Kailyn Kent

Preview: Portrait of A Lady

2010-06-09T15:30:00.000-07:00

All five almost-done pages of a short comic I made this April. They still need a little cleaning.

Gospel Gossip w/ Red Pens, 9/25/09

2009-10-18T22:37:00.000-07:00

It only occured to me after making this poster that the bears bare resemblance to Winnie the Pooh. Or could be thought to. This was one of those lovely posters where its image occurs in the morning, its execution late at night.
Like all the rest, Prisma color markers and pencils.
Gospel Gossip is Carleton's most beloved and successful homegrown band, as I guess Tapes n Tapes has gone a little prodigal. Their new stuff is getting a lot of radioplay around here.

James Pants at The Cave, 10/16/09

2009-10-18T22:21:00.001-07:00

Peanut Butter Wolf came to Carleton's Cave in the spring of 2008, and essentially introduced me to hip-hop. It was mindblowing to have another member of Stones Throw, the talented and truly nice James Pants, come out and dispel midterm tension.
I made this poster on the fly, after a miscommunication with my promotions staff. I think I'll go and clean up the floor with pencil (the marker strokes are very haphazard,) and maybe add some woodgrain into it. I had a lot of fun with the toucan beak and the robin's belly, but not so much with what happened to the toucan himself. It was an interesting reconciliation between the different things I wanted to try, with glowing wings and an actual toucan, and ended up much more in a Toucan Sam/ Krishna deal. Eh... at least the markings make it look a little less like a vulture. I like the poster a lot though: I stare at it a lot, and make up stories for the birds.

Bobby Conn and Moncia Bou Bou with D. Rider, 5/9/09 for The Cave

2009-05-08T11:28:00.000-07:00

5/9/09 I created this poster kind of last minute for one of the last shows of the year, featuring Bobby Conn and Monica Bou Bou with D. Rider at the Cave. I love this concept, and I'm going to explore it further. I'm not sure how ineffective it'd be to use on future posters.

http://www.myspace.com/bobbyconn
http://www.myspace.com/dridermusic
https://apps.carleton.edu/student/orgs/cave/

Little Owls

2009-04-17T11:25:00.000-07:00

My field drawing class spent a day drawing stuffed birds. I went back later and drew two little owls. I started with a gesture using vine charcoal, and I loved the wildness of strokes making up the back and ruff of the right most owl. I eventually brushed away the gesture on both and superimposed a contour drawing on the charcoal. I never quite got the face of that little right one, but I thin they both came out with a lot of personality. I really like this piece.

Oak in the Arb

2009-04-17T11:20:00.000-07:00

This was a gesture hatch drawing I turned in for homework in mid April. I think I really botched parts of it, like the first upright trunk from the left. The lighting changed as the afternoon wore on, and I kept on making things darker. I missed out on some of the beautiful instances of lighting I had, instead moving the shadows around. I won't do that in the future, and I'll also be more careful about the width of the smaller branches.

Friday 4/17 at the Cave

2009-04-17T11:05:00.000-07:00

This was the second poster I made. The 4/17 show, featuring Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin and Now, Now Every Children, was unfortunately booked the same day as Carleton's Battle of the Bands. We were a little late in getting out word about our show, so we flooded the campus with posters (I made two, and another poster child made a wonderful screen print as well.)
I really wanted to make sure that I gave Now, Now Every Children equal billing on this one, as I shafted them on the other poster (which I had made the day before, and hadn't received any information on an opening act.) I also wanted to give people a lot of information on when the shows would start, so they could plan going between the two big shows, but to stress the ishness-- I hope that nullified the, "ope, its 10:40, we're too late for the show" problem. Finally, the Cave is a basement, and its a beautiful, rare Friday night in Minnesota, so I wanted to make a poster that would integrate a summery attitude with an indoor location.
People haven't liked this one as much. I wonder what outlines would have done with it. I think I might color posters like this in the future, and add the black lines last, to avoid the muddiness on the other poster's original.

http://www.myspace.com/boris
http://www.myspace.com/nownoweverychildren
http://apps.carleton.edu/student/orgs/cave/

Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin, for the Cave

2009-04-17T10:56:00.000-07:00

This is the first poster I have made for the Cave where the printed poster improved upon the original. I did the ink with a brush this time, but I blacked out a few prisma color markers with the smear, which muddied the skin tones. I dislike the bottom informational portion, and I wonder if the poster would have looked better had I been more rigorous with the bars of the bed. (Yep, that's a bed. A lot of people think its a crib, and then when telling me about the poster remember baby rattles, but I was going for adolescent girl, not baby... good to know though.) The poster looks great up, and has attracted a lot of attention. I wish I could have stuck with the brush pen, but I wanted to make the figures darker, and I was afraid I wouldn't be able to recreate the line work. Because of this, some beautiful, gentle lines have been blocked out with a micron outlining. Hmm...
Great band, always a great show. We'll see how it goes tonight.

http://www.myspace.com/boris
http://www.myspace.com/nownoweverychildren

Page Five

2009-03-18T15:40:00.000-07:00

Final Ink:

Ink:

Pencil:

I'm very happy with my decision to hatch the background of many of the panels. I could have done more. I will fill in that hole in the third panel.
Original posted 1/31/09.

Page Forty

2009-03-17T19:52:00.002-07:00

Soon I'm going to post why I chose this project as my first. It had a lot to do with the first Greek myth that ever struck me, and that opened up my young female sexuality: the myth of Eurynome.

Page Thirty Nine

2009-03-17T19:52:00.001-07:00

Final Ink:

Pencil:

Page Thirty Eight

2009-03-17T19:51:00.000-07:00

And it was drawing this page that I really understood I loved the project I'm working on.

Page Thirty Seven

2009-03-17T19:50:00.002-07:00

Final Ink:

Pencil:

Page Thirty Six

2009-03-17T19:50:00.001-07:00

Page Thirty Five

2009-03-17T19:49:00.002-07:00

Final Page:

Pencil:

Page Thirty Four

2009-03-17T19:49:00.001-07:00

Final Page:

Pencil:

Page Thirty Three

2009-03-17T19:47:00.001-07:00

Final Ink:

Pencil:

I have taken a break in my celebration of St. Patrick's day to put some pages up, since I said I'd do it. Its by far the most amusing upload I've ever done, and most surreal-- the Nickelodeon floor at 10:30 at night is, of course, mostly deserted. I'm interested in who's still here.

Later note: It's the day before my boyfriend's graduation, which we flew in for, but his flight has been delayed and canceled continuously for the last 24 hours. Having nothing to do, I've been uploading images for awhile in the school library, and this is by far the most depressing upload I've ever done, and a little surreal. The library near graduation is similarly deserted, and full of a lot of parents checking their email.

My love of comics: on performance

2009-03-17T12:33:00.000-07:00

I love comics. Like theater, film, and dance, comics are a performative art. I didn't understand this until this past winter, and I wasn't really convinced of why I drew comics. I would tell people I both drew and wrote, and so it was natural to combine them. This never explained why it was necessary to combine them, especially in regards to what I wanted to evoke. I wondered if stories lost a lot in the pictures, especially where the rhythm of the description doesn't appear, or isn't allowed to overwhelm the reader, or is read like a campy voice over. I knew there was a way to combine words and visuals perfectly, but I didn't think that they were any more affective than words or pictures can be alone.
I don't think they are, but the question isn't about 'more' for me, that the combination must be stronger or weaker than the isolated parts. Comics are literary, you read them, and you own a comic book in the way you own a book, but not a dvd. But the lyricism and power, or the potential for a comic to be lyrical or powerful, lies heavily in the performances of the characters. We can direct and act the most remarkable of performances, and package it in a form that will leave the reader stunned, rectified, wishing for connection, but left with a physical key to the event-- the book. They tuck it in their jacket close to their body, and take it with them to each apartment, and flip back through it and remember the pages in brief, reread at any time. This connection with the book makes comics strong already. I wish I wrote in the margins more of my comics, and I think I'll start doing it to see what it feels like.
I wonder what it would be like to make a comic book like an ocean, where the images or words are like a tide, eventually flooding everything, and eventually falling away. I want to make a comic where the script is everything, and compose the pictures of this script, repeating, like Micheal Waugh's work for his exhibit The More I See of Men, which was shown in a gallery I live close to in New York. There are so many ways in which a comic can be strong, in the way of a book, or in the way of a film, or theatre, and in any combination. I think Alan Moore is right: comics can portray things other forms cannot (but they have their own advantages over comics too.) And I think comics can be powerful in the way that dreams are powerful. But I think a lot more can be done in terms of performances, that comic book characters have fallen into behavioral ruts. These can be entertaining characterizations, the way creators write puns during battle sequences, their reservation in showing real fear and loss. A related evil plagues children's television, where characters don't laugh at anything funny, but just in order to close the episode, like a bonding experience. Comics don't have to be realistic, and many people already prefer them they are. Yet I want to capture the behaviors and transformations and passions that truly move me, not for the sake of realism, but for the sake of what I value as a creator and consumer. I want to make performances that lock themselves in the readers' memory. And so this is a big part of why I comic, and what I hope to get better at it throughout my career.

