kuš!: Behind the Comics XIV

'Behind the Comics' continues with an insight into the work of š! #14 'Sports' contributor Jeroen Funke.

Jeroen Funke // *1976, The Netherlands. Jeroen is part of the colorful comics group Lamelos (featured also in kuš! #4 'food' and 'š! #4 'Lost in the City'), founded with his buddies at the Kampen Art Academy in 1997. He also creates a lot of solo projects, like murals, children’s books, monstersuits and comics books with his characters Victor & Vishnu, Pinky and other funny guys.

Visit the site of his collective Lamelos and his flickr!

Jeroen: Ready to get started!

I usually start with some type of written scenario. After that I convert that into small thumbnail-pages, as you can see here.

I wanted to do as little character design as possible, because I think it would take some of the spontaneity of the painting away. But drawing monsters is something I never get enough of. And what's one little drawing...

I started out with ecoline watercolours, but as I did that a couple of times before, especially with Pinky, I wanted to do something else and I rejected this immediately.

So I got some fineliners out and tried to combine it with really wet acrylic paint. I was kind of happy with those little guys, but not with the technique.
I thought, if I'm gonna use acrylics I might as well go all the way. And I started over.

To fight all that white of the cardboard I started to give everything a background colour first. One that I knew that I was going to cover with another colour right after. But since I was going to use very wet acrylics it would hopefully shine through.

And we're off! No sketching, to try and not make it too rigid. I would just kind of look at the small thumbnails to see what should go where.
I'm trying different things, like do I paint the lines first or the colours first? (Talk about rigid, to assume everything needs lines anyway. Oh well..)

I got it now. First the colours, then the lines. Trying not to be too 'clean' about it. Otherwise, what's the whole point of using paint anyway?

Some guy is sitting on my workplace.

This is some of the music I was listening to while painting these pages. Especially 'Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks - Real Emotional Trash' is a fantastic album!