but of course, they were not.

Block Printing

If you’re familiar with my work, you know that printmaking is a new interest of mine. It resets my creative brain by removing all the distractions of digital art.

Don’t get me wrong — digital art will always be my medium of choice. But being limited by colour, scale, and layers makes me solve problems through composition. In digital art, I can solve problems a million different ways before I get to composition.

You saw Bear Country last month, and if you follow me on instagram, you’ve seen my Moth print as well. Which brings me to Take A Hike.

I love this print, but my god, it almost drove me crazy. And to be honest, I’m not even done with it yet.

In my previous block prints, I had worked in black and white and applied colour digitally. This time, I wanted to challenge myself and use the jigsaw technique — cutting up the block, applying a colour to each piece, and reassembling it before printing. But my ink was drying before I could reassemble the block and move it to the printing press. And the extender base I needed to make the ink stay wet longer was backordered. So, this project is on pause for the time being.

Although, the final reveal with my amazing new woodzilla block printing press is so satisfying.

Ultimately, I want to print it in colour on fabric and make a patch I can sew onto a crewneck or a jacket.

For now, I’ll be selling the test prints from this project, as well as prints of Moth and Bear Country on my instagram isobel.png.

Comics Corner

I’m happy to say the last few months have been big for me in terms of comics.

First, I have an unnamed finished comic. I was really surprised how quickly I was able to move from concept to script to execution.

For this comic, I wanted to challenge myself to be a little imperfect — something a lot of people, from professors to therapists, have asked me to do. I wanted to use a more minimal palette, like cartoonists Tillie Walden or Jillian Tamaki. It’s a skill of mine that needs more work before I take it to a finished product. I settled for a blue-green-orange colour scheme, which felt like a pretty tight palette for me, but doesn’t look it.

So, here it is — an unnamed comic. Imperfect, to match the sort of complicated feelings I have about this little story. This is about a job I had a love-hate relationship with in a lot of ways. I ended up quitting in favour of something that didn’t have me up before 6am, but after I left, I started to think about everything else about it that was weighing on me.

For the record, after I left this job, I ended up working with some really lovely people. And it’s not that I never got along with those guys — it’s that when I did, it didn’t quite sit right with me.

Also, I’ve begun work on another comic. This one won’t hit the internet for a long time, but I want to add the development work to this newsletter to keep myself motivated.

During my undergrad, I worked briefly for a production company that had a pretty big sci fi project underway. I was an intern, and my job was to be the guinea pig for them to dip their toes into the comic world. Here’s a sample of stuff I made for them: A solar-powered farmer and a robodog.

Pretty cool, right?

Folks, if you google this production company, you will not find a single comic. Experiment: failed.

But, this internship (that and my Star Wars obsessed roommate — hi Tori) did reignite my interest in the sci fi genre. It’s a high-risk, high-reward genre. If it connects with its audience, it changes culture for 50-odd years. If it doesn’t, it’s a confusing, goofy, pretentious mess. So, when a creative brain like mine sees a huge mix of success and failure, it starts thinking, “what would my take on that be?”

This project is a sci fi graphic novel that I may shop around to publishers, or publish on my own right here on substack.

Here’s my main character: Captain Jae Lee. She’s a very cool astronaut with a sword.

Shoutout to Hannah Templer, author of CosmoKnights, for convincing me every sci fi protagonist needs a sword.

TL;DR

I’m working towards a more regular schedule of posting/completing artwork. But trying new things is still a big part of creating, so not everything will always go to plan. Hopefully by March/April I’m in a better routine where I have time to be on a schedule and time to experiment. We’ll just have to wait and see.

Until next time!