The Scab Man (Finished Comic)

These are the processes I used to turn this poem into an A3 comic page.

I took the poem and made a comic plan. I drew out the boxes based on my ideas of what I wanted to draw in each panel and it's corresponding line in the poem. I created the sketchy effect by scribbling with black biro and pencil. I like the dark, scrawling effect of these boxes as opposed to my usual solid-line style. This page was photocopied several times so I had copies on which to experiment and sketch out my ideas.

I made this sheet to remind myself of where I wanted each line of the poem to fit in the page.

This is one of my sketches that I began to apply lineart to. I used water-soluble ink as my original idea was to create tone by adding water and blending the ink to create a grey image.

The style of drawing figures here is similar to how I usually draw, but I tried to incorporate the more solid, expressive style used by Aitor Throup to add more depth to the characters.

Here are the finished lines with all of the backgrounds drawn in. I decided not to erase the pencil sketch underneath as I liked the sense of history in the image and it also reminded me of how William Kentridge built up layers in his animations.

I began adding tone by applying water to the dried ink, causing it to bleed and turn the surrounding areas grey. For the areas I needed to be darker or solid black I added black watercolour paint. I felt the piece was looking a little flat so I decided to experiment with adding small amounts of colour to it.

Firstly, I painted the gaps between panels black so that the images would stand out more. I think it also adds to the darker atmosphere. I began adding colour to the characters to make them stand out from the background. I liked how the watercolours looked so I decided to continue adding colour. I didn't want to add too much as I didn't want the piece to be overly bright as this might destroy the serious/scary aura I wanted the reader to perceive. I watered down most of the colours after this so everything still had a greyish tinge to it.

After the paint had dried, I went over most of the lines in black pen again to make the images sharper and easier to look at. I also added highlights with white gel pen to stop the drawings from feeling flat. I printed out IPostAtMidnight's poem and placed the lines into the relevant panels.