I keep meaning to make more sketches, but quickly colouring work to give it the sense of atmosphere I need it to have is quite good fun. I spent some time working with this one and I’m really happy with the mood it gives out in the end.

The character speaking is the sword, Whackus Bonkus. He is mostly quiet when it comes to moments of choice, as Mitzi needs to make the big decisions. He’s more of a plot enabler and describer. He’s hugely inspired by Senketsu from Kill La Kill, and I imagine him speaking with his voice. Whackus is a bit more serious than Senketsu.

Anyway. Really happy with the tonal range and with the colour pallette on the illustration. The reflection is cool too!

This is a good moment in the scene where Antonia and Mitzi try to break into the bath houses.

Getting the pose right, keeping the composition interesting, and still keeping this faith to the image I have in my head is very difficult. You have to be very good at all this stuff to avoid making compromises somewhere.

I did a BUTT-TON OF WORK sorting this pose out. Of course, the final could always be pushed further: I wouldn’t mind more of a spring across Mitzi’s back and shoulders to indicate excitement, but I am happy with the tension in Antonia’s shoulder and the clear slumping-against-the-wall I needed. Below are thumbnails, then I took some reference photos of myself slumping against a wall in a few different ways, then came back to the thumbnails. Then took it digital where I could fine-tune and push shapes.

Unluckily for you, I HAVE written this scene, so below is an excerpt. (Still in draft form – needs a few sexy world building notes and asides.) Enjoy!

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“Antonia!”

Antonia jumped at the sudden speech.

“Do you have your gloves on you?”

Antonia patted her pack, indicating that she did.

Mitzi looked closely through the glass walls, examining the baths. A bath had been constructed over a fire pit in the corner of the room, so that the water might be heated when the fire was lit. Above this, the ceiling broke into a lattice to let smoke out.

Excitedly, Mitzi pointed.

“You see those holes in the ceiling over there?

What if you made your glove float in from the ceiling, and open the door from the inside? Just like you made them float at the piano, when you were singing at the bar.”

Antonia’s eyebrows shot up. She rummaged and took out one of her gloves. As if to test that she still could, she let go of the glove, and it stayed suspended in mid-air. Mitzi was delighted. Antonia made it do a little wave and Mitzi smiled even more widely. Finally, Antonia began to feel her spirits lift.

“You say that you know a little magic,” she said, “so you must know that magic requires energy from your body. I’m familiar with all this, but I’m not sure I can make the glove travel so far away from myself with so little practice. It will take all my concentration.”

“Are you asking me to shut up?” Mitzi grinned.

“Now that you say it…”

Antonia and Mitzi crept around the building until they were at the closest point to the openings. Taking a deep breath, Antonia flicked her hand and sent the glove upward.

Mitzi gazed at Antonia’s hands.

“I just love it when your hands glow.”

As she spoke, the glowing stopped and Mitzi watched Antonia catch the glove as it fell with a little thwip.

“What did I say about talking?”

“Whoops. Sorry.”

Antonia was sweating, and her brow was furrowed. The last thing she wanted to do was lose her precious glove on the ceiling: if she lost control of it once it left her line of sight, she wouldn’t be able to get it back.

The glove disappeared over the edge of the building. Both girls held their breaths.

Antonia spent a few seconds in deep concentration, staring at the holes. When she could hold on for no longer, she shook her hand in frustration, slumping against the wall.

“Antonia.” Mitzi knelt down to check on her, but a disturbance in the light caused her head to snap back to the baths.

“Antonia!”

The excitement in Mitzi’s voice led Antonia to follow her gaze. At the last moment, the glove must have dropped over the edge – and now fell lightly into the bathhouse, landing on dark rocks next to the pool.

The success hardened Antonia’s resolve. Still exhausted, she crawled alongside the building until she was between the glove and the door. Now she could see it again through the glass, the spell was slightly simpler to cast, but still difficult. With immense effort, she moved the glove to the door, pulled the handle, and – click!

“It worked!! Antonia, it worked!” Mitzi held Antonia’s hands triumphantly. “That was incredible.”

Antonia was breathing heavily, still on the floor.

“If I had to smell you like this for one more day, I don’t think I would have made it much past Cerric.”

Mitzi snorted, pulling Antonia back to her feet.

“No, but I’m serious.” Antonia let herself be led into the building quietly. “We are finding you some soap in there.”

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I can see my art tending towards slightly coloured monochrome recently – and this is because when I’m creating a whole scene, to fully colour it too would turn it from a practice illustration into a whole project.

