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No. 40: Oliver's Scar Explained

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Oliver's Scar Explained

First | Previous | 2009-01-23 | Next | Latest

Permanent URL: https://mezzacotta.net/owls/?comic=40

Strip by: David Birch

{Delkin and the girls are sitting around a table}
Holly: So... How did Oliver get that scar anyway?
Samantha: Well! I heard that when he was younger, he got into a vicious KNIFE FIGHT, protecting a young innocent girl from a mugger!
Holly: eep?
Meridien: Don't be so dramatic. I'm pretty sure that Oliver's had that scar since he was little. It's probably just a birthmark.
Holly: Oh.
Delkin: Girls! Girls... you're missing the obvious theory here.
Samantha: ... And what might that be?
Delkin: Tragic Tetris accident!
{silence, as they consider this}

The author writes:

Occam's Razor.

The previous full colour comic I submitted, while a lot of fun to make, did take eight hours to draw and colour.

Recently I've been reading a book called Drawing for the Artistically Undiscovered by Quentin Blake and John Cassidy. It's a lot of fun, and strongly I recommend it. The book provides a lot of useful advice on the hobby of drawing itself, rather than on technical details. One thing it mentions a lot is that you should try to capture the "essence" of what you're drawing before trying for accuracy. In other words, if you draw with the intention of capturing the spirit of your message, you'll often get good results. If you simply try to draw an accurate representation of your subject, you might spend much longer obtaining something you don't like.

With this in mind and the dialogue already scripted I decided to just quickly scribble down the characters with the intention of getting "Holly" or "Delkin" rather than trying to make them look accurate or consistent. The entire comic took only 15 minutes to draw, and I'm quite happy with the results.