So here is page 15 with the usual excuses for the 12 people still reading this comic.
What I like about it is how unheroic Nightstik looks as he struggles to find the right file. I also dropped an Easter Egg into the file information. You have to squint, but it’s there. There are also a few clues as to where Nightstik takes place.
I have struggled with drawing hands for most of my drawing life. I can draw a flat hand fairly easily. But as soon as the characters do anything remotely resembling human behavior, it goes all to hell.
Yes, yes…I am aware of the multitude of “how to” videos and the countless platitudes about “all you have to do is…”
In my experience, there is only one thing that fixes any drawing difficulty.
Practice, practice, practice. And when you’re done with that…more practice. Drawing the hands often takes longer than drawing anything else on the page. It did on this one. That is for sure.
The human hand can assume multiple shapes and angles more so than any part of the body.
Many times, I find myself thoroughly disgusted with my lack of ability to render things to my satisfaction. I am sure this the frustration of many artists. Sometimes I even find myself outwardly seeming grateful for feedback from the many more talented artists than myself. While internally, I am boiling inside saying to myself, “Of course that doesn’t look right, I just suck.” What do you mean an arm can’t bend like that? No shit.
Still, a part of me DOES appreciate the feedback from those that are better than me or at least have more experience and techniques to draw on than I do for any feedback that I can use to improve.
I think I HAVE improved, but I feel like I am on a quest to improve something about myself that is immutable an unchangeable. The playwright David Mamet once said that “concern with one’s talent was like being concerned with one’s height.” That is to say talent like the other things about you are in a fixed state. One cannot grow taller; one cannot grow more talented. One can only develop the skills associated with that talent and hope for the best. There is no sense worrying about “more or less” talent just as there is no sense worrying about “more or less” height.
To some, this may sound somewhat negative. I would say to them that regarding one’s talent as if it were merely another part of the artist is what Lars Eighner calls “A healthy state of mind.”
Enjoy the page!
Toby Dycus