Including previous parts:

So far this part was the most fun to draw, and I think somewhere around these panels I started to feel more confident working with different instances of the character, even though I struggled with some expressions such as the one in the final panel, as you can see here :

I still have to go back and ink the building where Lydia moves to, in the first panel, but I already decided on its shape, which I half-projected from a reference:

I think there’s one update left with the final sequence. Thanks, and I hope you enjoyed this installment!

J.

Continuing the sequence, this is the part where the story becomes more of a mystery, where we lay the cards that later we’ll turn, so to speak. On the way from the first storyboard  below to the almost-final version I got here as well, I had  to think a bit about Lydia’s kitchen and the small grocery store. At first, I thought about a more distinctive kitchen, because she is a designer after all, but then I decided it would be better to depict a rather generic space, that is still in the process of her moving. This is a story with several exotic characters and circumstances, so it’s probably best to keep some plain elements for balance. On the other hand, in the case of the small shop I could add some variety because it’s a sort of doorway between Lydia and the mystery, so there’s part of a big plant, a sleepy cat in shadows, and also the cashier is reading a Neil Gaiman novel.

She does her search in DuckDuckGo. I wonder how will that detail age.

Below are the sketches for the plumber. I kept the first designs for him, because they felt right immediately. There’s a non-related doodle of Lovecraft there as well, I don’t know why.

See you in a few days with the follow-up to this process. Feel free to comment and leave questions, and have a great weekend.

J.

Here’s an early concept of two characters from the next Secret Knots comic:

I found that the Lydia Ray character was the right vehicle for some of the ideas I want to explore, (mainly the outside world as a reflection of  personal processes), so this next one story, and possibly another one down the line, are ‘Lydia Ray stories’. The new story is about Lydia moving to a new house, and those are her welcoming new neighbors.

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I’ve been trying to keep the practice of non-digital drawing, specially when I feel a bit drained. My mood has not been the best these latest weeks, so as part of strategies to deal with that I find this brief drawing exercises therapeutic and satisfactory. Now the small square sketchbook lives right by the laptop, on my desk. 

On these drawings I use 0.1 liners, lately Staedtler, and Pentel ‘Color Brush’ pens: one black, one gray. Sometimes I add a bit of water with a refillable Pentel water brush. Pentel ink, which has a good, intense black, dries very quickly, so I mix it with the water brush on a small patch on a different, softer paper to get a light gray (for face blush for instance). 

This one comes from this reference:

Which is one of several photos from the same session you can find online, that depict clearly the fun fashion style of the ‘Lost Boys’  (1987).

This one is from ‘Picnic at Hanging Rock’ (1975), a Peter Weir movie I saw and enjoyed once again recently. It’s a dreamy and mysterious movie that seems to imply much more than it reveals.  I got the sepia pigment from a wet teabag, with a regular brush. The reference comes from this scene:

A different, unrelated sketch from a photo I saw passing by on Tumblr:

Finally, a sketch from the opening scene of Bride of Frankenstein, where Elsa Lanchester, who plays the famous, intended bride of the creature, is Mary Shelley herself, captivated by the perfect mood to tell dark stories:

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Next month comes with a new Secret Knots story and progress on the new version of the Simon comic. I also expect to have a new PORTRAIT TREAT after I’m done with the new story, since we haven’t done one in a while, right?

Thank you very much! I hope you are all having a lovely week.

Juan.