Life and Death - a comic

Life and Death

In my last post I was complaining about having problems figuring out how to show a spirit. Here is my solution. I'm not sure its the best solution but its the only one I could come up with.

The story goes that a dying woman in labor as she passes from this world, meets the spirit of her daughter as she is born. They have a loving meeting and then the woman dies and her daughter is born. This was drawn on a Wacom tablet in Adobe Photoshop. The way I work is that I draw my pencils into the computer then print it off in blue-line on a large scale printer on 11x17 Bristol, ink the pages by hand then scan them back in for final edits and shrinking the pages down for publication. It may be a weird way to work but it works for me.
Anyway. The blue color of the daughter spirit is pretty much a reminder to myself that I want to ink her in blue ink to separate her figure from that of her mother. When i print it the page will all be the same blue-line color.

The only major problem I am having with this page is that on the second panel the spirit of the daughter accidentally came out looking sort of like an image of the Buddha. This wasn't my intention.

baby souls

I'm completely stuck on my latest comic. I really have no idea how to handle the problem I'm facing.

In my comic I have a dying mother meeting the soul of her soon to be born daughter. How does one go about drawing a soul? I certainly have no idea and all of my attempts have looked horrible.
I've thrown in the towel for the night and probably for the rest of the weekend.

I give up.

Dragon Problems

This is a sketch I did in my sketchbook over a month ago that I am still struggling with how to color. I love the drawing to pieces and I want to do it justice but I just don't quite know how.

I've tried a few different versions but nothing comes out just right. I'm thinking I might just go with simple generic dragon colors.

In truth I'm only contemplating this now because its 2 am on a Friday night and I'm locked away in my little apartment trying to get homework done that I don't really want to do anymore. My hands hurt from drawing panels.

I've discovered however that I have found myself with a growing interest in the discussion of life and death. Its not like I'm looking for a particular religion, I'm an admitted agnostic unless I'm feeling particularly religiously oppressed that day. But I look forward to all the ideas that have come out of religion to explain those unknown moments before we're born and after we die. I have my own ideas about what might be on the other side but those are really for another day.

I just bring this up because I was noticing that all of my comic projects on my plate at the moment have to do with life and death. I have my comic that I've almost completed titled, Life, about the meeting of mother and daughter in the tunnel as the daughter is born into the world and her mother passes from it. Its sad and heartening at the same time. I've also just finished the script for a story about two brothers dealing with the death of their father and their discussion as they leave the cometary. My other project is my senior project which would take much more time than I have now to explain and is still in the experiment stage but let me assure you it is all about death and the decisions we make and how they effect us.

The Beginning

Hello to all.


This blog is here for me to share my ideas, my thoughts, my mistakes, and my dreams with my fellow human beings and I will welcome your feedback. I accept that you may not like all that I have to say and I may not like everything you have to tell me in return. But I would like to think that in the end, with the input of others, I will come out of this experience a better person and artist and perhaps inspire a few people along the way.