Kris Dresen Draws

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The text for this piece was something I overheard a woman say at the Art Institute of Chicago. I was with one of the Jen’s (Jemale or Run Jen Run, I’m not sure who) and the woman said this to a group of over-sugared pre-schoolers who were VERY excited to be on a field trip and rarin’ to run amuck in the galleries. I thought it was a funny thing to say, especially when taken out of context. I wrote it down in my little notebook and have mulled how to use it since.

And here you have it.

I won’t pretend that my heart didn’t stop when I found this tonight.

I haven’t seen this artwork in almost 20 years.

Next month will be 25 years he’s been gone.

I still miss him.

lesser than was a difficult strip. Not that it was tough to execute or anything, just for some reason I was fighting it the whole way. What does that mean? Well, usually when I come up with ideas for strips, they pop into my head pretty much fully formed. The only prep work I do is to scribble any text down a few times to work out the flow and then I’m good to draw. With lesser than all I had to do was pick out which “less” words worked best and in what order. I was good to go, right? Nope. I had a passing thought that each panel should be it’s own page and lesser than would be a mini-comic. Cool, right?

In theory, yes. So I actually thumbed up each panel and was excited to be putting a mini together…until I looked at everything and it was all so freaking boring.  I put birch trees behind each woman and, ugh, birch trees again? Come on, kris.

Back to a one pager it went. The women all looked good so they were salvaged and plunked into the single page layout. I planned to have them on a neutral background of just whatever pencil texture I decided to throw down.

Again, boring.

OK, so they each get a background of some sort. Below is my thumb/under drawing v. the final piece.

Most were working for me. “Breathless” was just trying too hard and looked like a Terry Gilliam image. The escaping air bubbles are  more ominous. The vines behind “shameless” made the drawing flat so I ditched those for some falling leaves. Better. “Heartless” was a tricky one. The image of the breast took away from the strip, it became the unintentional focus. I toyed with removing the hand and putting a scar, but immediately thought it would be seen as a masectomy scar. Heartless = masectomy? No, no, no. So I borrowed some bandages from she’s in the trees and I had my image. Phew!

With this comic, I had probably the most false starts on any page I have ever drawn. Last weekend I trashed no less than 10 attempts before finally finding my groove and finishing the page this week. Sometimes my head and hand just don’t want to cooperate. Unfortunately, it was a full day of frustration before I finally gave in and went and watched cartoons instead.

What does the strip mean, though? I have no real idea. As with most of my, er, weirder stuff, lesser than is something that formed in my brain and I felt the need to get it on paper. I’m perfectly comfortable doing work that is open to interpretation – she’s in the trees being the biggest noggin scratcher. I like groups of words that don’t form a sentence or paragraph but tell a story. Perhaps next I will try and illustrate my grocery shopping list.

Click here to see full-size version.

It’s interesting that when I post artwork not much happens. But when I post process junkie stuff like the last few posts? BOOM. Y’all come crawling out of the virtual woodwork asking for more. I guess it’s more about the journey than the destination, eh? Well, I’m more than happy to give ya a fix.

Below is a series of shots as I started final line work on the first page of she said. I thought I would use a 0.5mm mechanical pencil for the main drawing and then a 0.3mm for the small details and shading. Nope. Wound up using the 0.3mm for the big stuff and the 0.2mm for the detail work. Haven’t used the 0.5mm yet. I guess I’ve practiced using the 0.2mm enough because I wasn’t snapping the lead every other stroke. I think in the whole day I only broke it once. I love how the 0.2mm’s line goes down as grey rather than black. It’s like drawing with a wash.

While this is not the finished drawing, it’s as far as I’m showing. I will continue to go in and build of textures and shading and get some really nice darks in there. The text will be added digitally. You’ll be able to see the finished page along with the rest of chapter one of she said when it debuts. When is that, you ask? The best I can say right now is…soon. I want to launch with a full chapter and chapter one has 12 pages/drawings/panels/whatever. So I have a ways to go although the other pages will move along briskly because I won’t be taking a photo throughout the process. My drop-dead goal date is New Year’s – one year after I completed Grace.

But starting is the hard part and I’m VERY happy with how I’ve begun here.

Thanks for your interest in what goes on behind the curtain.