I’m pleased with this one! I drew it before I wrote about it, and I’ve written and drawn for it since, and this delightful building-on-top-of creates a clearer and more lifelike scene of the bath houses every new iteration. Inspiration drawn from some childhood swimming pools I remember, two headspace sleepcasts – namely Blue Hammam and the stone night swimming pool one. Hot tubs, cotswold stone, ancient Grecian academies with pillars. I think I subconsciously thought of the Empress Suite at work too. And several more things I’m sure are underneath the surface.

The lighting was a fab challenge. I vividly see the angle of the moonlight coming in through glass and cutting the room up sharply. It was a good chance to put Mitzi against some dark trees and create a lovely tonal key. This is especially important because she’s so filthy right from the start of our story, and this is Antonia’s first time seeing her clean – and she realises that she really does look like a princess. Soppy!!! soppy!!!!!

Antonia as a bigger challenge. For plot purposes, she chooses to undress and bathe in the furthest bath from the light, where it’s almost pitch dark. I couldn’t draw this, because her expression was key to reading the image, so I’ve lit it functionally a bit like they have to light night scenes in films. Her tonal contrast to the background is purposefully less intense, but so she doesn’t get completely lost, I’ve let the moonlight catch her hair in a reverse silhouette.

Playing with textures, painting, rendering. Balancing time against detail, economising to hit the point on the graph for best effect in the best time.

Haven’t written this bit yet so you’re spared an excerpt.

Brace for critique.

A big success. A good angle, helped considerably by four or five messy ink thumbnails in my sketchbook. You should really see them. You’re going to have to trust me that … oh, for god’s sake, hang on.

honestly, I do so much work, and then I do even more documenting it. But I’m going to bother getting up and taking a photo of these thumbnails and you’re going to take my word for it that my absolutely gorgeous and sexy creative process operates just like this for all my work.

Here, you can see in the bottom right of this spread and top left of the next spread I figured out Antonia’s pose as she speaks to Whackus Bonkus. Key points I needed to showcase were hand casting light (for interesting lighting point), sword on lap. This meant slightly top down perspective to showcase the sword best. Toyed with an over the shoulder shot but I preferred the frontal shot. Makes you feel like you’re watching her more intimately.

In the first spread you see notes for the comic and piece of writing I created before (see this post).

In the second spread you see some thumbnails for a more complicated scene, where I try and capture the bath houses of Cerric. I’ll try to remember to ATTACH it when I make that visual diary post, because I completed the illustration this morning.

Important that you see evidence of the way my creative process takes shape in these notes and thumbnails.

Oh, and I almost forgot. You get to read a snapshot of my writing, you lucky, lucky thing.

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“So… You’re Whackus Bonkus?”

There was no-one in sight as Antonia spoke, and on first glance you might be forgiven for thinking she was insane. As she looked down, it became clear that she was addressing the huge, ornate sword laid across her lap.

“Mitzi named you that, didn’t she? I haven’t known her very long, but it sounds like something only she would do to an ancient, magical heirloom. Do you like it, or is it torture every time she says it?”

Antonia was sitting on a tree stump in a little wooded area about five minutes’ walk from Cerric. Cerric was a town – mercifully larger than Plinton – that was known for its Spas and Baths. Set low on an ancient mountain, water flowing through there was fresh and clean, having fallen only a mile or so upstream in the hills. People travelled to Cerric to “take fresh air”, but Antonia suspected it was mostly a marketing thing, and had little basis in geographical or medical knowledge.

It was night time, and the woods were incredibly dark. Occasionally, Antonia would cast a small light-spell in her hand and check her belongings, but she tried to restrict this to avoid drawing any attention to herself.

Looking down, she allowed herself a tiny magical light between her fingers as she admired the otherworldly blue-green of Whackus’ metal blade. Although it had been dangerous, she had to admit that getting the sword repaired in Loreel had been a good idea: it had always looked scary, but now it looked formidable.

“I bet you had other names before Whackus Bonkus. Probably slightly more noble ones.”

The sword did not respond: only Mitzi could hear it speaking. Antonia had to assume that Mitzi wasn’t pulling some elaborate prank. Otherwise, she was just talking to herself, but this was far from unheard of.

“Mitzi has named herself as well. Mitzi Harper. Do you call her Lyra Casseopeia, or do you call her Mitzi? I don’t suppose many people would call her Mitzi. They would probably think the Princess picking a name for herself would be a bit of a folly.”

Antonia looked into the distance as she talked; she was speaking more to herself than to the sword.

“… I picked a name for myself, too. When I was nine. Although, my name before that was Antonio, so I wasn’t particularly creative with it.”

Whackus Bonkus listened patiently, which he seemed to be very good at doing.

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