Page Thirteen

2009-03-11T15:38:00.000-07:00

Final Inked Page:

Penciled Page:
This will look better when I have made the borders definite with a ruler.

Page Thirty Two

2009-03-10T08:34:00.000-07:00

Final Ink:

Pencil:

I wonder if it should match page 33 more in color scheme, as they'd be facing pages.

Page Thirty One

2009-03-10T08:31:00.000-07:00

Final Ink:

Pencil:

So I'm starting to put copyright things on my pages. Sometimes I'll put them on the bottom, and sometimes between panels. This wasn't really inspired by anything except that I used to do it with webcomics, and I've been told its a good habit. So that is why it looks like I'm paranoid all of a sudden. More recent note: Agh! A bad habit from safe Northfield MN, but I've forgotten to put them on. That will be one big Saturday morning project.

Page Thirty

2009-03-10T08:20:00.000-07:00

Final Ink:

Pencil:

There are a lot of little comments on this page. When I was penciling it, I felt strongly that the dialogue wouldn't flow as it does, so I'll look at it again, and figure out what would work instead. I'm tempted to include the rough draft page at some point too. Upon inking it, I'm deliberating whether or not to darken the windows like I've done in page 31 (or alternatively to digitally erase the darkening on the following page.)

Page Twenty Nine

2009-03-10T08:13:00.000-07:00

Final Page:

Pencil:

Page Twenty Eight

2009-03-10T08:06:00.000-07:00

Final Ink:

Pencil:

Over the next few pages, I'm working out what kind of lettering I want to work with, and if I want to hand letter it at all. I love working with a hard copy, so I'm drawn to doing it manually. Later note: I did, but I was sort of an impatient dunce about it. I went ahead without practicing very rigorously-- as a result, my current projects have a natural, and somewhat more consistent feel, but this project, being the trial-run, looks a little shifty.

Page Twenty Seven

2009-03-09T12:23:00.000-07:00

Final Ink:

Pencil:

yeah, her nose is smudgy. I am going to digitally fix it, but I don't show the digitally fixed images on this blog.

The Beast of Burden

2009-02-09T12:23:00.002-08:00

This is the most recent sketch of 'The Beast of Burden,' an elephantine creature I designed for a comic book series that I am conceptualizing. I created this one for a business card, and there are more scattered around that I will upload. Generally, they hang their heads a little lower.
In the comic, all of the animals are made in the image of human beings, or that is at least how it appears to the former.

Page Twenty Five

2009-02-09T12:21:00.000-08:00

Final Ink:

Pencil:

I had issues with the lilies. I began to do real field drawing after inking this, and it has convinced me to do future depictions of plants plein air, or with better reference.

Page Twenty Six

2009-02-09T12:20:00.000-08:00

Final Ink:

Pencil:

Page Twenty Four

2009-02-06T18:44:00.000-08:00

Final Ink:

Pencil:

Overall, I think Eurynome (the main character) comes off as unnecessarily moody, but because of the position she is in, I'm going to have to decide whether it is appropriate. I will probably work through the pencils again before inking. Later note: nope, I didn't. I think its ok. This was the first page I used a brush on. As a thumbnail, it looks even more intimidating.

Page Twenty Three

2009-02-06T18:38:00.000-08:00

Final Ink:

Pencil:

I am very unhappy with the hand.

This ended up as a sort of experimental page as well-- the panel of her entering going into library initially didn't turn out well, so I tried it again with a gesture hatch. People seem to find it very striking, but I wonder about how it sticks out.

Page Twenty Two

2009-02-06T07:36:00.000-08:00

Final Ink:

Pencil:

Inspired by the work with images I've been doing here at Nickelodeon, I upped the resolution, and this has affected the page size. Also, the leaky pen on page 21 convinced me that I could deal with smudgy brushes-- this is one of the first pages I did experimenting with a brush. Using a brush on the foreground figures really brought the project back to its roots-- I designed Poison People to be a "short" project designed to get me back into comics. However, I wonder if it seems a lot more amateur now-- maybe the brush just makes my naivete more transparent.

