My thoughts on the craft, the process and the subjects
This is the ink of the last panel on page 2. It’s the first time all four characters appear in the same frame. I thought it would be a good time to use a kind of “the knights of the round table” perspective to show them as a group.
These are the rest of the supporting characters in my short fluids-related crime story. I enjoyed developing them and making concept drawings early on. However, simplifying those for this inking stage, so that the characters would hopefully be recognizable and easy enough to draw multiple times from various angles was not trivial. In fact, I had to come back to these panels and tweak them quite a bit as I progressed further into the book.
Here is the ink of the first panel on the second page of my fluids comic book. The second page was easier to conceptualize than the first one, since it was a straightforward introduction of the supporting characters. Among them, I had a clearest vision of this one, Trevis, and as a consequence, he changed the least from the initial character design stage.
This is the ink of the last two panels on the first page of my fluids comic book. The first closeup of one of the main characters required quite a bit of thinking through in order to simplify the original character design. Professionals like Victoria Ying say that by the end of the inking process one becomes very good at drawing the main characters, because they appear so often. I am certainly looking forward to that, but in the meantime, I was quite glad to simply finish the first page.
Here is the ink of the third panel of my fluids comic book. When I was laying out this panel, I made a decision to use a 3D model for the backgrounds, and now that I am several pages into inking, I am certainly glad that I did so. Considering that the story takes place in the same room full of small details, maintaining consistency of the set without the ability to simply re-position the camera would have been impossible.
I’ve been working on a fictional short story, hopefully the first in a series, on the subject of my academic research and teaching – fluid mechanics. As a colleague of mine said about teaching fluids at the university level, “fluids is a dry subject”. In the hope of making it a bit more entertaining, I’decided to try a manga format. It’s a crime story set in the not-very-distant future with the working title “The Flowing Clue: La Source Unveiled”
Here are the inks of the first two panels. Stay tuned for the updates on this work in progress.
Visited the 21st Century museum of Contemporary Art in Kanazawa yesterday and saw Shinsuke Yoshitake’s exhibit. Amazing amount of work, creativity and attention to detail! Not to mention, a great sense of humour.
It’s the beginning of a rainy season in the Hokuriku region in Japan. I saw this building, which was almost overtaken by the vegetation, from a bus yesterday and snapped a quick photo with my phone. As much as I like live sketching, yesterday’s heavy downpour could have given the word “watercolour” a new meaning. So I used the snapshot as reference, sketching in the comfort of our temporary home, listening to the sound of rain outside.
I’ve been thinking about how much we value things made for us by someone special. Two of such things are on top of the mind for me personally (probably because they are sitting on my desk right in front of me).
One is a small leather wallet made by a long-time friend, who is a wife of my shodo (Japanese calligraphy) teacher. She has always amazed me with her curiosity in learning various crafts and ability to execute them at a very high level and with tremendous attention to detail. There is also a 5 yen (go-en) coin that she put inside the wallet as a symbol of friendship, and which I always keep there.
Another special thing is a wooden caster for my coffee mug. It was made by my daughter about a year ago. She used a wood-burner to engrave a cute coded love message for me, which always makes me smile. Later, I tried to reciprocate in kind and made a desk decoration for my daughter with some of the things that were on my mind – symbols of ancient Greek cardinal virtues. Curiously, the word “cardinal” is derived from the Greek “cardo” – meaning “heart” or “hinge”. I particularly like a poetic interpretation that the practice of the cardinal virtues is the hinge on which hangs the door to the good life.
Last summer in Paris, I saw, almost by chance, the sculpture by Giuseppe Penone called “L’Arbre des voyelles”, or “The tree of vowels.” I wasn’t specifically planning on visiting it, but it was marked as a point of interest on Google Maps, and I was curious to see what it was. It is located in the Tuillleries garden, in the somewhat wilder and greener part of the park. As the name suggests, it’s a sculpture of a tree. It is incredibly realistic, despite being mage of bronze. As I later learned upon doing some reading, Penone used a 30-meter uprooted oak tree as a model, eventually casting it in bronze. The bronze tree looks like it really belongs in the garden. In fact, my first thought was that it could have been easily replaced by the original tree without any loss of artistic value. But then, of course, provoking this kind of thoughts was probably the artist’s intention.
Regarding the deeper meaning, when I was looking at the sculpture, I was focussed on the roots and completely missed the significance of the five branches. At the points where the branches touch the ground, there were planted five different species of oak trees. So the significance of the artwork (or at least one of the points it conveys) is to show the role of human creativity in the evolution of the environment.
Initially, I also didn’t understand the significance of the name of the sculpture, but reading about it later, learned that the roots apparently resemble the vowels A, E, I, O, U. Penone mentioned that he was inspired by the hypothetical alphabet of the druids. On the other hand, these letters are also associated with the famous sonnet “Voyelles,” written by Arthur Rimbaud in 1871. (I read it on the Internet, so it must be true!)
For what it’s worth, it’s a nice association. Here is the original sonnet:
Voyelles
A noir, E blanc, I rouge, U vert, O bleu: voyelles,
Je dirai quelque jour vos naissances latentes:
A, noir corset velu des mouches éclatantes
Qui bombinent autour des puanteurs cruelles,
Golfes d’ombre; E, candeurs des vapeurs et des tentes,
Lances des glaciers fiers, rois blancs, frissons d’ombelles;
I, pourpres, sang craché, rire des lèvres belles
Dans la colère ou les ivresses pénitentes;
U, cycles, vibrements divins des mers virides,
Paix des pâtis semés d’animaux, paix des rides
Que l’alchimie imprime aux grands fronts studieux;
O, suprême Clairon plein des strideurs étranges,
Silences traversés des Mondes et des Anges:
—O l’Oméga, rayon violet de Ses Yeux!
Here is a English translation by Oliver Bernard: (“Arthur Rimbaud, Collected Poems (1962)”):
Vowels
A Black, E white, I red, U green, O blue : vowels,
I shall tell, one day, of your mysterious origins:
A, black velvety jacket of brilliant flies
Which buzz around cruel smells,
Gulfs of shadow; E, whiteness of vapours and of tents,
Lances of proud glaciers, white kings, shivers of cow-parsley;
I, purples, spat blood, smile of beautiful lips In anger or in the raptures of penitence;
U, waves, divine shudderings of viridian seas,
The peace of pastures dotted with animals, the peace of the furrows
Which alchemy prints on broad studious foreheads;
O, sublime Trumpet full of strange piercing sounds,
Silences crossed by Worlds and by Angels:
O the Omega, the violet ray of Her Eyes!
And I also liked this translation into Russian by Nikolai Gumilev:
Гласные
А — черно, бело — Е, У — зелено, О — сине,
И — красно… Я хочу открыть рождение гласных.
А — траурный корсет под стаей мух ужасных,
Роящихся вокруг как в падали иль в тине,
Мир мрака; Е — покой тумана над пустыней,
Дрожание цветов, взлет ледников опасных.
И — пурпур, сгустком кровь, улыбка губ прекрасных
В их ярости иль в их безумье пред святыней.
У — дивные круги морей зеленоватых,
Луг, пестрый от зверья, покой морщин, измятых
Алхимией на лбах задумчивых людей.
О — звона медного глухое окончанье,
Кометой, ангелом пронзенное молчанье,
Омега, луч Её сиреневых очей.