Jigsaw Girl (2009)
Jigsaw Girl is, so far, the only colour comic I've done. A nine-page story written by Dave West, Jigsaw Girl (the character) was, I think, a kind of fortune-teller, a woman whose scarred skin was covered in tattoos that depicted the future. Jigsaw Girl (the comic) told the story of her origin, or at least, the origin of her scars. She was once held captive by a madman who disliked the future he saw in her skin, and so he set about removing it, a piece at time, determined that eventually she would depict a fate he could accept...or avoid.
The book is unpublished, and some of the pages are, in retrospect, really rather wobbly in quality. I'm incredibly proud of some of them, though. Two of them are reproduced below, with more to follow at a later date (why yes, I am milking it, thank you for noticing!).
Some of the actual drawing on this page is horribly rushed - those cherubs on the pillars are painfully deformed - but I'm pretty pleased with the colours, and especially with the light in the fireplace. As for the windows - who would place a chimney and an open fire immediately between two massive gaping windows? Only a comic book artist with no idea how else to fill the space. Nice stars though.
The book is unpublished, and some of the pages are, in retrospect, really rather wobbly in quality. I'm incredibly proud of some of them, though. Two of them are reproduced below, with more to follow at a later date (why yes, I am milking it, thank you for noticing!).
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| Jigsaw Girl, page one |
Nice blood, too, even if I do say so myself. Although try as I might I could not get the tattoos to speak more clearly - that is to say, the meaning of the tattoos should have been obvious throughout the book, and half the time even I can't quite tell what's happening. Which is quite a serious flaw, given that the whole plot is communicated through her tattoos.
Second page - I hate the face and hand on the last panel, but I love that lamplight too much to care. Took forever but I think it was worth it. (Although I've only just noticed I also left out the windows next to the fireplace. Yay for consistency!)
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| Jigsaw Girl, page two |
All text and images copyright © Marleen Lowe - please do not reproduce without permission
The fireplace is particularly awesome. I really like the concept of the Jigsaw Girl but an extremely difficult concept to pull off I would've thought - getting the balance right between mystery and revelation. Reminds me a bit of the guy in Heroes who paints the future. It's a great concept but it's got to illuminate rather than make things too esoteric.
ReplyDeleteI have no idea what I'm talking about.
Goodness Marleen...
ReplyDeleteNow I want you to color everything! And that fire! Sweet mercy! Well, I think I have now used too many exclamation points. Honestly though, great stuff. Can't wait to see more.
Thanks Rik - I saw about two thirds of the first episode of Heroes so I'm ill-equipped to comment on it...!
ReplyDeleteI think the character was part of a larger narrative, and I'm not quite sure what her role would have been in that, but here the story was a sort of Twilight-Zoney vignette of a man brought down by hubris, trying to cheat fate, and digging his own grave in the process...
I would post the pages that show the tattoos telling the story, but those are the rubbish pages, so I'll just leave everyone to imagine that they're better than they really are...! :)
Thank you Mark! Hopefully more colour stuff coming soon... :)
ReplyDelete