Did you know sadbook is drawn by hand? Maybe you do; every so often in the drawings there are little smudges… that would never get there in digital art!

I do clean up the drawings a lot*, but sometimes I leave those tiny imperfections because they show something unique—these lines, black on white, are part of a drawing process, something physical that exists & that could be touched. Also, I am only one small artist trying to make mostly-daily comics, and I do not have the capability to worry so much about making every single panel Pristine and Perfect. If I tried, I would only get so overwhelmed…

*yup

But there is another reason too. And it has to do with the fact that, when you are an artist looking at other artists, it’s so easy to feel like you will never get anywhere, because other people’s art is so much better than you could ever make! But that’s the thing, isn’t it? You never get to see the process—not really. You don’t know how much time that other artist has spent perfecting something, or how many failed drafts there have been, or how many smudges have been meticulously cleaned up in post-production… all you see is the final Art, the pinnacle, the shiny face of other people’s work, while you are stuck knowing about all your own troubles and false starts. And so—seeing imperfection from artists I admire has always been inspiring to me. It reminds me ‘everyone tries a few times, everyone puts effort into it, everyone starts somewhere and gets better as they go on.’ And seeing artists get better over time and continually keep striving—is what finally gave me the inspiration to try my own hand at comics and graphic novels like The Yellow Wallpaper and illustrated books like The Picture of Dorian Gray* and even this, The Sadbook Collections.

*in both of which I do have, since it is Published and all, help in the stage of touching up, and which I am very thankful for.

So these imperfections have a special reason to them as well as a practical one—because just maybe it will inspire another artist to try.

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How I Make A Traditional Art Comic

The first thing that I do when I start making a traditional art comic like The Sadbook Collections is to think of the concept. Usually this happens when I’m trying to fall asleep (unfortunately…) Since this is a comic strip, it’s small and I can easily conceptualize it by thinking about the sketchbook page that I draw in. I’ll turn the joke, or idea, or whatever it is around in my head for a while until I’ve figured out the basic pacing (how many panels will there be? Three? Four? One? What’s the best wording, and what else will influence the pacing — do I need close-ups or insets? A wide shot? How do I set the scene?)

For The Sadbook Collections, this conceptualization process is the hardest part. Once I’ve got that figured out, I open my sketchbook and start drawing… for this, I use a Platinum fountain pen. It’s affordable but still gives you a beautiful, smooth line and is really lovely to use. You can’t post the cap, because of the shape of the body, but that doesn’t bother me too much. (Although some people take a saw and chop off that extra-long end, and are able to post it after that.) I use platinum carbon ink with it (which you can get in a cartridge or a bottle which you can use with a converter).

Then I start drawing. When I’m happy with the comic, I take a picture of it with my phone. Yes, you can use a scanner of course—but you don’t need to if you’re doing black and white comics! It’s easy enough to take a top-down photo and edit it. Using my phone makes it so much quicker and easier for me to make comics, not only because it makes the editing/uploading process faster, but also because if I want to look up references as I’m drawing, it’s a lot nicer to have them on a small screen near my workspace than to have to keep glancing up at something open on a computer.

I up the brightness and contrast on my phone, then email it to myself and make the final edits on my computer. Again, this isn’t really necessary, especially if you had a couple of apps to work with besides the photo app. On my computer, I just use preview (lol). One good phone app (that I’m usually way too lazy to use) is Snapseed; and for the computer you can use photopea (online photoshop) in your browser.

Once it’s on my computer, I change the saturation to 0, copy over my signature, and clean up any little bits & pieces I might have missed. Sometimes I also up the exposure here—if I originally took the picture in bad lighting, it can sometimes help to do this extra step even once it’s already been edited a bit, to get it nice and crisp. And then I upload the pictures! And it’s done!

So that’s how I make a traditional art comic.

—S.B.

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Recently I went to the mall & saw a beautiful denim ruffled shirt in a shop window. Ooh! I want it! I thought. Then I remembered what happens every time I buy a ruffled shirt…

This is one that I got once—that looks very good when I’m not wearing it. Look at all those little stitches! Antique things always remind me about the work that was put into them, and how even something necessary can be turned into a piece of art.

I always become intimidated when I see an artist who is much better than I am, since I think, “I could never do that,” but it’s also very inspiring. How sad would life be if no one was ever more skilled than you at anything? If there was never any kind of work that, when you got right up to it and saw it, it took your breath away?

So that’s what I always think of when I see something that was made by a person more skilled than I will ever be. That I’m so lucky to live in such a world (and I only wish I could be alive forever to experience all the beautiful things there are).

—S.B.

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