Alright, so maybe “catastrophe” is an exaggeration. “Experiment gone terribly wrong.” That’s better.
Above is the raw inking portion without any pencil shading. I feel it looks worse in this form…
Also I guess I did technically get some practice by adding some more ink to Chapter 5’s header. The result is below. Even after one botched page and one ruined header, there’s actually still a lot from both that I enjoy and I want to find a more appropriate way to weave more inking into MitM.
But seriously, I was really serious about testing out some new stuff artistically with my style in this chapter. Expect to see some stuff that will never show up again in MitM, and some terrible face-palm moments. However, I hope to finish Chapter 5 a better artist (here’s hoping!).
For today’s atrocious experiment, I present to you: Ink Shading!
Not only did I dive into this blindly with no idea what I was gonna do, but I didn’t actually figure out how I wanted to do it till like halfway through the page. Looking over the finished product, it’s not…terrible. I do like the idea of some solid black shapes using ink, and some subtle ink shading. Also I think if I get a better hang of inking like this, I could do some cool dark scenes. Until then it’ll just kinda look all awkward……like this page…
So after the first LP Monday being about a record that has so much nostalgia for me, let’s dive into some uncharted territory.
Chewing Pine (1975) by Leo Kottke. Amusingly released the exact same year as An Evening with John Denver. I had never heard of Kottke, well not until I picked up one of his albums at a record store last week. I literally knew nothing about this guy or what his music sounded like (other than he was an acoustic guitar player) prior to throwing him on the turntable. When I saw it in the store for 50 cents it caused me to pause and give it another look. Maybe it was something about the cover design that caught my designer’s attention, or the fact that I enjoy just the sound of the guitar, or that I had no knowledge of this guy, or that I generally enjoy the music from the 70s, or maybe it was just the cheap price tag. Whatever the case was, Leo Kottke wiggled his way into my vinyl collection and I’m rather pleased I didn’t overlook Chewing Pine.
Not having a lot of experience with Kottke, there ain’t a lot more I can mention here about him. I found out that the guitar wasn’t his first instrument, and he is known for a rather unique picking style. He often played on a 12-string guitar and probably his most famous song, Vaseline Machine Gun, was from his debut album.
Side note: I’ll try to keep LP Mondays to just two songs from each album (give or take a few exceptions).
Honestly considering another day to update rather than Thursday…
Expect some interesting changes to come this chapter. Obviously already spicing things up with some ink shaded segments on this cover page, but I want to push myself extensively with this chapter. Kinda like how I pushed myself with chapter 2, but 5 won’t drag out as long (thank goodness!)
The Music is You
&
Farewell Andromeda (Welcome to My Morning)
So I thought long and hard about what LP to choose from my collection to put up here for the first Monday LP. I wanted it to be special and memorable. While I did think very seriously about it for the past week, I knew pretty early it was going to be a John Denver album though.
An Evening with John Denver (1975), John Denver’s first live album recorded in University City, California. Denver was at the height of his musical career in the 70s. While often heavily criticized by music critics for being a lightweight, his music is still fairly popular all across the world. One of my favorite quotes from him came from a interview with Rolling Stone Magazine:
“All right, I’m not Bob Dylan. I don’t write songs like that. But I think 25 years from now people will be singing my songs even if they don’t remember who wrote them. Can you remember that Duke Ellington wrote ‘Mood Indigo’?”
So why is this album important to me. Well, this is the vinyl I remember be told at a very young age how to use a record player. I remember slowly lowering the needle to hear this beginning quite vividly. My surprise at being told I could flip the record over and hear something different was only surpassed by me discovering there was a second LP in its case (since it was a four-sided album). So yeah, lots of memories with this one. That actual vinyl I listened to is still back at my parents’ home, but this is just another copy I bought for myself somewhere along the line.
Trying to get everything MitM transferred over to this site right now.
I just got done reposting all of my author’s comments on all the pages from Chapter 1 and I plan to tackle the rest in stages. Also getting the first entry in Monday LPs finalized and ready for tomorrow.
As for even more exciting news, I plan to finish the Chapter 5 header for this Thursday. I want to make it out to be something of a Thanksgiving gift to the few readers who have been bearing with me over this break ^^
Whoo!! The website is live, the blog is up and running, and there are only a few bugs/unfinished segments left! (yeah, please ignore the cast segment on the main site for now…)
This has been a long process and I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. Anyways hang in there everybody, Mutt in the Middle is almost completely back 😀
That’s it. The end. No more. One hundred and ten pages is a good stopping point 😛
…Well, at least for a chapter. Next chapter (Chapter 5!) will bring us back to Dayton and his adventures. But, sadly we are all gonna have to wait longer than just another week to find out what the next part of MitM brings to the story.
I will be briefly putting Mutt in the Middle on hold. Why? There are several reasons that factor into my decision, but the biggest for me is the MitM website. It is in DESPERATE need of updating. While the front end is……feasible…the back end is currently a mess and needs reworking. Fittingly the domain name for my website is set to expire next week (which I will renew), so it’s like a perfect reminder/sign to get some work done on the site.
I will sorely miss working on MitM weekly, so I may get restless with the website rework and start chapter 5 before the website is finished ^^;
Not a huge fan of this page honestly. Had some missteps here and there while inking and I didn’t really do anything special with the panels. I had some trouble making a few of the characters on this page look right too, but i guess we all have our bad days…
The middle three word bubbles I rewrote several times. I really wanted them to capture my thoughts on the topic of blindness, while also be relatable to other situations. Whenever I think about things like this I always remind myself that life’s simple qualities truly are gifts and we should never take them for granted.
Also I guess I should say something about how this page is important for revealing that Joel is blind, but I don’t really know what else to say…
