Yep, after the medium's most exciting conceptual artist, Robin Barnard, sent me a few original art pieces in the mail (just touching those things, wow), I got creative. This comic returns to a color method I used on a fairly unsuccessful one-pager earlier this year; I think it worked a little better this time. I Xerox the originals, paint the color over them, then print the black linework back on over the paint.
Here are the two pieces Robin sent me:
Here's my colors pre-processing:
And at top, of course, the rendered products, pasted up into a nice lil two-panel grid (my favorite layout of late).
This page is, I suppose, a slightly disconnected part of the increasingly fascinating avant-comix project "Doubtland" that Robin's got going over at his blog, Images Degrading Forever. Dude's copying Steranko's entire Outland adaptation page by page, hitting Jaunty Jim's cold, crystalline line sculptures with the blur of his own vital, wavery, utterly alive inking. It's an incredible thing to watch a comic decay like that, but the real thrill of Doubtland for me is the bald conceptual straightforwardness of it all, the uncertainty around who the artist of the project really is, the guts that go into planting a flag squarely in the middle of the flawed territory that is this work. The guy's an incredible blogger too: his process posts are in-depth and absorbing, and the odd little non sequiturs and ideas he throws into almost every sentence he writes stick in the brain like velcro made of thought. A while ago Robin sent me a letter that mentioned "evolving the medium into its true self", which was the most revelatory sentence I've read in a really long time. And seeing him change Outland -- evolve it, even -- like it's melted plastic being poured out of its mold is exciting me more than anything else in comics right now.
2 comments:
Matt's painting on these is absolutely awesome it puts a whole entire fresh level of perspective and artistry on top of those panels breathing even more life into that still locked in figure
Starting off with a cool blue - clearly showing us how cold / neutral the first panel is, while there is still some hints of life and blood flowing through our "hero" contrasted with the bright light distorted orange caution sign overlaid - the painting on this for some reason reminding me of Dash Shaw
Flipping then straight to to full on red explosion of colour over emphasising the intensity of feeling and anger in the need to just destroy all that background and just leave the figure mostly untouched even by this level of intensity, who is now devoid of anything just stark black and white
or you could just say it rocks!
Added to this Matt has Put a black and white striped and distorted background referring back to the original locked in contrast of sterenako's original work and my careless use of the rollerball pen
In short Matt has made a work of art
I wish I could get Jaunty Jim to clap his eyes on this one, this pop art meets I don't know what, it almost defies convention or description!
The 2nd painting (boom) is my new desktop wallpaper! Very cool stuff guys. Robin is stripping Steranko down, and Matt is building on top of it. God knows where this thing will end up.
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