“Click”

Hipster Picnic is definitely getting better looking. I attribute a lot of that to the fact that I have nailed down a process that works for me. A huge influence in getting to this place was Palle Schmidt, whom I visited last fall in Copenhagen. Palle has developed a style that is very much his. I saw his original pages for Thomas Alsop & Stiletto which contrasted with his earlier work on Devil’s Concubine, all of which are series he was the primary artist on. When I asked why it changed for him, Palle told me how the tight deadlines meant that he really had to find a way to change.

In Devil’s Concubine, one of his first major comic efforts, Palle approached it in the style a mainstream comic is made: heavy inks, sharp colors, etc. The problem was that Palle was doing all the work himself and this process took forever as one person. When he went to work on his next book, Stiletto, his style drastically shifted to being heavier with watercolors. This made pages faster and more pleasurable for him to make.

I was very struck by this and really started experimenting last fall with adapting a lot of Palle’s approach into my own. The biggest addition to my work in the last couple of months has been the watercolors that I do before I add the colors to the page in photoshop.

Below you can see what the watercolors for today’s page look like:

watercolors

I cannot describe to you the joy it brings to the process to work with watercolors. When I was younger I did a lot of painting. (Some of which you can see on PatrickYurick.com) For some reason, until I talked to Palle about his process, I never really thought about how paint could be integrated into my comic work. I was approaching it, for the longest time, as a checklist of how a comic “should” look as opposed to what makes me happy.

I do not believe that this is the end of me experimenting with my art. I can say that I am seeing a style emerge from the last couple months of Hipster Picnic, and that is making me very happy. We’ll see how I grow and change from here.

Oh, and thanks Palle – I wouldn’t be here without you!

-Patrick

Song Of The Day:

“Either Way” by Wilco

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