Something has taken Root...

Hey! You!

Do you like your queer romance with a fun mystery and healthy dose of horror to make the medicine go down?

Check out my webcomic Kingfisher, an occult mystery series set in the 1920s!

We now have nearly 250 pages of reality shifting puzzle boxes, gun-totting tea drinking mobsters, dubious cocktails, and an immensely slow burn romance! 

The current book is Rotgut, where a strange plague seems to sweeping over the city with a strange inhuman being in the center of it. Can Seymour and Gabriel navigate the increasingly complicated web of lies and relationships to find the truth at its center? Can Seymour discover the secrets of the mysterious artifact, the Kingfisher Box? Can gentlewoman thief Fox ever stop finding herself being pulled into their messes?

And maybe, just maybe, our main couple will hold hands by the end of it? Just once?

Remember! The road to hell is paved with good intentions!

well, this is by no means definitive, but some things to do:

ask yourself what makes this compelling to you? is it the language? is it the tone / voice? what about the tone/voice? is it the ideas presented? the characters? the dialogues?

2. how is the author putting together these elements that compel you? what are the tools they're using to do so? do you know? if you don't know, look it up!

3. play parrot! sometimes it helps to just mimic / pastiche your favourite authors' voices. mix them together! does it work? does it not work? why does it not work? mix it around till you achieve something you like! you'll eventually settle into something that will be your own voice.

4. read literary criticism of the works / authors that you like. this could be something in a magazine like bookforum or london review of books. read widely. or it can be a straight up journal article! just open up google scholar and look up a specific theme + work or just look up the work and see what comes up. think about the criticism: do you agree with what they're saying? why or why not?

5. you have to be curious & open-minded about people & the world. not all the book and theory knowledge in the world can save you if you're not interested in understanding real people in the real world / are only interested in armchair analysis & diagnosis. 90% of writing sucks because people are uninterested in building on the scaffold of the simple fact that real people in the real world are both quite irrational and unreasonable AND yet are deeply compelled by their social structures and invisible psychological needs. can you analyse this in the people around you? if not, go back to zero and try again and again.

6. look at the world around you. think about how your favourite writer might describe how something looks. think about the way the light falls on something. how would you describe it? why? if you were a different person would you describe it differently? how might someone else describe it? why? (this will help you build up the skill of creating a specific set of metaphors and means of thinking for characters that reflects in their word, metaphor and simile choices, that in turn will shape the language and voice you employ for them both in dialogue and in free indirect speech)

7. ok so we've sorted out language, now start thinking about the underdark of the things you're reading. what is the social world that shapes the characters? how does the author depict this? (reading criticism on this can really help, whether yr reading thru a feminist lens or a marxist lens etc etc) how does the author decide on what to focus on? how does it propel the narrative and its stakes? (btw heyer and austen / older marriage plot novels are really good for practicing this, because they'll usually make obvious the social constraints of class and gender (for example) that are compelling the characters to act or not act in the ways they're acting.)

8. read the sort of books / history the author of the book you're reading might have read. e.g. reading about roman history, early modern gender roles and having a sense of 1930s - 1950s english social and economic history enriches my reading and understanding of tolkien's undergirding philosophical, social and economic concerns threading thru his works. i cannot stress this enough: reading accompanying history can make a huge difference in the depth with which you are able to read a text.

9. think about the author's politics & leave aside your own fanishness/your preconceptions of how this author should or should not be. how does that show up in their works? (again litcrit can be good for digging into this). where does that show up? do you think that was consciously employed? do you think it was unconsciously employed?

Any suggestions beyond observing and practicing?

Love your art!

Hello!

I’m very happy you like my sketches and want to learn from them! I think that inking trees is quite difficult, and creating an inking style that works takes time and a trained eye for inking. I'm still struggling with drawing trees.

I’ll do two step-by-step studies of tree photos to show my approach. Hopefully this helps!

First tree

The first thing I notice about this tree is the feeling I get from the leaves, then the general shape of the trunk and branches, and lastly where the light and shadow areas are. The leaves have a slightly angular shape to them, and are both in clusters and by themselves.

I start off with drawing the leaves. Sharp edges and implied detail is my interpretation of this tree. I'm not just drawing an outline, I'm also drawing clusters on top of each other within the outline.

Then I draw the trunk and branches. These are mainly in shadow, but I’ll leave the darkest tone to the top half of the trunk.

Lastly, I draw leaves in shadow and add some more detail.

Second tree

This pine tree has its needles more clustered, and the shapes are a bit rounder than the previous tree.

Pine needle clusters tend to point upwards. So I’ll keep that in mind when drawing them.

Add some shadows and details.

More shadows, and some extra upward pointing needles. I might have overdone the needles a bit.

If I were to fix this, I'd remove some of the details to keep it simpler. Something like this.

Summary

I think my approach to inking trees has a lot to do with trying to understand the character of a tree and its species. How dark are the shadows, how do the branches look, what’s the feeling I get from the leaves and leaf clusters? Working from life or reference is very important too, otherwise the trees turn in to a kind of generic tree without character.

Further Reading

Keep making your own studies from photographs, and also do studies of other artists. I can recommend looking at Hermann Huppen, Linnea Sterte and Jean Giraud/Moebius for example.