A character sketch of Angel from Ragbox, chapter 5

The amazing talented Line O will be illustrating chapter 5 of The Ragbox, I’m pleased to announce. I met Line O about a year ago when she joined the Boston Comics Roundtable, and from the moment I saw her portfolio samples, I knew I had to ask her to do a Ragbox chapter. Thankfully, she was willing.

The Ragbox project is an experiment in which a different illustrator works on each chapter. In part, this is to create a panoply of styles that reflected the harmonies and dissonances of the neighborhood. It’s also fun, of course, to work with so many different people. But most importantly, I wanted to find specific illustrators for specific chapters, stories in which I thought only this particular artist could could draw out the emotional honesty of that particular chapter.  Chapter 5 takes place entirely within a hair salon in the Ragbox district. It focuses on two female characters, the younger Angel and the older Desiree. It seemed important to try and find a female illustrator, and one that could make a visually compelling page in a relatively static environment. The way Line O renders the female form, dramatically posed with a loose, curvy limbs, along with the intricate cross-hatching, work perfectly to this end. It helps that she really seemed to like the story, too.

Check out Line O’s website at http://outoflinecomics.blogspot.com.