Kind of a big leap! I put in a lot of work and got it all finished! Here's the final piece.
Really pleased with how it turned out! I especially love all the little details I was able to capture on the smiling figure. The veins, protrusion of his bones, chapped/salivating lips all turned out really well! I think as a whole the piece is about as disturbing as I wanted it to be. That said, I think the 3rd panel is probably the weakest, it just doesn't have as much impact. Not sure what I'd change around next time other than investing more time in my under drawings and trying to find a really impactful image for each panel.
I used charcoal in the second panel to mimic the texture of the cast iron pan I used in some of my reference photos, largely because I wasn't sure how to capture the texture with how I draw in pen. My style is pretty obviously reliant on hatching for value and texture, but it has its limitations, mostly because of my lack of practice. The most glaring issue, in my opinion at least, is how everything can tend to get muddled together if I go overboard in trying to capture an exact value or texture. And everything feels kinda same-y if I'm not careful. That said, I think everything here is distinct enough to be clear from image to image. The upper portion of the face in particular took a long time to separate the nose from its shadow from the upper lip, but I think the end result looks good. I think in my next comic I want to resolve the background better though. Here I opted for just a black fill-in with some light being brought into the top 2 images, but I think an actual background with a setting and minute details could really elevate the piece. That said, doing so would've made this take another 4 weeks, and I don't have that amount of time.
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