IRON, now in colour!

Here's the first page of a new (very) short IRON strip.

As with all of these, it's real purpose is to try and teach me stuff, and for this one, I'm attempting a more conventional looking strip. With inking. And colouring in.

I've attempted a sort of semi-painted look here. I did try to do the airbrush style colouring that seems to be in vogue in comics at the moment, but found it really, really didn't go with the drawing style. Perhaps a better colourist than me would have more luck.

I found this style took me a hell of a lot longer, but I suspect that's for a couple of reasons - I'm not used to working in this way, and I was still producing ultra tight pencils as I didn't trust my rather shoddy inking. I'm hoping practice will speed the process up.

IRON is ©2015 Jonathan Wyke

Porn

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/feb/25/google-and-reddit-ban-non-consensual-naked-images-from-sites

None of my work is pornographic, but it often contains mature themes and language, and also nudity, both male and female.

Now Blogger has announced it's going to ban explicit content. Who is judging what is ban-worthy and what isn't? Nude photos and videos banned. What about drawings and paintings next? Or literature? Would the next 50 Shades of Grey be banned from the site? Which culture's standards are being used to determine what's suitable and what isn't? Are we all now subject to the puritan right wing of American politics?

I am against exploitation in any form. I am against anything that hurts the participants against their will.

I am also against blanket censorship. I am against arbitrary decisions that blow with the political wind.

The following drawing was done by one of the greats of 20th century art, Egon Schiele. It's one of his milder ones. Will that be banned too?

Page Eight, the final page of IRON!

This is the last page so it's now all done. It too way too long for eight pretty simple pages, and literally nothing happens in it, but it's finished.

I've done three of these short little strips, all set around the same time, with fundamentally the same people involved, and in my head they're really all primers. They're all set in the British Dark Ages. Following the fall of Rome and the withdrawal of it's infrastructure, troops and market economy, Britain really collapsed. We don't need to look to science fiction to see a post-apocalyptic society. It's happened. Here.

I'm interested in just following normal people as the go about their lives, and was hoping that the setting would at least provide enough visual interest for people to want to look at it. This past strip is simply a small group of people who've been called to the funeral of their king. Nothing more or less.

Each one of these strips has also served to answer questions I'm having about my own art. For this one, I've really tried to push the boat out with my drawing. I've literally spent days on each page, treating the drawings more as paintings than simply pencils. The average length of time taken to draw each of these pages was 3 1/2 days. I must admit, I'm still not sure if it was worth it.

Having said all that, I've enjoyed doing them.  All comments and crits are gratefully received!

IRON is ©2015 Jonathan Wyke

Pages Six and Seven

Two more pages of my IRON short-story...

IRON is ©2015 Jonathan Wyke