Gerz Blog

I'm working on Brian's next piece for the on-going WWC project. 
Cirin was purging the Library, pulling books off of the shelves to be taken out for burning.

Pencil version...

Here, I'm figuring out the lighting. I added shading on the computer to give me an idea of how it will progress.

Again on the computer, I'm playing around with some colour. This way, I won't wreck the original drawing.

It probably won't look like this... I'm just foolin' around, that's all.

Painting a room in your house can be time consuming:
* washing the walls.
* taping off areas.
* waiting for everything to dry before you can begin the actual work of painting and creating a new room!

It is much like the way I prepare a water colour piece for colouring. 

First I immerse the paper in cold water.

Then let it soak until it's saturated. (Yes, this is my bath tub...)

...waiting for the excess water to drip down the drain 

Then I place it on a board that wont warp when wet.

I use a paper towel (on sale at any dollar store) to flatten the piece to the wood.

Wet the paper tape to activate the glued side.

Apply tape to edges.

Let dry flat. As the paper dries, it contracts and is held in place by the tape.

Resulting in a nice, flat suface that I can get wet again while colouring and it wont warp or buckle.

When I'm done colouring, I trim the paper away from the tape.

If the piece doesn't adhere properly, I have to begin the procedure again. When this happens, my hair takes on a whitish hue while I wait and wonder if I shouldn't just stick to painting houses.

Ahhh.... art.

I was contacted via my website www.gerhardart.com (you can also get there by clicking on the "Site" link next to my picture at the top of the page) to use Brian's concept of a World Without Cerebus. John's idea was to see the scene in "His First Fifth" after Cerebus has nabbed the bottle from the table, dropped the mop and scurried downstairs.

This is my rough pencil drawing of the scene with some grey shading added on the computer.

The next step will be to pencil it full size onto the watercolour paper. But I have a few other things to finish first.

Stay tuned.

I tried again.

This is grid section 01, all sections are 8" x 10". I printed this out on 8.5” x 11” bond paper.

It’s much easier to work with than the giant complete print.

 I put it face down onto the light box and outlined the images directly in ink onto the back of the print.

I scanned that in and superimposed the outline onto a lightened up version of the original.

We’ll see if the people in China that are making the silk copy can work from this.

It occurs to me that if I had one of those drawing tablets, I could draw directly onto the original image digitally.

Hmmm… gotta look into that.

J(ay) has been a long time Cerebus fan and cyber-acquaintance. He sent me some awesome chocolate once (he lives in Switzerland). He draws a little scarecrow figure that he’s admitted he’s “never done much with." You can see his “Devolution of an unnamed character” here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/10thletter/sets/72157600363372859/

His idea for his commissioned Ger's Dream piece was to have one drawing for the "sleeping" side of the room and another for the "dreaming" side. These are the drawings he sent me.

Since he supplied the perfect drawings of his character, I just pasted them into the picture frames, after adjusting for perspective. The bigger scarecrow is holding onto the picture frame. Great idea!

You can see them in this close cropped version.

The smaller, "sleeping" one is hardly noticable beside the wood stove but he'll know it's there.

Now it’s time to get it printed out on the 100lb paper and colour it.
"Quit blogging, Ger and get started!"