Page 3 - finished

Finally the third page, which took me longer than expected due to the swan's detailed plumage.
Also, words, at last, after some completely silent first pages!
The witch the lady with the vivid imagination is talking about is, of course, good old Baba Jaga.

And in case it is not entirely obvious, the little bird is supposed to be a robin. Much sweeter than the nasty swan. It might be worth mentioning, that I find the scary and wicked portrayal of the swans in "The Magic Swan Geese" much closer to reality, compared to other fairy tales. Seriously, they must be one of the most scariest birds in the world. Too bad, one can not hear this one's hissing.

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Page 3 - Ink

While working on the coloured version of this page (which will be finished soon) I realized that I haven't yet uploaded the inked one. So, here it is.

A Swan in a Tree

This time there will be only a pencil drawing of the third page as university and travel preparations have been keeping me rather busy during the last weeks.
The background for this piece is a Russian fairy tale called "The Magic Swan Geese".

Page 2 - finished

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Page 2 - Ink

Random historical information...

The wine bottle does not have a wine label made of paper as the earliest known wine label of such material is from 1822 (for a Schloss Johannisberger Cabinets Wein). Until then it was common for wine bottles, at least in Europe and during this particular time, to have seals (not wax seals, but seals which where part of the bottle). They informed the consumer about the producer, the year of production, and maybe the place of origin.

The news about the grizzly bear in the London Gazette is actually a historical one, even though I neither know whether the respective newspaper carried an article about the story, nor at what time of the year it happened. But fact is that in 1811 George III got such a bear with the name 'Martin' as a present from the Hudson Bay Company. The grizzly was the first of his kind in England and made part of the no longer existing Royal Menagerie in the Tower of London.

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Page 1 - finished

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All three pelisses (long outdoor coats for women) are actually historical ones, even though only the woman in the middle of the third panel is wearing a pelisse from 1811 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pelisse). The other two coats both date back to 1812 (http://www.fashion-era.com/images/RegencyRom/1812-blue-pelisse-collar.jpg and http://janitesonthejames.blogspot.de/2011_09_01_archive.html), so there is a slight historical inaccuracy here.
The design of the blue reticule (a little handbag for ladies) shown in the last panel is inspired by a photo by  Rachel Holkner, which can be found here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/rachelholkner/1486973717/

Page 1 - Ink and Informations

Some notes regarding a number of details...

The newspapers shown in the last panel are, from bottom to top, The London Gazette, the Haarlemsche Courant (Harlem courier), the Königlich privilegirte Berlinische Zeitung von Staats- und gelehrten Sachen (Royal privileged Berlin newspaper of state affairs and academic things) a.k.a. the Vossische Zeitung, and the Gazeta Warszaska (Warsaw Gazette).
Who has a close look at them will quickly see which year and month it is.
The card game in the same pictures actually exist(ed). The whole deck of cards can be found here: http://riowang.blogspot.de/2010/12/cards-1-cards-as-literature.html It depicts characters from different plays by Shakespeare and dates back to the year 1787. Therefore it is already a bit antiquated by the time the story takes place, but out of convenience I simply assume that there might have been reprints.
What lays atop of the London Gazette and looks like a bun is, by the way, a pirozhki.

The German magazine in the panel next to this one is "Die Jahreszeiten. Eine Vierteljahresschrift für romantische Dichtungen" (The Seasons. A quarterly paper for romantic poetries) by Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué. To be precisely it is the Frühlings-Heft (Spring-Issue) in which Fouqué´s story "Undine" was published for the first time.
As I assume that most people (like me) are probably not familiar with the Russian language I might as well translate what is written at the bottom of the letter. It is the sender´s address: Hunter Street 2, Saint Petersburg. Back then the sender´s address was not written on the envelope, simply as no envelopes existed.

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Page 1 - in progress

The lower part of the first page is finished now. Well, the preparatory drawing. So, all that is left is coping, inking and colouring.
Of course, the newspapers, the magazine and the letter won´t stay blank. The content will be added as soon as I copied the two A4 pages on the final A3 page. I think, some comments regarding a number of details in the picture (e.g. wine bottles, letter writing, the card game) will follow as well as I have a (strong) soft spot for things one doesn´t need to know.

Fur and Feathers: Page 00 (coloured)

It took some time but here is finally the coloured cover of the first part of "Fur and Feathers".
My flatmate commented on the coachman´s facial colour that he doesn´t look particular healthy, and, indeed, she is spot-on.

Mr Coachman

Haven´t worked with acrylic paint in ages and at first wasn´t sure whether or not I should use it for the comic. But I think I will stick with it.

Page 01 - in progress

A glimpse of the first page, the upper half to be precisely. While the final page is drawn in A3, the preparatory drawings are done on two sheets in A4.
As there is no colour yet, it is not visible, but the hat in the second panel belongs to the lady in the first one.

Fur and Feathers 1: Detours (Page 00)

And the story begins...

I have a feeling both of the carriage lamps could have been a bit smaller, even though - at the beginning of the 19th century - they were indeed bigger in comparison to preceding models.
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(Font: "Dandelion in the Spring" by Brittney Murphy.)

The history of "Fur and Feathers"

A bit more than half a year ago, in June 2011, I drew a comic page with knowing barely anything about the characters involved and exactly nothing about the events which led to the particular scene I was drawing. What started as a mere pasttime soon turned into a strong interest in these characters´ respective past and future.

So I began to work on their story, researched the time and location where the action takes place (who would have thought that a simple question as how people used to send letters about 200 years ago could be this interesting!) and so on. Now I finally reached the point to start with the actual drawing.

There will be - at least at the moment - no regular update of my webcomic "Fur and Feathers" as my studies keep me on the go and it takes me some time to finish a single comic page. Aside from this it is my first comic project so far (not included what I did with pen and paper when I was a (half-grown) child, of yourse). But I hope to eventually find a rhythm and to increase my pace of work.

Usually I will upload a black and white version of the final page first, before adding colour as this again will not be done overnight.

(As for the font I used in the header, the picture with the two bears, it is called "Dandelion in the Spring", created and copyrighted by Brittney Murphy.)