PJ Holden's Blog

Coming towards the end of Bad Magic – 21 pages of ink and then that’s a wrap.

This week I’ve also drawn another episode of the leopard of Lime Street, and talked to a guy about pitching for an image book. I have an appalling track record of pitching and I can’t abide six pages that just go nowhere (the normal expectation is to draw six pages of the story), so instead we’re gonna try doing a 16 page complete story and if it doesn’t land we’ll kickstart it just as a one off. (I dunno what a kickstarter would look like, but I figure it’ll have a lot of process stuff – pencils, inks, script, the whole shebang)

So I’ve also started scheduling ahead. Since everything can be a little chaotic with art, especially the further ahead you attempt to plan (I mean, can you plan for sickness? plan for sudden spurts of activity and speed?) but planning one fully drawn page per actual day drawing seems solid. 

In truth I can probably reliably do one and a half pages per day, so I’ll always, over a long time period get ahead of deadlines.

But, if you’re interested, here’s how I’d LIKE the next few weeks to go:

6 March – 12 March ink 21 Pages Skulduggery Pleasent (this might go over)

13 March – 19 March Judge Dredd 6 pager (this should finish in less time than I’ve allowed)

20 March – 26th Match Leopard ep10 (6 pager ditto)

27th March – 11 April Image Pitch (16 pages) #1

And then, I’ll be on Dredd, the Leopard then Dredd non stop (well, until I’ve done 8 episodes in total)

Start of April I’ll need to reevealuate. I’d like to not have any non working weeks (I mean, apart from holidays, obv)  but that depends on work. Plus an email from DC asking me to do something there will obviously derail this all, but I’ve no expectations on that front.

Plus in that time I may be snuffling around for longer gigs – though, right now, I’m of mind to pour a lot of time into drawing Dredd, assuming Matt will keep asking me. 

Here’s how I get in to the flow. Sit my arse down and draw. I’m in a pretty great position of not having any other job to do but my job, and I find it a lot easier when I have a big chunk of pages to get through. 

That said, here’s how a typical page works – and you’ll see all the steps I take that speed me way up.

Any new project requires a new file, so I create a new document in Clip Studio at exactly the right size for print (actually it’s usually 30% larger than print, because I used to physically print the art out and ink over it – I don’t do that, but habits are habits)

I’ll usually append a few extra pages to the file, a 21 page story gets a 26 page file. On pages 22+ I create thumbnail pages, I have a nice little clip studio action that generate a 3×3 grid on the page. In practice these thumbnails are actually pretty big…

I’ll pencil my thumbs in this page – my thumbs are often crude blocky things, but enough to get a sense of what’s going on and I’ll thumb the entire book in one day. It’s exhausting but necessary.

Once it comes to pencilling, I’ll open the thumbs and select the thumb from the page I’m drawing and copy and paste it into the new page and scale the thumb to fit.

(an unusually detailed set of thumbs)

Then I’ll apply a second action that preps the entire page for me (this will add a few layers that I’ll need to draw on, putting all the pencils into a folder, and adding the frame around the page) reducing a thing that can take 10 minutes into a few seconds.

(this action seems to include a mad amount of “Make Layer above as editing target” I suspect they’re mostly a bit pointless, but when you make an action it records everything you do as you do it, so it was my fault, I probably clicked the same layer a few times, I could tidy it up, but I’ve relied on this action for years now…)

Then I’ll tighten the pencils up a bit, this is an intermediate step, just cleaning up pencils a little and clarifying anything in the thumbs that are too vague.

Next I’ve another action that simply creates a nice clean pencil layer (while making that pencil layer fade in to the background a bit) and then I do a finished pencil on that layer (which is named “finished pencils”)

And then I move on to the next page to pencil. My pencils are rough but detailed enough for me (unless the page is a struggle in which case I’ll usually move on when I’ve done something more detailed)

It can take me 2-4 hours to pencil a page (sometimes a lot less if it’s a big simple splash, sometimes days if it’s a complex crowd scene…)

As long as I’m not interrupted, I’ll break for lunch around 12. Kids get out of school around 3:40 so I’m normally hanging out with them, until after dinner, around 7, then back to work (sometimes don’t get back to work until 9) then bed around 12.

