 So, there's somebody mowing and stuff and I know I say this in every video but maybe you're new to this video but these vlogs are very casual so I'm not really controlling having the window open and the noises being made outside and stuff because I just want to kind of get on with my work and not have to worry about that but explain my work to you guys. So, if you're new here, hi I'm Steph, I'm the Average Artist, you've probably seen some of my videos by now hopefully and I do all sorts of different stuff but at the moment I'm working on a horror comic. If you haven't seen those videos previously, what we do is we grab a drink and we just chat about my work and you leave comments about your work and it's all very exciting. And the process so far is that I'm sort of on final pencils but if you haven't seen up to this point and you like to have something almost you draw and just chill listening to me talk whatever then go check this out, I'll leave a playlist up here probably. Hey guys, usually it's Monday morning I'd be working on my horror comic but today I thought I should address the fact that I put my patron on hold for a month so I could work on my horror comic but then I realised that that's a bit silly why don't I change the rewards up so that I can work on things as they come, you know different comics and different projects and kind of just changing my rewards to be less specific to the slice of life of comic because I felt although I love doing that, doing it indefinitely is probably not the best plan. I just ran out of steam a little bit on it and ideas became a bit drier and obviously I will revisit doing those comics it's just that I want to work on other stuff at the same time, my plan was always to make more graphic novels more well this horror comic is a good step forward towards that more books more stories more just changing the tears up to be more about at early access to comics and art stuff that I do like blog stuff and then all commissions and stuff like it's just all a bit of a process and I'm really worried to change it up because I've already got quite a few patrons so to change it up is quite scary because I think like maybe they might leave or I'm not sure so I'm just trying to figure it all out and so I'm just gonna do like little icons like this to go next to the tier rewards and then after this I'm gonna obviously work on my horror comic a bit more. Okay so I finished my patron stuff and it took all morning which is well not a shame because obviously I wanted to make it quite good but it just took a lot of time I did this last night and I'm absolutely appalled with it I was like what is this and then I tried to glue tracing paper down but I glued it down with this PVA glue and it just scrapped the whole page that's right scrapped and yeah so goodbye to that page I'm not using that now so it was probably quite nice to work on something a bit different these images for the reward tiers it was nice to get my brain away from the comic for a little bit but now it's time to get on with work. Experimenting with the tracing paper as I've always said that I wanted to do and it makes the lines kind of nice to work with but I think because of the pencil underneath it's kind of spreading the ink a lot more than I had hoped for. I think what I'm gonna do is just finish this page up with this style and then see how it looks like just complete a page and see if I like it and if I don't like it then I can find a different way to make it make the comic because I think I'm just I'm pretty I'm stuck on this stage I haven't moved forward for a while and obviously last week I had my friend visiting and stuff but also I think like I was putting it off because I felt stuck even though I've done all this work previously of the style you know I just feel like I would like that style more with the pencil and stuff so I feel really what do I want to do so instead of moving forward and trying different things out I just kind of paused and that's I guess it's a form of art block or just intimidation but I need to just back it up you know get on with it so we'll see how it goes and yeah I'm just gonna finish this page and I need to I realized I didn't pencil it all because I had an idea how I was gonna do it so I need to do finish that and get on with it you know just buck it up buck up my ideas as my dad would say buck up so yeah let's let's go I just glued this together using what's it called washi tape it's a paper with white paper so I can do my grunts underneath and yeah then I can just take this off if I don't like it but I mean it's gonna scan I'm gonna scan it digitally or anyway at the end so this is like quite a useful way to work on it okay I've been trying this out for a few hours and I just not sure if this is the right look now I'm psyching myself out because I just think it's kind of lost some of the charm that it had and I don't know I think I want to do the lines with that black pencil that I was talking about ages ago that gave me this kind of style and I think I prefer this to this a lot more do you see what I mean like the kind of character it has is changed and I think my favorite stuff that I've done is this kind of stuff with these colors and this pencils the pencil work so I think the tracing paper is just kind of led me down a path that I don't want to go down I'm still not sure so do you like all in white looking like that and I feel like she does not look the same do you know what I mean I put some color over her face here and I just don't like it and it was all in experiment and it's all gone wrong but this is the rough page and then this is the look that I wanted and it kind of looks very different I mean there's some things I like about this but I think I just went with a really really bad color scheme considering that all my color screen screams color schemes have been you know purples and blues that might be the downfall as well I really like this styles I don't know just a bit disappointed with the results of this one I'm gonna try it all again I think yeah gonna try this again and see see what happens I think