For this first assignment, the end result was to create a self-portrait in homage to the self-portraits made by sequential artists over the past 100 years. I started by researching images using the web search prompts from the assignment text, as well as my own exploratory searching. I curated a selection of images, making sure that I could reference all that I had selected.
All images below are used under the educational fair-use policy:
The first set of images were fairly easy to find, particularly those of superhero comic artists. I then extended my search to older or underground comics - areas I would be even less familiar with. I then went looking for specific artists I like and admire, seeing if they had created self-portraits as well. Whilst you can see that there are a good amount of examples, above, doing these kinds of self-portraits was not as common as I had first thought: artists seemed to use photographs on their websites more than portraits.
One thing I found very apparent after this initial research was the distinct lack of diversity. Knowing that women have been involved in comics from the very start I was disheartened to see this lack of diversity and went back to my research. This time I was looking specifically for gender and racial diversity. I managed to find a few examples, but most of the female artists that I found had not published self-portraits.
Out of the selection of portraits, I determined five that were my favourites. I used my sketchbook to analyse and review why I had chosen those images so that I could better incorporate some of those aspects into my own work.
Doing this analysis made me curious about how I might want to render my final image. Rather than jump into things, I decided to try out some experiments. Using these images as well as other graphic novels whose styles I have enjoyed, I thought about how I might like to make choices in the execution of the final piece.
In my sketchbook I did my best to replicate the same image 4 times in pencil, I then took three different approaches to add ink lines, leaving one with just pencils - the intention was to colour first then ink on top. I scanned in the inked images so that I could then colour them digitally in different ways before I added watercolour to them in the sketchbook.
One of the common factors of the portraits I had chosen was that they all featured colour, but there are differences in how each of the portraits tackles the subject. So I decided to try a few different approaches to using watercolour for the images that I had inked in my sketchbook.
With both scans in my computer, I then approached things digitally - firstly I used the ligne claire image (with no colour) and converted the black inks to a semi-transparent blue, which I then experimented with using vectors to create shapes. I then experimented with using raster brushes to add texture to the shapes.
I stopped before I added in top inks and shapes for the otter (now looking more like a stoat... oh well) because, while starting to be successful, I did not like the effect. I think it may have some merit in the future but I think I need a great deal more experimentation to work out how to best utilise vectors this way. I read The Junction (Konyu, 2020) last year and it was one of my favourite books of the year. Norm Konyu used vector graphics layered with textures for his technique and it's an intriguing and unique approach I want to learn more from.
In my next experiment, I took the scanned watercolour 'flats' from my sketchbook, and added in digital inks. I did this quickly, so wasn't too worried about technique, but I did find that I was having a few problems here and there with finding a brush and pressure curve that felt natural to me.
Again, this seems like something I will need to investigate in more detail: It's easy to have lots of brush packs at one's disposal, but that doesn't mean that any of them will actually work for you, and you need to also get to know the brushes to know how to make them work for you to create the kind of marks one is looking for.
For this second piece, I used a colouring technique that I was more familiar with (albeit in Clip Studio Paint, not Affinity Photo) using curve layers to add different shadow and highlight layers. I only did a few shadow layers, but I really liked how it worked over the watercolour, and I was pleased to experiment with different brushes to see how it affected the shadows. I had only previously tried a 'cut-and-grad' approach this way with the lasso tool so it was nice to be able to get a more natural effect painting in the shadows.
Not deterred by my vector experiment, I also experimented with using texture in the image - I used a stock photo of wood grain and manipulated it over the decking boards to add in an authentic effect - this was quite interesting and I thought it could work well somewhere in this assignment. I wouldn't be forcing it in though!
Overall, I wasn't happy with any of the approaches in isolation. Whilst the watercolour aspect was a nice avenue to pursue, I think that it might require a lot more experimentation and practice to make it translate to the world of comics for me - but that is a very exciting prospect! I greatly admire the artist behind the Blacksad books, Juanjo Guarnido so it's worth working on that avenue to see how I can improve my techniques.
Moving towards the final piece, I decided that I should first concentrate on a good drawing, and composition first and then inks after. I could then start with strong, clean and flat colours and experiment digitally from there. The natural next step, then, was to think about the content of my drawing. Making a mind-map from the question "what do I want the portrait to say?" I came up with the following:
Interests
PC Gaming
Movies
Warhammer
Science-Fiction
People
My wife & son
My Mum, Sister and her family (perhaps in reference somehow to avoid clutter)
Influences
The 1980s, my decade of birth, are still a huge part of what influences my style and taste, so I separated these out a bit.
