January Update - !Printer Acquired! + Gibson Comic Roughs

This is going to be a little bit of an out of the blue update, but remember how last March I said I wanted to sell physical prints so I could get a new printer to make nicer print comics at home? Well I finally sold enough physical comics to pay for it :)
After a stupid amount of research I finally decided on this fella, a Kyocera laserjet printer that weighs more than me but prints real nice, and can handle all kindsa different paper and even--get this--print on transparency, check it out:

I put some of my pens under there so you could see how weird it is to have a print on clear plastic.

So you might be saying to yourself, Winton, why would you get such a massive printer, aren't your comics mostly digital? And the answer is 1. because I wanted to and 2. yes and this is a strategic waste of money 😂

I'll probably talk about it more in the future but there's a weird thing about making art for me, where having restrictions is an absolute necessity. I don't make anything when I don't have them, and having a specific limitation, like trying to make art that looks good on transparency, while largely irrelevant on a digital platform, fills me with ideas and creative gusto (I'm lookin' at you ZooBooks 👀) So stay tuned, there's gonna be more about all this in the future I'm sure.

Now for the report: Here's a sampling o some of the things that happened this month.
We started things off with halftone doodling. I am all about this new character that kinda came out of nowhere--let's call her Libby or Eliza the Librarian, I haven't settled yet.

There will definitely be a story for her immediately following the Gibson Girls and it's gonna involve this under utilized hiker and college student, Holly.

Plenty of scribbly sketches of different things this month. I keep trying to make use of the pvc/resin model studies in these little bits of color. I'm rather liking it.

I briefly became obsessed with Lazy Nezumi in PS and the brush smoothing in CSP because of how utterly butterly smooth it makes my lines. ♥

This was maybe the most rendered thing this month outside of the Holly pinup early on. I did not get to doing any fanart but I thought the comic was more important. I know I'm gonna need some chill drawing activities this month so I'll still keep the suggestions handy.

But then came the Gibson Girls. Not that I'm sad about it, I know I'll return to the Libby x Holly project, but I really should start the year off with something simple, and black and white sounds about as simple as it gets, even if it's getting complicated with Edwardian fashion.

I am trying to better document the process of making the comic this time around. The thought process, the research, everything. I might end up making more drawings than I normally would to prepare for it just so I am describing what's in my head that normally doesn't make it onto the page.

Part of that was doing the above little sketch and many others of sort of story 'beats' I'd like to hit, or images that kinda stick in my mind that I really want to get down in the pages themselves.

And finally I've got all the pages roughed! I did this over the past couple days and I haven't gotten to post it because other work obligations came up so I'll post that next as a little  behind the scenes preview for Gold patrons.

I'm thinking I'll have a cleaned up page or two for everyone to see before long tho! :)

Thank you all immensely for all the support over this past month, and welcome to all the new patrons! ♥ Very happy to have your company. I'm excited to be doing a comic again, it feels really right.

Winton