This week @jilboskilbos posted a cartoon drawing inspired by an Aaron Paul quote. Below, Jilbo writes about the process behind it.
For as long as I can remember I have doodled, as a kid I brought british comics and would copy the particular style and created my own comic strips. Into adult life I continued to doodle in notebooks, at one time I even took an entire meetings notes purely in doodles, it was then that I realised it helped me to remember key facts a lot easier than writing them.
In more recent times I’ve not doodled as much for fun, bar leaving work colleagues little funny characters in their note books if they happened to leave them lying around. Recently, after a few rough days with work and financial woes, I found myself picking up a pencil to just doodle. I ended up drawing various versions of Aaron Paul and Bryan Cranston, just to see if I could capture any essence of them.
In my projects room I’m now surrounded by multi-media tools, pens, pencils, paints – the works, and I decided it was about time I tried my hand at inking, and colouring in my doodles. Looking for inspiration, it didn’t take long to stumble across an old Aaron Paul interview where he mentioned what it was like to work with Bryan Cranston.
Easily the most professional-slash-immature person I’ve ever met in my entire life
Aaron Paul about Bryan Cranston
Once I worked out four ‘scenes’ along the idea of a serious photo shoot but a ‘misunderstanding’ occuring for Bryan’s character, I sketched out how I would present them (sketches at the top of article). With those done, I then cut out larger boxes to work with for each scene, to give me more flexibilty if one didn’t work. I figured if I put these all down on one piece of paper, working with ink, it would be a nightmare if I wanted to rework anything at a later stage.
As it was, it all went very well, the original ideas are still pretty much there in the finished product with only slight changes.
Once I had completed the hand-drawn version, and laid it out, I decided to then scan each square into my computer. Using photoshop I then lifted each image up a little, keeping as much of the original as possible but making the text more readible and the key characters stand out more.
I’m really pleased with this end product, the first time I have inked and coloured any of my doodles. It really looks great in the frame, but also as a digital file. The feedback and response to the post has far surpassed anything else I have posted. Maybe I need to take my doodling a little more seriously!
