Latest Page (Patreon)

A little news, a couple of thoughts... I have a new website! http://www.mmmendes.com/. You can read all of part 1 there, and I'll be updating it with each new page. My awesome friend Jesse Lucas started a great site on Medium called Darling Sleeper, and I answered some questions for him in a segment called "Questions for Cartoonists". https://medium.com/darling-sleeper/questions-for-cartoonists-melissa-mendes-810cc1086c2f (Sorry about the long links, Patreon doesn't have a super fancy blog setup). In that interview I talk about my process and some of the thoughts behind The Weight. Yesterday I started redrawing my thumbnails *again* and I had a thought. I've been mostly working from thumbnails (rough sketches of pages), but there have been a couple pages where I've just winged (wung?) it. And I've noticed that my sketchbook is full of the same thumbnails for the same pages drawn and redrawn. It seemed kind of weird to be making myself go back and draw the rough sketches even though I was ready to just start drawing the actual thing. That got me thinking about the writing process, and what I would be doing if I were writing a prose novel instead of drawing a graphic one. I would be writing it word by word, not writing the first and last sentences of each paragraph and then going back and filling them in. I don't know if it even makes sense to compare writing just words to drawing comics. But I think I want to approach The Weight like I would approach writing...treating each mark I make like a word, and panels like sentences. It's like you guys are watching me write, making my way through the story, without an exact plan, but with a general idea of what's going to happen. xo mm