Music
Synthwave
Rock
Pop
TV
Henry's Cat
Danger Mouse
A-Team
Knight Rider
Airwolf
Dr Who
Cartoons & Toys
He-Man & She-Ra
Transformers
M.A.S.K.
G.I. Joe
Thundercats
Silverhawks
Bionic 6
Comics
Dandy & Beano
Buster
2000AD & Dan Dare
Asterix
Tintin
I also decided that there were certain things I didn't want to talk about in my portrait, namely my day job, aspects of body image and the rest of my eclectic music tastes.
After all of that preparation, it was time to start thinking about the final piece. To start, I needed to create my 100-word personal statement from the assignment:
"My name is Dan Woodward, and this portrait shows me with images of my interests and influences. I have always been drawn to fantasy, science-fiction and adventure. Growing up in the 1980s provided me with a lot of inspiration that turned into hobbies. I have been playing Warhammer since I was nine, and have been an avid gamer since well before then. I am fortunate that I still have time for those hobbies, but they have taken a back seat to the love I have for my family and expressing myself creatively. I wouldn’t change anything about it!"
Next, I needed to translate my statement into a final image. As usual, the best place for me to start was by doodling in my sketchbook to see where my imagination could take me. I started with some initial rough doodles based on concepts as they came to mind.
After I had finished four of these concepts, the movie poster one really started to appeal to me, and it got me thinking about all of the 80s movies and cartoons that I had listed as part of my research. So I decided to find some visual examples of the ideas that were going through my head.
As I found images of movie posters that were from, or evoke the 80's style, it got me thinking about the first games I played in the 80s. There was no such thing as downloads, so a game's box design was a big part of selling a game. It brought me straight back to some of the games that massively influenced me growing up, so I included some of them into my collage too.
Next, I remembered that one of my featured artists, Brett Parson, had done some movie posters of his own, so I managed to find a few so that I could look at them in more detail and reflect on how I might approach my own. I also talked to my family about how they would like to look in an 80's world which gave me some great feedback to reflect on and record.
Now more settled with my choice of presentation, I moved onto thumbnail compositions so that I didn't just stick with the initial doodle earlier in my sketchbook.
I liked aspects from a few of the thumbnail compositions, so I took the idea and started to create some rough pencils. I debated whether to do so on paper or digitally. I was a little apprehensive about just how to get going, so I opted for digital.
However, once I decided this, I realised that I had done little dedicated digital work in about a year, apart from some pieces at the end of Illustration Sketchbooks. For the most part, I had intentionally been working analogue for a long while. I discovered that both my Affinity programmes and Clip Studio Paint had undergone fairly extensive upgrades since I last used them properly. I couldn't get comfortable with either and had to spend a great deal of time getting re-acquainted with both before I could choose.
I finally opted to go down the Affinity Designer/Photo route, as I had an idea of some of the stylistic choices I wanted to use, so this seemed the easiest route to stop looking at a blank white page! Even still, I found that the amount of choice on offer was somewhat overwhelming; even picking a pencil brush to use seemed to take forever.
Incidentally, this feeling of overwhelm continued for a long while and extended to all parts of the process. For example, when inking I couldn't get any single brush to behave like it felt when I was using my No.2 brush on paper. I ended up taking a brush that was close and editing it to better suit my needs. What this has done is inspired me to look inwards to what I like and don't like in this arena. I think I am getting past the point where I want to just use other people's packs. I am inspired to learn how to create my own brushes so that I can operate digitally and make the kind of marks I want to, and emulate the kind of techniques I want my work to have (things like how to use watercolour more for colouring digitally).
I started to get into a groove and managed to tweak my work to build up some fairly decent rough pencils. Getting this far had taken me simply ages at this point, however, and I was in two minds whether or not I wanted to do any tight pencils - especially given it was only me who had to do the inking!
I moved onto the inks, trying my best to be a bit looser with my work. I still was fighting the tension between realism and cartoony/stylised. Having to do portraits made this even harder. I looked back to my sketchbook and research to give me clues on how to tackle different aspects. I think it's given my inks a bit of inconsistency as I learned and tweaked different approaches along the way.
