Drawing bare trees takes a lot of patience. And you can't do it fast or you'll screw it up. I had to redraw quite a few of them in KENT STATE because I wanted to move on to other things, and they looked like hell.

Done beautifully here. This is how you do it, kids.
The trick is to stick to the proper sequence. You start with the main trunk and major branches, which gives you the basic shape of the tree. Ash, Oak, maple etc all have different shapes. Then you draw the smaller branches, then smaller still
But too many branches, especially for trees in the distance, and the visual gets clogged up. I'm right on the edge of that here, especially those trees dead center.

I used a .05 pen for the big branches, then a .o3, and finally the .01. Can't get any finer than that!
Bare trees at night are a different challenge. Trees in the foreground you can see sky through the branches, but in the background they're more of an impenetrable mass, except along the edge. Took some experimenting to figure out how to draw this.
Patience, patience, patience. try to shortcut it, and it looks like shit and you'll scrap it and start again. SO you might as well take your time. This panel alone took a full day, but I knew it would going in.
Aerial perspective is tricky to pull off, too. Things in the distance are fuzzier than in the foreground. The trucks and the soldiers are the important things in this panel, then a couple well-defined trees. But the background, too much detail there are & it'll be a mess of lines
The challenge is putting in enough branches to create the effect of a bare tree and get the shape right, but not so many branches that it looks like a solid blob of ink. I'd just do one tree at a time and adjust as I went. Ok, this area has enough lines, then move on.
This panel was super tough, because again I had layers of foliage extending into the distance. I started with the foreground trees, than drew each receding layer of trees, getting a little less detailed with each layer.
Next time I'll discuss drawing crowd scenes. The biggest frustration of all!

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More from @DerfBackderf

12 Dec
Don't get me wrong, I adore Gil Kane's art. But his covers? Meh. They all look the same!

#comicbooks #BronzeAge #GilKane ImageImageImageImage
I guess this is what Marvel bigshots wanted, but every cover is a crowded fight scene, usually with a superdude flopping over backwards with one of Kane's signature limp-wristed poses. ImageImageImageImage
Kane drew like 75% of Marvels covers in 1972, 73, 74 and 75 and one is pretty much the same as the other. Sweet gig for Gil, but I would've MUCH rather had him drawing stories. ImageImageImageImage
Read 5 tweets
12 Dec
"(Roger Stone) protege Jacob Engels appeared at a School Board meeting, blending in with concerned parents, to discuss sex education books. When Engels took the mic, he read aloud an explicit passage from (the graphic novel) “Gender Queer: A Memoir.”"

washingtonpost.com/outlook/2021/1…
This is exactly what I've been tweeting about. And again here's Maia Kobabe's graphic novel GENDER QUEER being used as scare tactic in school board meetings.

This is the book outraged zealots and professional rightwing plants wave around at school board meetings.

#bookbanning
This exact same performance is happening all around the country. The playbook was written by Christian Nationalist "think" tanks & creeps like Steve Bannon, & is bankrolled by dark money.

This is their plan of attack for 2022 and 2024.
Read 9 tweets
7 Feb
Since everyone is talking about the crisis at the @usps and the Trumper creep #DeJoy, the Postmaster General. These are mail sorting machines at the main Cleveland postal facility last August.

DeJoy ordered them torn out and they were left to rot in the parking lot.
Not removed and reused at another facility. TORN THE FUCK OUT, and purposely left outside to get rained on and ruined so they could NEVER be used again.
And no effort was made to mask what they were doing! You could see (and photograph) these things from the street!

When called on this, DeJoy insisted they were torn out "months" ago. Postal workers revealed it was just days.
Read 9 tweets
5 Feb
With Jose Canceso trending for some reason, let's remember one of the greatest plays in baseball history, when a fly ball bounced off his head for a homer!

I was at this game!!
It was 1993, and the Indians were a very young, very talented, but not very good team. It was the final season in wretched old Cleveland Stadium.

Carlos Martinez, a journeyman 1B, hit a long fly ball to center. The rest is history.
Cleveland Stadium was huge (seating 75,000) and no one in my section could see what happened. There was no video scoreboard then. We thought it was an out, but Martinez started circling the bases. WTF? Then a dude with a radio in front of me started laughing hysterically.
Read 5 tweets
22 Sep 20
Another blow from the Year That Won't Stop Sucking. The great Ron Cobb has left us, dead at age 83.
Cobb is one of the greatest political cartoonists of the late 20th century and on the short list for greatest ever. he worked exclusively in the underground press of the 60s and 70s. His cartoons were devastating, gut-wrenching and cut to the bone.
There were no gags-of-the-day with Cobb. When he took aim, the blow landed full force, right between the eyes.
Read 24 tweets
9 Sep 20
Hmmm. Not seeing much here that looks any different than Fury Road or any other action blockbuster. Certainly doesn't match the visuals of David Lynch's glorious mess of a film. They should've just replicated those visuals and made a better movie.
Or brought in Jodorowsky!
And a Pink Floyd cover as background muzak? Really?
Read 4 tweets

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