Page Twenty One

2009-02-01T13:36:00.000-08:00

Final Ink:

Pencil:

AHH! My pen broke while I was doing this. I first messed up the mouth of the dream-guy, making him look incredibly creepy. And then it went all over her hair. I'm not sure what I'm going to do, because I really wanted to use Photoshop very uninvasively, fixing things where white out fails and correcting those slips of line you see from place to place. This would be a little more intense. I'll just have to see. Also, more incentive to move to a brush, which will have its own issues I'm sure.

Page Twenty

2009-02-01T13:33:00.000-08:00

Final Ink:

Pencil:

Page Nineteen

2009-02-01T13:29:00.000-08:00

Final Ink:

Pencil:

Page Eighteen

2009-02-01T13:26:00.000-08:00

Final Ink:

Pencil:

Page Seventeen

2009-02-01T13:18:00.000-08:00

Final Ink:

Pencil:

Page Sixteen

2009-02-01T13:14:00.000-08:00

Ink:

Pencil:

I'm going to have to make a call about the text, because it just isn't up to snuff.

Page Fifteen

2009-02-01T13:07:00.000-08:00

Ink:

Pencil:

The simplicity of this post astounds me. But I guess most of them will look this way from now on.

Page Fourteen

2009-01-31T16:54:00.000-08:00

Final Inked Page:

Penciled Page:

Page Twelve

2009-01-31T16:47:00.000-08:00

Final, Final Ink:

Final Ink:

Pencil:

This is one of the pages that I would redo with a lot of hatching if I knew I wasn't going to color it. I've decided that I'm going to put these halfway pages online, and then hopefully find a way to print them back onto Bristol board to do a more sophisticated ink. Or, I could just give up having a physical copy that is between the color and black & white. Am I even going to want to color this? We'll see.

Page Eleven

2009-01-31T16:33:00.000-08:00

Final Ink:

Preliminary Ink:

Final Pencil Version:

Initial Pencil Version:

Lots of pictures.

Page Ten

2009-01-31T16:31:00.000-08:00

Final Ink:

Preliminary Ink:

Pencil:

While erasing the final pencil lines of page ten, I learned that one can successfully erase chocolate. There's a line going through the word bubble-- I'll fix that, and obviously not with whiteout.

Old caption:The inked page has a lot of white out on it, which I used to try and preserve the ability to color the original (call me crazy) as I did with the posters. I will also play around with digital coloring, and will fix up the image both physically and on the computer.

Page Nine

2009-01-31T16:29:00.000-08:00

"Final" Ink:

Preliminary Ink:

Pencil:

The inkwork is really unclean, as there is a lot of pencil left. Some parts, including the frames, I do at the same time I ink the text bubbles, right before coloring. Where I have erased, some of the ink work is bleached out, which I will also correct.

"Final" in quotation marks, as there are many errors on this page, and I really don't want to fix all of them digitally. For one, my experiment with a french curve went a little awray on the oval frame.

Page Eight

2009-01-31T16:17:00.000-08:00

Final Ink:

Ink:

Pencil:

I'm really unsure of how heavy the borders came out. I really would like to color it to get that element of sunlight back.

Page Seven

2009-01-31T16:11:00.000-08:00

Final Ink:

Ink:

Pencil:

I am debating what I am going to do about the eyes if I don't color this comic. She has darker hazel eyes, so I don't want to give the impression that they are blue. I might hatch them, but they are so striking as they are.

Page Six

2009-01-31T15:45:00.000-08:00

Final Ink:

Preliminary Ink:

Pencil:

Unfortunately this page is really muddy with unerasable graphite. I had to rework it many times, and did it originally with a forceful mechanical pencil. Lesson learned. I reworked the dialogue here- I will include the older version later, in this entry. I am torn. I think I like her articulation of her breakdown here, but I'm not sure if the reader is as clear that we are in a Beauty and the Beast situation.

Page Four

2009-01-31T15:34:00.000-08:00

Final Inked Page:
Inked Page:
Penciled Page:
One major problem with micron pens is that the ink grays out when you erase the pencil under it. That's why I touch up the ink with a second layer after I erase my guidelines. I don't think I've touched up the comic a considerable amount between the first ink and the final ink, and that's why I'm confused. I'm drawn to the lighter quality of the inked pages as opposed to the final inked pages, although I'm a big fan of the latters' boldness. Alternatively, it could have something to do with different scanner settings.

