Abstract comics and playing with colour

Dear Sarah - Day 317 of our daily drawing exchange

Hi Sarah -

In the Field Guide to Graphic Literature: Artists and Writers on Creating Graphic Narratives, Poetry Comics, and Literary Collage (eds Kelcey Ervick and Tom Hart ), Nick Francis Potter writes about abstract comics and the art of play. His suggested exercise resulted in the above four-panel zaniness.

I love the book, which is full of ideas, thoughtful essays, examples, inspiration, and exercises.

I’m posting a bit early as we are off to see a play this evening.

Until tomorrow -
Nikki

Hi Nikki,

I LOVE those panels. So vibrant. After yesterdays’ black-and -white adventures, I felt like playing with colour, first creating a moonlit scene with misty washes, then falling into a vortex of more intense colour.

This morning’s dentist appointment wasn’t any fun (are they ever?). Much poking and prodding, an X-ray, and talk of how to avoid dead teeth and endodontists.

Distracted myself by running errands, meeting a friend and then working. I made a delicious broccoli-cheese soup last night, but there’s a LOT of it, so that’s dinner sorted.

Hope the play was good.

I’m reading an excellent book, too. Years ago I read and loved Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann. I’m now reading his latest, Twist, about a journalist who goes on assignment on a cable-repair ship off the coast of Africa. Cables as in the bundles of fibre-optic threads, no thicker than a garden hose, that move 95 percent of our online data around the world. They are buried in silt and mud in the darkest deeps, and the cables can (and do) break. Fascinating, scary, and beautifully written.

XO S