that looks much nicer the learning quality I don't know what you guys think I think that looks way cooler so I'm gonna try with these guys and forget the tracing paper morning everybody I just updated my patreon page with some aspects of this process which I thought was quite exciting because I haven't done that in a while I know really liked sharing that stuff with people on my patreon and I did it all without any coffee I've just realized so I'm gonna eat a coffee and come right back okay and we're back so don't need this light box for what I'm planning to do this morning this is my you probably saw this yesterday but my crummy light box that has like one lamp working on this side and it's a bit broken down here and this lamp doesn't work and this lamp just it feels like an oven lamp it gets really hot so I'm like is this suppose is this the lamp that was supposed to use with this but it doesn't matter you know because we do what we can I'm just gonna get rid of this use my desk because this is horrible to work on as you can see yesterday I did a lot of work trying to figure out the style even though I know the style sort of I did a lot of processes in my sketchbook before of the style that I wanted and I was like yes this is definitely a style and I was excited about it and that was you know a plus I wanted that style and it was funny because I just I got sidetracked concepts were exciting me but then as I got down to it doing this tracing paper stuff with the inks and top and then I used pencils I think to be fair to this I used a very different color scheme than I had been planning all this time and it just turned me off I was just like no I can't do this this is gonna be awful it's gonna look terrible what have I done I don't know what I'm doing like you know standard everyday panic that we all have when working in creative field but then I just thought no you know what like go back to the beginning and try what you liked before which was this pencil which is just like this crappy pencil I found but it's very smooth and just a black pencil and I really like the line quality on this guy guy I always give pens and pencils genders doesn't make any sense at all and yeah so you can see the difference hopefully just looks nicer I think like the line quality everything I don't know I mean I don't mind this piece but it just didn't it didn't excite me I felt really all this is gonna be a struggle to finish where my whole mantra mantra mantra whatever has been to be excited by this project and find joy in what I'm doing and push forward in that sense so if I'm not enjoying it what's the point you know what I mean but you know what you really like to use in a pencil and then I'm gonna use the Copics on top so what I did instead of you know experimenting on this page I really liked turned out I'm gonna put that to the side and I scanned a couple of copies so I printed off two copies and because my printer is absolute garbage or maybe I just haven't aligned it properly probably probably the latter there but whatever I cut off some bits it doesn't really matter because these are just gonna be color tests and also I need to do a little color test with the actual pencil because I'm not sure if it smudges that's what we're gonna be doing today folks I hope so much fun we're not all of today but for this video yeah like I said I've got my patron page up now I'm gonna try and be more in depth on the patron page because obviously if you pay for reward then I'm gonna try and explain like my processes and breakdowns and stuff so I'm gonna be trying trying to post every other day I don't want to give myself a schedule because I gave myself a schedule before and it became very much too like not organic so if I say like oh I post every other day maybe every day maybe every two days like it gives me an opportunity to just explore different stuff for what I want to share with you guys this is the pencil so I'm just gonna go over this this one and then use Copics over the top and see if it smudges anything at all and I hope not yes the color scheme that I really liked where has it gone but I know I can't use that color scheme for every single page so I have to be very sorry like blues and purples that's what I'm saying here you know why I'm having this trouble now is because remember I want I wanted to do the color scheme color keys and I just I skipped that part basically so now I'm having trouble and it's the same old story of what I do where I just skip stuff because I can't be bothered and then I have this horrible struggle afterwards so just don't skip stuff in the process guys no matter how hard it is yeah this is the color scheme on I want pink and then I want the blue on top and then also I wanted there was another one I liked there have you gone so this is the Copic and pencil and I remember it works okay on this paper but maybe it does smudge a little bit but maybe on this paper it sludges more because this paper is more photo printer paper I use with this one I use the micron so I'm not sure if I should use micron for line and then add pencily stuff in you know what I mean it's all too up in the air right let's get going I'm gonna put this here for reference even though I know pink and blue that's not so hard is it ages coloring everything in with Copics though isn't it that's the probes I don't know if it's this Copic in particular but it's kind of smudging the line and that worries me it worries me a lot well my Copics are kind of stained which is embarrassing let's see yeah it kind of sludges it but do I mind that much does it look kind of cool let's just do a whole page and let's see how it turns out six of stains here great brilliant job thanks universe obviously I haven't done the backgrounds of these but I think what works quite well sometimes is an open background and just suggestions of a background and so your main focus is on the characters I think this looks quite cool to be honest I could really do if you got your help as well like everybody I know I'm not asking you to look at my patreon or anything if you don't want to but if you could just