After a long time of drawing on printer paper, the most ghetto of artist paper, I've finally bought my own sketchbook after going months drawing without even using one.
I call it a "Comic Book Sketchbook". It's a sketchbook specifically tailored to draw comic book sketch and layout and cleanup pages on, whether with pencil or with ink. It's spiral bound on the side, with tear out sheets of paper, with a structure similar to that of a book with blank pages. I've drawn around 5 or so comics pages in this book so far. It's easier to draw better comics pages when one thinks of it as regular drawing fit into panels, instead of some iconic association lumped in with "specialized comic book pages", which is the mind set I used to approach my work with, making it needlessly difficult. Ah well, doesn't seem to be a problem to me when I'm drawing now.
This just feels a lot more comfortable than the method and paper model I was using (computer printer paper). In terms of drawing real comics pages printer paper kind of sucks. Almost every page I did ended up looking like shit, with few exceptions before I got a comic-book sketchbook, and I was doing a lot of sketches, but before I got a sketchbook tailor made to be turned into comic book pages, I was really, really struggling. It felt like it was going nowhere no matter how much effort I put into it, and I in fact ended up with many headaches upon attempting it the old way. I just wish I would have thought of this method and sketchbook innovation sooner. Finishing the actual sequential art pages is quite important to me, and if those particular types of art pages look like shit, in turn I feel like shit, because as we all know its the sequential art that people actually see, which is part of why in the past I felt anxiety-possess everytime I even tried to draw one or two panels on a blank page. *shudders*. Glad that's over with. Honestly, I'm just glad I found a more productive type of technical supplies and mental method. The previous one was driving me fucking crazy! I failed in the beginning so bad! Auugh!!! What a nightmare. But like I said, it's ancient history. That's not the the case anymore.
-J.M.-
