Preparing a page for colour - page 7

Page 7, one of the earliest pages I drew, and needing some reworking, before it was ready to colour. 

Thewrestrong aspects to the page, I wanted to keep though. In panels 1, 3 - 4,  Uccello is asking for help from colleagues, and I deliberately put barriers between them. I did something similar between Uccello and his wife, with the door frame and the open doors creating a gap or void - I have literally put his (lack of) work between them. Panel 5 reprises this shot, but the wife, (excited by the rewards of this commission moves forward) , as he (further daunted by the challenge) moves back. I carefully composed them in relation to the door-frame to emphasise this. The next panel provides a further literal and metaphorical intrusion into Uccello's space, as the patron pops into the room, with the effect of ratcheting up the stakes.

I redrew the figure of Donatello in panel 1, the original had too much line stablisation to work at the bigger size, and I also ensured it matched the drawing of him on page 11. I also redrew the backgrounds for the two panels of Uccello and his wife. Panel 4 had been partly pasted and enlarged from panel 3: it mostly worked, but the lines for the tiles were a bit thick, so I reduced the width of them. I also redrew some of the Uccello faces, to be consistent with later drawings. For panel 6, it's only the face of Rocco (right) that is unchanged. I liked the ladder and the perspective lines on the upper panel visually, butI I had drawn it on the basis that he would be working directly onto the upper walls, but I subsequently decided that him being up a ladder would be visually cumbersome, and distract from the interaction of the characters, so I changed this panel.

Having made these changes, I was able to do flats. I was noticeable how much quicker it was to flat the more recently drawn panels. I have tended to use the approach of drawing a white layer underneath figures, etc, and would often deliberately leave a white halo around the figure - I sure paid the price for that in the extra time it took me to flat the tiles in the middle row!

This page is fairly unusual in containing the full six panels, and also unusual in featuring four different locations. I tried to give them all distinctively coloured walls. I tried to do the same with the floors, though it was difficult. The colour schemes in panel 2/5, and 6 are already set: with hindsight, I would have been better to colour them first on this page to help me keep the new scene (middle row) I tried to do that, but's it's not so effective moving back across pages. Despite the amount of work it was (as noted above) to do the tiles in those panels, I think it may be better to remove them: they are quite busy panels, with a lot on the tiled areas. It may be possible to take down the tiles on a tone layer, though.

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I may have to redo the balloons, as I going to work on the character and line spacing of the lettering, though i may be able to just enlarge the balloons.

On checking the page this morning, I went back and made some minor changes: redrew Rocco's face (panel 6, right) to make it look less vectored); fixed the line spacing on panel 4 balloon 1; added some ink lines for the wife's clothing in panel 5, added colour on pupils (panel 2), etc.

It occurs to me now that I've drawn the woman with a hat in other scenes - am torn between being consistent, and liking these panels as they are...