take a look at it no pressure or anything just to tell me if you like the kind of thing that I have all rewards on there because or any ideas that I might be might be a good idea that I'm missing because I really want to try and get some good rewards going and people excited about my work so if there's something that you see maybe I'm missing you could let me know because I don't know maybe I'm missing something that is stuck like so obvious and people are like you should put this as a reward and I just haven't really like this idea of like layering color and just hinting at things I don't know I think I want to keep these the characters in white I just think it looks cool maybe some shading I think that looks quite cool maybe I should do like some shadows behind them I did a live stream on Friday morning my time anyway it might not be morning for you but it went really well because I felt like I was really worried to do it and then I was just like just do it you know what I mean when you just like convince yourself to just go for something and it was really good I really enjoyed talking to everybody who joined I know everybody not everybody can join because everybody's into different time zones and whatnot so if you join then thanks very much and if you missed it it's still all my I'll keep all my live streams up but obviously people like to chat and live streams so if you're watching after the fact it can be a bit late but some people don't mind it because it's still me talking about processes so it's pretty much the same as this video just a live stream and we got in depth about some topics as well like book publishing and things like that that was pretty interesting it helped inspire me to chat a little bit more about other stuff that I know about or that I hope I know about anyway I never claimed to be an expert on these topics just doing my thing yeah I think that looks quite cool don't you think this is the style guys and very excited I think I do need to explore coloring them in though because and I do miss the pencils because the texture of the pencils is very nice as well the way that you've got to look at each panel is that their own little pieces of artwork and then you've also got to look at it as a whole as it was working with everything again it can be tough you got it you visualize everything before you do it the pencil does smudge a little bit as we've seen from this guy but it kind of adds something to it that could work you know so obviously this is just going to be a layering of colors and I think towards the end I might just make it darker and darker like as her mood changes camera died so as I was saying I'm pretty sick but not that bad it's just yes diet coke I know awful but it's not that bad I just feel quite tired and the heat here doesn't help and so I just continued working on this and I really I'm so getting excited about these colors because I think this is what I wanted and this before this was just not not what I wanted at all and look at the comparison like how much more engaging at these colors than that makes such a difference guys please don't skimp on your color work if you start doing a comic whilst I was waiting for my whilst I was waiting for my camera to upload this footage I uploaded this page this page to my patreon for free you can download it and have a go at coloring it yourself if you feel like it it might be quite a fun exercise for you guys and just yeah just you get it for visiting my patreon page it's there for free and just download it whatever I thought that would be a good incentive for you guys to just maybe go there and have a look as well and tell me what you think you don't have to though you can just download this page if you want because it'd be cool to see that so this is kind of a color color me in this style you know that hashtag that's going around draw this in your style there's a color me in your style you might like it I don't know yes I'm just gonna continue on doing this I really like the textures that happen with the pencils and stuff and I'm just sort of being quite loose with it really helps as well because I think before I was getting quite rigid because you know when you think oh this is the final page I need to have this done this done but then you become very rigid with your work and I think that was what was happening with me I was like this is the final page I have to make it look really good and then I realized I was just trying trying too hard whereas with this kind of style where I just go for it I think I really like it and it's just fun to do as well which was something I was missing before so I'm getting really invigorated and really excited about this which is so such a good feeling I also think that I haven't really been looking at a lot of inspiration recently which is such a deterrent because if you're not inspired then that can really it does make such a massive difference so looking at different inspirations and styles I think as well there can be a limit to it though as well because what I do anyway I get a little bit like oh I'm not good enough comparing myself to other artists but I think I've said this before where there'll always be someone who's better than you and there'll always be someone who's worse than you like it doesn't matter just create what you want to create and enjoy yourself and if anybody is sitting there going oh they're rubbish at drawing then that's just like that that's their problem you can draw whatever you want and just enjoy it don't do it for the wrong reasons because then you get bogged down in it. What do you think of these colorings? I think I'm not going to do any more because the more I do the more I get attached to this and this is just a practice piece so I'm gonna probably cut this out and stick it in my sketchbook so I can just look at it for reference and not lose it because sometimes I just lose newspapers and I don't like having like loose papers everywhere. This is the actual line work so I need to keep that secret somewhere. Secret? Keep it secret, keep it safe. That's embarrassing. Just for the sake of it I'm gonna