Flat Tire

I wanted to push myself further with the backgrounds on this comic. So, I made the following artwork with Copic markers on bristol board:

Then I scanned it. And, as you can see, did a lot of copy-pasting, cloning, and color-tweaking.

But I ran into a new problem. See, I usually hash out the details of the figures first. But this time, with only a very basic compositional sketch to guide me, I created the background art first. 

This meant that as I got into the nitty-gritty of composing the characters, their bikes, and other props, I was faced with tangent after tangent.

And then I remembered that I had to add in the concertina wire. I did a lot of adjusting–moving figures left, right, up, down. And in the end, I still have a couple bothersome tangents, like this one:

Rudek’s mouth butts up against the curve of the concertina wire there. There are a number of little issues like this which I suppose I could address. But after spending about two weeks on this one, I’m content to let it rest. I learned a lot by wrestling with these compositional problems, even if I didn’t lick them all.