PJ Holden has been extremely helpful. Just as I had given up hope of ever getting my foot in the door of comics PJ comes along and shows me a glimmer of light. Let me explain, a little wile ago I started posting some colouring I was doing as a last ditched attempt to claw my way into the medium and gain some credibility. I posted the first few pages about hear and there and it went largely unnoticed except on the pencil monkey forum run by none other then PJ Holden himself. Pencil monkey is a message board I would recommend to any small press or independent comics creator or any one interested in becoming involved in comics, it’s the best board for the UK small press scene.
One of the main reasons it’s so hard to break into comics is it’s tricky to know what’s expected of you. sure you can buy ‘how to’ books and you can watch tutorials on line (some of witch are quite interesting) but the insight you get is normally into how a particular artist works, not how the creative industry operates. Working with a seasoned professional is giving me an insight into what is expected and hopefully that will translate into credibility if I can scare up some work (and that’s another thing PJ has been helping with placing a link to me on his blog and making sure I know what ground to put my ear too). Also as an unexpected bonus PJ has asked me to colour a Strip for him written by Leah Moore and John Reppion and published by an independent American publisher. It’s all exciting stuff.
I mentioned before that I had never really thought of myself as a colourist and in these days of studio produced anonymous colouring that’s still true but there are plenty of artist, really good artist that colour other peoples work, Peter Doherty, d’Israeli and John Higgins either are colouring or have coloured other peoples work and 2000ad’s regular colourist are for the most part distinctive and high quality. It’s amazing the difference colouring can make to the artwork, it can compliment it or it can crap all over it and it’s amazing how little respect it gets. Veteran artist Ian Gibbson Had a bit of a rant about the faceless bland colouring we normally see in American comics and he’s right, how could anything produced by a studio on a production line ever have an artist touch or a distinctive feel? All the top comics look like they have been inked not just on computer but by a computer and the same computer at that. The differences between the artist are lost as the colour pulls everything together pushing out the nuances and making it look the same as everything else. Far from thinking that the colourist is unimportant I think it’s time for there importance to be recognised, I think it’s time for a colourist come back.
