Hi all
First off, more than a bit belatedly, a very happy new year to everyone - here's hoping that 2021 proves to be a better year for everyone.
This may well be the last update I post for The Boy with Nails for Eyes before it transfers to Cast Iron Books (the reason I'm being vague is because I'm uncertain of the transfer date, so apologies in advance if that proves inaccurate).
Once the project's transferred I'll no longer be doing these updates, but if you want to keep up to speed with The Boy with Nails for Eyes then you could follow the Facebook page or seek me out on Twitter or Instagram. At some point in the future when life isn't so hectic I also want to start putting out a newsletter with snippets of writing and art I'm working on. If you'd like to sign up for this you can do so on my website, so you'll be first to get the updates when they start rolling. (I also suggest subscribing to Cast Iron Book's mailing list on their website, as that'll be one place future updates regarding The Boy will definitely appear - and it's a very worthwhile subscription in its own right.)
While reviewing things I noticed that I started writing an update a long time back that went stage by stage through a page from the story - I thought for this update that I'd resurrect that post. And here it is.
This page is from the story,'s third chapter, The Labyrinth. This chapter follows Bobby through the town - we meet more of its inhabitants and encounter some of its landmarks.
The page begins, of course, with a drawing. This is first outlined in pencil and then rendered using inkwash (that's what I call watered-down Indian ink, if you want to get technical) plus pencils, chalk, charcoal, and acrylic paint. Bobby himself is rendered differently from the rest, first using pure Indian ink which is then painted onto with acrylic, followed by detailing in pencil and pen. The crows are rendered using ink only.
The page is then scanned into Photoshop, where a first round of digital colour is applied, and the clouds are added using photographs.
After this the levels are tweaked - the shadows are deepened and the highlights emphasised. Attention is paid to the sky, making the clouds look as dramatic as possible.
Blending - this stage aims at subtlety, the idea being to blend the digital elements with the physical drawing as much as possible, so that the image loses the disjointed effect when the two are combined.
Detailing begins - smoke is added with digital painting, and some of the basic colours are put in place. Details are emphasised, especially in the areas that need to draw the reader's eye (for example, the shop window to the extreme right of the picture, which will be important in the page that follows this one).
The fog is added, and a few more digital details added (such as the graffiti on the shop window, which was inspired by a similar slogan I saw painted on a wall in Bristol, back when I lived there).
This stage is a complex one - the crows' speech bubbles. These were digitally created, but made to look as physical as possible. I'd already created a lot of these headlines for the prologue of the story, so I simply reused them here. I wanted the chimneys to be visible through the crow's speech, so I replicated the image and laid that copy over the headlines, applying filters to give a different look and feel.
Fog is added, and a few more digital details brought in.
Final details are added, pushing some details back, bringing others forward. This stage often feels like it goes on for longer than it should - I try to apply a rule, that when I find myself working on details that will probably only be noticed by me rather than the reader, I should stop. I rarely do this.
So that's the entire page. After this is done the page is exported from Photoshop and brought into my desktop publisher (I use an open source programme, Scribus, which I thoroughly recommend). This is a 'silent' chapter, so no text is added, but if there were text to go on Scribus is where it would happen.