Illuminating letters: craft club

Dear reader,

It’s time to get craft-y again and this time I wanted to set my own challenge.

This voice over from instagram reels (yes I am too old for TikTok) has been stuck in my head for what feels like months now.

I don’t think my illustrations are always interesting through colour, and I don’t know if I want them to be. But I’ve never tried to be interesting through texture. So, this was my prompt to myself:

1. Draw a four panel comic

2. Colour it in four different ways, using your usual colour palette but each one has to bring in a different kind of texture

I started with a four panel comic based on perhaps the most well known joke of all time…

Then I got to colouring.

First, I wanted to try something Luke Healy inspired. Luke uses a lot of halftone, particularly in Americana, and two tone comics. This felt very calm and I don’t know if it’s because I associate this style with Luke’s work but it felt ripe for comedy, particularly something deadpan. But as someone whose work is seen mostly on screen, I’m not sure how good a halftone is on the eyes.

Second, taking inspiration from Fionn McCabe again I wanted to try his Lee Lai influenced prompt of pasting your characters in after the fact. So I coloured the background of the comic as I normally would (his original prompt is much more fun than this!) and then created a digital collage to colour the chicken taking a few chunks of an old National Geographic. It came together in a way that felt quite stylised and I could see myself doing again, but probably only if it was in service to a specific story.

Third, I wanted to try to take something from the rich pencil shading of William Grill’s work, which I adore. The directionality of the line work gives the images more energy and a greater sense of movement. My work is usually very outline forward so it was also fun to see how that looked. I really like the trees and elements of the car and chickens, but I think I would want line work in details.

Fourth, and finally, I wanted to take something from my Phenakistoscope project where I enjoyed bringing in paper textures as backgrounds. So here I thought I’d try to work from a midtone paper background using some riso print style brushes.

This was definitely my favourite because it feels so tactile even though it was produced digitally, thanks to some of the riso textures and the backgrounds. It’s somehow turned our joke into a gritty film noir. I will definitely be working from a midtone again to bring light and shade in a more conscious way - in fact you might have seen me try it out already because (trade secret) these aren’t always published in order!

That’s all for now. If you try out a texture challenge or have any other great comics prompts you’ve tried, I’d love to know!

Write/draw again soon,

Natalie