Page 16, Visible Fuck-ups, and Who is the Cake Brat?

I just inked page 16 last night, and have to do a few other bits on it before moving onto penciling and inking page 17, which is the last page. Then figure out the cover, do that, and American, Eh #2 is done. How 'bout that? Not bad at all. I have to go through and make corrections and tighten everything up, but the basics of each page are solid.

I'm pretty stoked, actually. I made a goal a few months back that I had to finish a minimum of two pages every week. Well, with Christmas, then NYC, and just that heavy winter laziness that robs me of any kind of motivation, that goal got pushed back. But for the past month, I've been sticking to it, and making myself work on the comic at least one hour every day. And the 2-pages a week goal hasn't been too difficult at all, it turns out, despite all the mistakes and set-backs.

I make lots of mistakes. Lots of mistakes. My white-out pen is always popped out and shaken because I'm still not a confident inker with a brush, particularly now that I'm re-learning to hold it vertically (as you are supposed to do, I learned) instead of angled like a pen. I will never be able to sell original copies of my comic pages for this reason - who wants visible fuck-ups? I can't help but wonder how they *do* that - even the more amateur artists at the SPX who aren't super famous. Am I missing something here? Are they faking me out with their pretty, perfect boards?

I'm also debating what to do next, while I'm scripting AE#3, which usually takes a couple of weeks to figure out. I want to keep going with inking and practicing with my new swanky Winsor and Newton Kolinsky sable brushes (which *do* make a difference, holy crow) . One thing I'm turning around in my head is another title, which came from a random reading of a post on Hong Kong food.

Cake Brat is actually this:

But someone in the comments section made mention of what a great name it was, and I agree - it's stuck in my head for weeks now, and I've been turning it over in my head, and letting characters and situations come to me. Everything is scribbled in my little black sketchbook right now, but I'm thinking it might be something new to try, something outside of my personal romantics. Titled Cake Brat, with overdone, overt covers. Sprinkles on red lips that spell out Cake Brat, you know, really over the top, trying-too-hard stylized art. But then inside, it's just someone who is known as "the Cake Brat" from these covers, whether it's a band name or or even as just a nickname.....

It probably sounds strange, but I'm not going to get into much more here, because it's all still being figured out in my head, but we'll see where I end up going with it. It's probably going to have something to do with food and music and stuff.