The second entry and already I’m a day late. Sweet familiar territory. This is an excerpt from a page I worked on yesterday, with our dear protagonist still exiled to the bathroom. In conceptualizing the selection below I wanted to:

A- force myself by necessity to draw hands more often

B- draw those hands in action, involved for a reason

I find that the moment-to-moment transition is most helpful for describing simple actions, and of course for slowing down time. I used the hands here as a kind of match on action (in editing terminology); that is, to move from a close up, to a POV, by the movement of the hands unfolding, revealing a reflection.

Bear in mind, these are first-draft pages; still rough, still working out page-flow, emphasis, and actions before I get to the specifics of proportions and anatomy. The first draft is the most challenging and rewarding phase, an mixture of drawing, design and visual storytelling. Balancing negative space with detail, making judgements on spatial relationship; every panel a multitude of decisions that effect the overall timing and pacing. Intuiting where to place the camera, for how long and at what angle to achieve the desired effect; all without breaking the 180 degree rule or impeding the flow of reading. Here at the layout/thumbnail/drafting stage I am storyboard artist, director, cinematographer, editor, actor, lighting technician, producer, set designer and hand model.