I didn’t forget the mandatory cat photo. Here is BeBop drinking out of the OFFICIAL cats’ water glass.

Picking up where the previous post left off…

The “finished” underdrawing. It might look tight, but it’s really not.

The underdrawing compared to the enlarged thumbnail.

From top: Original thumb, enlarged thumb, underdrawing. So much color to get to a black and white comic, eh?

The underdrawing goes onto the light table. A sheet of Paris Bleedproof  Paper for Pens trimmed to 8 X 10 is placed on top. I rule the panel border
in ink with one of my 1.40 rapidographs. Then I grab the delicate 0.2mm mechanical pencil (“Stabby”) and begin to lightly – the only kind of line you can make with that pencil, really – outline the basics.

Super-thin lines!

I work very cramped. I like being surrounded by what I’m working on. It might look like chaos but I know exactly where everything is. I think. And there’s the underdrawing for page two on my light table. I hope I haven’t spoiled the story for anyone. (Yes, that is sarcasm.)

I also work in the dark. This picture was taken around noon. I have just three lights in my studio -the lamp on my desk and two ambient lights. You can also see the roll of red drafting tape that is the OFFICIAL drafting tape of she said. The water glass is not for cleaning pens and brushes. It is the cats’ drinking water. They both refuse to drink water anywhere other than out of this glass and it MUST be on my desk.

I’m pretty sure Bat thinks she’s invisible when she sleeps on my Wacom tablet. Usually she covers the whole thing. Yes, it’s a pricey sleeping mat for my cat.

NEXT: Final pencils!

Tonight I began work on she said. I’m approaching the artwork for this project a bit differently than I usually do. So for all you process junkies out there I present my work flow for she said:

It all begins with a cat named Bat. She is supervising the thumbnailing process.

I thumbed the book (comic, web comic, whatever. I just call ‘em books) quite small. Normally I thumb at 100%, but for she said I think I cranked it down to 40%. I make mini page layouts in Illustrator and draw directly on printouts so I can see the book develop as I sketch along. What can I say? I’m a book designer and I see books before I see comics.

This is the thumb for page one. I draw with a .9mm mech pencil with blue lead and  work loosely and quickly to keep the line energetic and lively. I sometimes add little notes so I remember what certain scribbles or details are.

Drafting/mechanical  pencil porn break! Since I’m drawing she said entirely in pencil (exciting!) I’ve been, um, researching (read: buying damn near everything  jetpens.com stocks) various kinds of mech pencils. These are the ones I’m using for she said. The pencils that are fanned out are my primaries. The rest are various brands that range from .3 to .9mm. It’s interesting in that each brand has a different line quality even though I’m using the same lead (2B) for all. The pencil with the pinkish-purplish top is the deadly .2mm. I adore it and it’s delicate line but have already stabbed myself. She is needle-thin and inflicts a whole lot of hurt. I treat her kindly for fear that she may develop a taste for my flesh.

After thumbing, I scan the artwork and place it in an InDesign file of the book layout. Here I scale the art up to it’s final print size. As I finish each drawing, I scan and make two image files – one for the web and a hi-rez file tweaked for print. When the web page gets posted the thumbnail in the book layout gets replaced with the hi-rez image. This way, the book comes together at the same rate as the comic serializes online.

When I’m ready to draw the final image, I print out the scaled-up thumb from the InDesign file onto crappy old printer paper and slap it on my light table.

My light table is a massive, archaic, green metal industrial beast from the 1950s. I love it. The glass is held on by the yards of reinforced tape you see here. The original glass – before it broke – was thick and opaque. I replaced it with clear glass and now she’s a beauty to work with. Sucks to move, though. She is quite hefty.

Next I place a sheet of higher-quality color laser paper over the thumb. On it is printed the final panel size for the book. I tackle the tight underdrawing with a .9mm pencil loaded with red lead. At this stage I add the details clearly and figure out ideas for textures and patterns. The underdrawing stage is tighter, but not completely so. Gotta give myself some room to have fun in the final stage, y’know?

And…the tape. I use a different drafting tape for each project. Manya books had black tape,  Max & Lily’s were held down by standard cream-colored drafting tape, Grace had yellow, she said gets red.

The filled portfolio of she said thumbs.

The script. Subject to change, but usually not much.

NEXT: The always fun final drawing stages!