Illustration Notes for Episode Twenty-Seven
In this week’s image I return briefly to portrait content—a thing that will still happen from time to time, despite my current resolve to depict the characters in your head as vaguely as possible here. Unlike the past few episodes, Twenty Seven was not an ‘action scene.’ It’s a quiet, introspective reflection on the turmoil that Colleen is finally left (and able) to process now that the immediate crisis has passed. So—what to illustrate? I thought about depicting a ‘dark figure’ loitering near a nursing station desk, but, functionally, the ‘mysterious insurance adjuster’ wouldn’t take us ‘into’ this scene. If anything, he’s there to take us out of it and on to what’s coming. No, this scene is about Colleen’s turbulent inner process and Dusty’s recovery. So, that’s what I decided to draw.
There were three challenges to navigate this week.
The first—as always lately—was finding any time to write this scene from scratch, do the illustration, and put the episode page together in the middle of holiday crunch week. As I write these illustration notes early Friday afternoon, those tasks are still not entirely finished. But if you’re reading this, I must just barely have managed. :] Go me!
The second challenge was Colleen’s face. This is the second time I’ve had serious trouble getting it right. It had to look like the same woman depicted in previous scenes—to whatever extent they look like the same person—but from straight on, an angle I haven’t drawn her in yet, and, despite having worked from photographs of a very generous local model for the character of Colleen, her features seemed to have a lot of trouble finding their right positions on her face. I also wanted her to look like someone who’s been sleeping on a cot in a hospital room for four days now, showering occasionally, but generally rumpled, tired, and internally troubled. Unfortunately, everything I did to try and make her visage convey these things just made her look much, much older instead. …What you see is my best effort. :]
And, because the universe has a special place for me in its heart, the third challenge came when my brush settings in Photoshop suddenly and inexplicably stopped working yesterday! My Cintq Stylus is pressure and angle sensitive, to create varying line quality like you’d get from a real brush or pencil. But there’s a toggle switch in Photoshop to turn that variable line quality feature on or off, and yesterday, it suddenly turned it off, and STILL won’t let me turn it back on for some reason. It looks like I may have to reinstall Photoshop altogether to get it back: a thing I’ve certainly had no time to do while getting this episode ready in time for this afternoon’s release. So, if the ‘line art’ part of this illustration looks a little more stiff and hamfisted than usual this week—that’s why. :]
Other than that, however, I had a great time putting together an image that was not, for once, just an unaltered stock photo hastily painted over. As always, you’ll find an uncropped version of the image below.