I really struggled with using spot blacks effectively, and this is something I am going to need to work on. The further I went, the more it felt like the inking style was a bit bland and mainstream. But I suppose, looking at the reference I can easily get my hands on, that is probably to be expected at this point. It's pushing me on further to buck against that, and giving myself permission to try other non-inking ways of doing the comics. The one thing that did surprise me as I was inking was just how much fun I was having! I really got into a flow state, which has eluded me for such a long time. It was wonderful.
I'm really pleased that I managed to incorporate my son and wife's feedback into the piece, I think my son, in particular, looks great! My wife's pose is not exactly how I wanted to get it, but it was good enough. Having not done any 'traditional' comic work digitally in a long while, I reverted to the standard process of flats > colours > render, so went about putting in the flat colours, which would be used as a reference layer later for ease of selection while rendering. I didn't worry too much about colours at this stage, only that each one was unique. You can see in the image below that in putting some of the background colours down, I had started to think about colour palettes for the piece. The gradient on the sky went through a number of different permutations before I settled for the one below.
I then duplicated the flats layers (I had one for each person and the background) and started to get to work on adding in the local colours for the piece. These are the colours if you were to see them in even white light. I played around with options and did web searches to do some visual research into common palettes for the 'synthwave' genre.
I have been dying to tap into this 80's influence for months, but have not been able to let go; that the material is not 'serious' enough. I had even created a Spotify playlist to immerse myself in the genre! Suddenly all of that fell away and I was having so much fun. It felt like I was a kid, and yet at the same time creating a radical world that would have been in one of the games or TV shows of my youth. My playlist was thrumming away as I worked in the zone.
I settled on a palette and saved it into the file itself so I could get consistency across the piece as I went. Synthwave often features pink and purple, but I wanted to see if I could go for a palette that included blue and orange into the mix.
Next was the render. This took me a long time - every colourist seems to have their own personal way of going about it, so when I researched approaches there were lots of good ideas, but sometimes the advice just seemed to be conflicting. Where possible, I preferred using non-destructive adjustment layer masks, which made it easier to change the lights and colours. I tried to get a strong main blue key light, and a bright pink accent light to help me create definition and strong silhouettes. As I progressed I experimented with using halftones in places (hard to see in this very small version) and special effects.
I found myself using brushes normally used for painting, and this has given the work a bit of a textured painterly style in places. It looks good in this context, but I did feel that the more I did, the more generic it felt. I think I need to do more experimentation here to see how I can embrace quicker, simplistic techniques that also meant I don't look like a 'cut and grad' clone. I think there must be a way to take a simple approach and still achieve sophisticated things with it.
Lastly, to reinforce the 80's poster theme, I added in a title to the composition. My wife liked the image so much I think she wants to hang it in the hallway! I think that the blue key light might still be too strong, but done is better than perfect!
Not content at this point, there were a few things I wanted to take further. Firstly, I noticed that I had forgotten to do anything about the gauntlet screen. I created a separate file in a retro computer style, and made a simple vector illustration of a casette tape:
This allowed me to add my own little 'Easter Egg' into the image, putting in references to my mum, sister and her family who are such support and strength to me, not least for my continuing studies. The loading 20% is a little nod that this is assignment one of five. I then used some line halftones and layered effects to give the image a retro, grungy feel:
This is also a little nod to the Pip-Boy gauntlet featured in the Fallout games, one of my favourites! Finally, I embedded the image into the gauntlet and added some extra glow effects to show its backlight. Then the really fun part - I wanted to turn the image into a computer game!
In the 80s we couldn't download games, so cover art was a huge part of making a game look appealing. In the 1980s there was also a huge variation in approach. Some of the first complex games I played were the point-and-click (well they were written commands before mice were readily used, I am really showing my age here!) adventures from Sierra - things like Space Quest, Kings Quest and Police Quest. This memory inspired me to make a retro-style cover. They would normally be in a laminated cardboard box, so I imagined all of the wear, tear and scratches that a box like that would have.
Layering on the extra text and graphic elements, I transformed the image into its final state, which I then printed out at A4, close to the size of old PC game boxes:
Now, I know that I didn't need to go so far for this assignment. But honestly, once I started the inks this became a personal labour of love. I managed to unlock something in me doing this assignment. I feel growth personally and in skills. I feel a bit braver and definitely more competent. Most importantly I feel a deep desire to just have more fun with my work and try and push it to be a bit more loose, crazy, silly and... well... weird.
Because that's me.
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