A week of slight frustrations, where I’d genuinely thought I’d lost the ability to get work done at any sort of speed. Felt like a slog some days to even get two pages of crude pencils done. 

BUT! ultimately – 20 pages of pencils done, one final page and that’ll be the last page of the last chapter of bad Magic – the Skulduggery Pleasent graphic novel done and it’s on to inks. Really looking forward to getting it finished (there’s some fun pages to ink too)

Monday I’ll get that last page done, then spend a couple of days doing the leopard from Lime Street. 

We have mice again. Flipping mice. So some amount of time was spent just laying traps and reassuring my wife who is freaking out.

Once Bad Magic is done (I’m planning for it to be finished Mid-March) I have a couple of scripts I can do, but I’m waiting on more things! It’s that time where you start looking around and snuffling for work. It’s hard because you find yourself in a position where your criteria for a project is more than just “can I get paid for this” you have to consider “is this a good use of my time” “does this progress my career in some hard to define, blurry fashion” and also “can I get paid for this”

ANYWAY… I leave you with a silly reference photo…

I do love a scifi cliche. This is just a late night unfinished doodle.

Not sure where I was, but I was in the mood to do colour sketches (these turned up from a de-duplicate image search on my ipad.

Ugh. What a disappointing work week. I thought I could slip a couple of non comics gigs in there, and of course, it through my entire schedule out of wack. Really I’m at my best when I’m drawing comics and know the work I’ve got to do and just get on with it.

Pencils / inks completed this week-  1 page pencils and inks (and even that was 90% done on the Sunday prior)

I did do a cover, which I needed to do. And some film stuff that will probably not happen, but you never know. And some other stuff that is a bit odd and may or may not happen, we’ll see. And took a couple of full days off (it’s mid term here, so both kids off school, next week they should be going back, but eldest is currently ill – maybe covid, maybe not and the youngest has exams but also half day on Tuesday because of a teacher strike (I fully support))

What I’m saying is next week may turn out to be rough. And page 1 of the new pencils which I should get done tonight starts with four panels and a crowd scene on each panel which is exhausting and slows you right down and is not the best way to start back in to work after a week of not working. I’ll get it back. I will, dammit.

(I could’ve drawn 10 pages of art this week, and now I’m annoyed any weeks I don’t – which is stupid, but you’ve got to let yourself off on stuff like that)

Anyway, onwards!

(Oh the pencil numbers in the boxes were my estimates of when I’d’a finished the previous chapter of bad magic, but obv I got that done ahead of schedule, so they’re not inked in…)

So far this is the only time I’ve drawn Sinister Dexter for 2000AD and it was around 2014-2015.

I’ll be brutally honest, I don’t think my art was in a good place – or at least – I didn’t feel particularly happy about it. There are charms in it, and I think it was all digital, so I was still finding my way (and frankly, still am) but it’s so chonky. Made worse when you see it in context, where more polished art sits – it’s available in Volume 7 Sin Dex of the massive, I-dunno-how-many-parts Hachette 2000AD collection out soon ish.

Every panel felt crammed, I was drawing figures much larger than they needed to be and inking them so crudely they looked like I drew it all half size and then blew it up.

Anyway, it’s out there now.

I thought I already uploaded this, but somehow it’s not there. So apologies if you get this twice.

Think the background, ground needs more of something, but I dunno what. On the other hand the book is gonna be … book sized? I dunno, anyway it’s likely you’ll miss anything too detailed.

Update : I will never be finished. I’ve added woad, which I think works better. 

This is a WIP (foreground mostly done and background I’m working on) I like the textural nature of it (which is probably ruined in this image) and I lioke the colours, so far… 

 I think I like it… 

(But I’ll probably change my mind…)

WHAT IS IT GOOD FOR? A reasonable part of my career, it turns out.

Anyway, 2000Ad have announced the new Battle Action specials (five issues!), and just for you, here’s some art from it.

True story, I completed this entire story (which is not about Tanks, but does have them in the background) and got an note (not from the editor nor the writer) about the tanks being the wrong ones. So I redrew them all…

I suspect you know who it is.

Anyway, just wanna reiterate, all this stuff is between us – art and inside stories, I like sharing this stuff, but can only do it if I know it’s not going anywhere!

https://comicbook.com/comics/news/battle-action-garth-ennis-2023-rebellion/