It is with a heavy heart that I must announce that I’m putting my current comic, Ginger Rap, on hiatus. It’s not that I don’t have time, it’s not because I lost an interest in drawing, it’s not because it sucks. (Pages 1, 2, and 5 are really good, but it’s not working.) And it’s not because someone read my first color comic, “Haute,” and realized what a genius I was. It’s because it wasn’t doing what it was supposed to.

I decided to illustrate this comic for two reasons. First, I wanted to make a comic. This was not my first comic, and I really enjoyed it. In fact, about a year ago, before my renaissance, I remember thinking that it would be fun to do another comic. Too bad I didn’t draw anymore. Here I am, with fifty sheets of Bristol board, ready to have some fun. The second was that if I drew a lot and a lot of the same characters, over and over, I’d be a better artist.

So here I am, treating the comic as a duty, and wanting to draw bigger pictures, while not enjoying the quality of art I was putting out. I like simple comic art. It’s the reason The Kindly Ones has always been my favorite Sandman story, and why I will buy anything Matt Wagner illustrates. However, my art has been oversimple, unlike the art in my sketchbooks. I had forgotten everything I had just learned about anatomy when I penciled and inked the pages, and I did it because I was rushing. My comic book art has been getting worse.

It’s time to step away and do a post-mortem. Even though each page had been penciled, painted, and inked, they look like sketches. Meanwhile, my sketchbooks have hardly any sketches, rather complete pieces of art. I’ve been treating the whole page like the medium, when I should be making each panel art.

In addition, I’ve been learning a few things, I bought a hand model (first thing I did was flip the cats off because I am a child) and a book on anatomy and a book on perspective. I’m experimenting on some tricks to give my characters more depth.  

So I’m not quitting. But if I spent some time away just practicing and learning, it would be really jarring for the art quality to leap like that between pages 8 and 9. Is it time to put Ginger Rap to rest and move on? I’m really looking forward to the last page, though. That’s why I said hiatus and not canceled.

But you see what I’ve been doing, right? Totally worth it.