try and do a different color scheme on this one because why not you know like let's explore every option that's always a good way to go and I think I'll probably do more pencil-y work on this one and see what it looks like. I'm currently watching Simon and Martina on YouTube they just have a vlog about food in Japan and stuff and I love food and I love Japan so it was always going to be a winning situation. I really like Holly Brown's vlogs as well because I really like that casualness that she has and I think it's quite rare to to have that. I'm not sure if I'm making any sense because a lot of people have casuals or logs put. I prefer like a lot of times people have vlog channels and then they have their main channels but I think I prefer a lot of the time people's vlog channels where they have a lot less subscribers and I don't know I just prefer like down to earth chatting about work. I think it gives us more of that inspiring like seeing people do stuff. It's almost like having a virtual studio team and that's something I really missed about my old job is that we we were on a big team of people. I was a graphic designer and we'd all work on projects together and comment on each other's work and we'd all learn off each other and things like that and you'd get along and you'd have laughs and things like that and that's something I really miss when like now that I'm working from home it's something that really gets to me sometimes because I'm like I wish I could just chat to people and joke around and I really miss my team sometimes even though it's been a year and a half it's kind of like get over it already but yeah you never knew. So it's nice to just I think YouTube it sounds really lame but YouTube gives us that chance to chat to people and be part of the community and things. I think I've probably said that a lot of times before but I've never said it in these vlogs it gives us chance to connect with each other and I think like a lot of you messaged me on Instagram and stuff and I chat to you on there and like chatting to you guys on live stream. Obviously I've been a bit awful with commenting back on some of the video comments but I promise I look at them and I really enjoy reading your comments and it spurs me on and I do want to you know take some time to comment back because the thing is when I comment on reply to stuff I really want to reply well if that makes sense I want to take time and an effort to respond to you guys so sometimes I just like feel a bit bogged down by that because I'm like I need to get a good response here. If that makes sense I hope that makes sense uh some like weird shadows going on here. I'm sorry I need like a bigger desk because all my stuff is just creating shadows across this. It's quite difficult to film and work because I make such a mess so I need to clear stuff. I'm using alcohol markers because I think I really like the way that they layer on top of each other and it gives such like a crisp kind of color. I don't know I like that kind of rigid boxiness of these if that makes sense the way I'm using them anyway. Sorry about the lighting I can't afford like a good light system yet but who knows maybe soon. YouTube still hasn't monetized me or anything just really feel like it's never gonna happen is it? Well I never know you never know. So if you like my stuff then help a brother out. That sounded so bad I'm so sorry. And um look at my Patreon page for rewards and stuff and hopefully that will give me more time to work on this comic and things like that. So let's just go crazy with the pencils. I am kind of liking this style as well now dammit. Which do you prefer the left one or the right one? I do think like I could add more pencil-y stuff to this. That's what I'm learning here because I'm really into like the whole idea of this being very textured or looking very textured. I think it adds like a depth to it and I really like the splodges of like random color as well. Yeah I think I prefer this one it's just I don't know. I haven't colored the car in it on this one obviously but maybe if I do some lines around the trees. I do want this to have a very loose vibe to it because I as I've said before I really like the way that that looks in comic books. And I'm a very I draw everything very rigidly so it would be great to be able to just do something a little bit different and aspire to create my style to be a bit more loose. Okay um I'm gonna finish the vlog here because otherwise it's going to be about five hours long and not everybody would like that especially not my computer. I probably maybe do a live stream on Friday morning my time which is European time and yeah so if you like this video then please comment down below or give me a thumbs up whatever the the cool kids are doing and let me know if you what color schemes you prefer. Again like I said I've got the this page up on my Patreon so you can print it out or color it digitally and have a go with that just for like fun and obviously I look at your suggestions too because why not. And you can help work on this comic with me which would be quite fun to see I don't know no pressure though or anything guys but yeah it's on my Patreon page and any advice you can give me about Patreon rewards would be very very very helpful and I really appreciate everybody's feedback so thanks a lot for watching and I will see you on Friday morning or next week. Sorry guys one more thing before I edit and upload the video I continued with that process yesterday or the pencils and the Copics and Pro markers and I finished two pages and I think they look really cool I obviously got to do the typography but I'm not sure if I should color them in or what I should do with them I like the way her hair looks here so I might do that for all of the panels but because I really like the way it looks now I'm really worried to like touch it again so opinions please but yeah these are the final you know what the pages will look like more or less so I'm pretty pleased. I think I came for a real break for yesterday so I'm really happy. Anyway, yes, back to the goodbyes, bye!