March 25th, 2009
The Magic Pen – page 8
These panels are based on In the Tepidarium (1913) by John William Godward (1861-1922) and Le Crepuscule [Twilight] (often called ‘Evening Mood’) (1882) by William Bouguereau (1825-1905).
I spent the last few days doing several colour versions of these, and then dithered for a while about which one to use. This is typical of me; I think of it as my Curse of the Libran: a vast indecision that sometimes drifts into crippling option paralysis. One advantage to this website is that it forces me to make up my goddamn mind and choose one.
March 26th, 2009 at 3:36 pm
I think those colors came out really well. The second image, in particular, is luminous — even more so than the original, I think. Here’s to cartooning!
October 3rd, 2010 at 4:46 am
Reading Magic Pen for the first time after seeing it featured on Bleeding Cool (I’m telling you that site gives exposure). Funny thing: I actually thought that the “Curse of the Libran” was some sort of thing I’ve never encountered before, and I was intrigued because I feel like this quite often. In fact the preview panels on the Bleeding Cool piece drew me to the story because I’m a writer and I have experienced long periods of just not being able to write a damn thing.
However, silly me that I didn’t realize that a Libran was simply someone born under the Libra zodiac sign. Still interesting though. I’ll be reading the rest of Magic Pen this morning.
April 22nd, 2012 at 3:49 am
“Curse of the Libran” — I had to puzzle that out. I was thinking, “library, books…?” But it turns out I’m a Libra too and I know exactly what you are talking about. Now that I look more closely I see I have written essentially the same thing William Noetling. I’ll add something different: I just bought and read HICKSVILLE: it was one of the most satisfying graphic novels I’ve ever read. I’m waiting a little while before I read it again.