This picture is originally from Maelstrom #2, so was drawn a long time ago.

When the Illustration Friday topic of "Smoke" came up I couldn't really think of anything, but yesterday I remembered drawing this. The original picture is large - an A3 sized original comic page on board - and the smoke was done with dots using various-sized Rotring technical pens. It's in pure black-and-white, although I had laid some dotty screentones for greys in places, and would have done on the koala at the finishing stages.

I've meddled with this picture considerably, as the original had white frame borders, thought balloons and a few bits of the tree sticking out over the smoke. The full page has Maelstrom climbing down a tree on the left of this image, and various wildlife. I think part of what I intended was a juxtapositioning of the natural world and human-invoked disaster - fairly central to the theme of the story. There's also the contradiction between the indigenous and Western elements - something that became harder to reconcile as Maelstrom went on, and one reason I eventually abandoned the project.

The cracks in this version are visible to me, but hopefully the composition and technique still hold up. Hmm, maybe I should've posted a bigger version... then again, maybe not :).

Labels: Illustration Friday