Page Three

2009-01-31T15:16:00.000-08:00

Final Inked Page:
Inked Page:

Penciled Page:

Page Two

2009-01-30T20:33:00.000-08:00

Final Inked Page:
Inked Page:
Penciled Page:
Yeah, seeing those permanent penciled lines makes me very motivated to use a blue pencil next time.

Page One

2009-01-30T20:11:00.000-08:00

Final Inked Page:
Inked Page:
Penciled Page:

I did this comic using HB pencil and micron meditatively. I'm not going to do it again, and will probably use a blue pencil and a brush for the second installment. I made the choice because it was my bridge back into comics, and I wanted to make the intense amount of time spent to be simple and intuitive. I'm glad I did this, but it created some lines that just can't be erased off the originals, and my inked line work could be better. However, I am very happy with the final ink. (I keep a version with some penciling still on it for shadows and shafts of light I don't want to forget. That's the middle ink.)

Poster: Chris Koza, for The Cave, 11/15/08

2009-01-30T19:36:00.000-08:00

11/15/08. I was unhappy with how I penciled the trees underneath the branches, so I tried to manipulate it in photoshop, and I think I did a brusque job of it. So, it's a work in progress. I want to work more with this way of drawing trees. This poster was done for the Chris Koza show, where Aaron Kaufman, Ben Mirin, and Hannah Button-Harrison (such a wonderful name for a folk singer,) opened.

Poster: Gretchen Presents..., The Cave, 11/14/08

2009-01-29T18:16:00.000-08:00

11/14/08 I drew the poster without a definite idea of where I was going with it, in contrast with other posters. I ended up with a migration of geese. The poster was created for Gretchen Presents:, a night of music featuring Mayda, Anthony Newes, and A Sunken Ship Irony.

Poster: Local Fest, The Cave, 11/01/08

2009-01-29T17:51:00.000-08:00

11/01/08. The image is a little dark, but I like it that way. I was interested in this idea of embroidered ripples, and Scandinavian embroidery influenced my circles. Since The Cave and the college radio station KRLX (get it, Carl-10?) partnered to hold Local Fest, I wanted a theme that would utilize the waves in KRLX's logo. My big regret is that I didn't track down items with circumferences large enough to draw the outer circles, which was a big mistake. The building in the center is The Cave, which is located in the basement of Evans Hall.

Poster: Pit er Pat, The Cave, 10/11/08

2009-01-29T17:10:00.000-08:00

10/11/08. UNFINISHED. I conceptualized the image of this poster, in profile, and I am estatic about how it really turned out. I realize that the pencil on the neck of the girl make it look fuzzy, and that its not clear that that is the line of the cup peeking out of her shirt, not really fuzzy line work. Also, the ink got a little faded when I used an eraser before coloring, so there are bits and pieces which need correcting. I am very happy with the work overall. The poster was done for the Pit er Pat and One for the Team show at The Cave. Oh, and the boy in this poster was intentionally the same one from the Acoustic Night poster. I'm not sure whether I want to continue doing this in the future with posters, but I thought it worked harmoniously with the atmosphere of my college.

Poster: Casiotone for the Painfully Alone & Ill Ease, The Cave, 10-10-08

2009-01-25T16:57:00.000-08:00

This was another image I had been thinking about for awhile, and thought it would make an appropriate poster for the October 10th show.

http://www.cftpa.org/
http://www.illease.com/
http://apps.carleton.edu/student/orgs/cave/calendar/

Poster: Acoustic Night, The Cave, 10-04-08

2009-01-25T15:29:00.001-08:00

I had the image of a raccoon dancing on its tail floating around my head for awhile. I built a poster around it for Carleton College's termly Acoustic Night, held at The Cave and hosted by Aaron Kaufman of '09.

http://apps.carleton.edu/student/orgs/cave/
http://aaronkaufmanmusic.com/bio.html

Poster: Cataldo and Caroline Smith + The Good Night Sleeps, The Cave, 10-03-08

2009-01-25T15:00:00.000-08:00

This is the most last-minute poster I have ever done. I drew the pictures of Caroline Smith and Eric Anderson minutes before class, and had my friend write the words and run it off to the printers before they closed.

Poster: Mark Mallman, The Cave, 09-06-08

2009-01-25T14:41:00.000-08:00

Poster made for the Mark Mallman show at The Cave, (Carleton College,) September 26th, 2008.