Tales from Canadian Wine Country
Tales from Canadian Wine Country
A little jaunt up north
Hello there cool kid!
I have excellent news - the inking for The Alchemist of Aurillia #4 is finally done! Yay! Inking always seems to take the longest for me to do. Despite years and years of practice mostly traditionally but now digitally, my line work still doesn’t feel great. I always mess up something with inking. But the key is to make everything else so great you don’t even notice! Even though there’s still some work to do to get the book fully ready to print, it feels like the biggest hurdle is behind me.
Let’s take a look at that sweet sweet progress tracker:
Pages Penciled: 42/40
Pages Inked: 42/40
Pages Lettered: 10/40
Mini Comics: 2/4
Looking good! And yes, the book ended up being 2 extra pages than originally planned, but these things happen when making edits and scooching things around. I’m working through the mini comics and lettering the rest of this week, and will be packaging up files to send over to my production artist Katie so she can layout out the book. Exciting stuff!
It’s Canadian Wine Country, eh!
Did you know that Canada has a wine country?! When Dr. Husband and I went to Toronto last year, we drove through the Niagara peninsula along the way and each exit along the way had a long list of wineries. We were intrigued, so a few months back we started planning a wine trip to the area with our group of friends. We had already done a trip to the Finger Lakes in New York back in February, so we were pumped to try a new location all together.
I will (embarrassingly) admit that on Day 2 I had waaaaaay too much wine and got a bit happy and silly. BUT overall it was a really fun time. One of my favorite parts was the smell of the area - a little woody, a little sweet, and a bit like the ocean breeze but without the salt. Put THAT in a candle, Yankee Candle!
Our AirBnB was right in a vineyard field for one of the local wineries. On Saturday morning as we were hanging out and enjoying the beautiful weather, I took my sketchbook and pencils down to the edge of the vineyard rows and to the chance to sketch some of the vines.
The shape of a grape leaf is a little harder to capture than I thought it would be, lots of different sections and edges. But it was really fun to sit down and draw directly from nature instead of just a photo or my imagination. I hope while the weather is still nice that I’ll get more chances to go out and draw from my surroundings. It’s really such an important skill for artists to hone, and I loved to do it in college for art class. I hadn’t realized it’d been such a long time since I drew from life. It reminded me that even when we think we know something, it really helps to go back and review those fundamentals!
A Selection of Pages
Here are some of my favorite pages I got done in the last batch of pages for The Alchemist of Aurillia #4:
Check out this Kickstarter!
Wurst & Mayhem #1-2 by John Edingfield II and Ryan Kroboth
This delightful (and mature) tale tells two mercenaries who must outwit thieves and wizards to break a curse set on them by a mythical creature. You can bet wherever Wurst and Mayhem go, shenanigans are sure to follow! If you like DnD, then you're going to love this one! Plus, Ryan and John are my very good pals and I just love what they’ve created here.
Next time, we’ll talk mini comics and production!
Till then,
Melissa J