Paul in Amsterdam, who has his own comics website, asked me questions, which I will answer at the bottom of this post.

So, this is what I finshed yesterday, and I want to show you a few tricks.

Below, you see I made an error. How do I get rid of it?

I use my Xacto knife and scrape away the extraneous lines. Don't dig too hard. Go gently and lightly with the knife or you'll dig a hole.

Then I take an electric eraser and make smooth the surface of the paper.

Et voila! All clean.

Here, I mask the border so I can begin painting. I actually have stopped masking because my control of the brush is pretty good.

And now that the border is masked, I am free to over paint.

Once the drafting tape is peeled away, I get a clean edge.

So by yesterday afternoon, I was done with this particular page of my graphic novel.

Tonight, I start typing up the next page of my comics script and begin drawing another panel tomorrow.

Paul's Questions answered:

1 Can you give us some background what makes a graphic novel different to a comic book?

I think Paul can better answer this question, but for me, comics represents all formats of sequential art, whether it's a daily strip in a newspaper or a longer work like the graphic novel, a term coined to encompass the longer narratives of the comics genre. The subject matter of the graphic novel can be the more traditional superheroes, or like my book in progress, "Forget Sorrow: A China Elegy," which is part history and part family memoir.

2 What makes you decide on how many panels in a page?

I type out a script for what I imagine would bring good flow for my story. Then I imagine the flow visually on Bristol board, how many ideas, dialogs, concepts, visuals will fit comfortably on one page. Since I am the writer and artist, I can play it by sight/ear. I don't follow the script too closely, and I continue to edit the dialog as I draw. If I find I can shrink some panels, I do so to give more room to something of more significance in a lower panel.

3 What (photographic) angle to draw a panel, how much is dialogue and how much is text ?

The angle is based on the desire for change and variation. I like the naive folk art style of China, so my perspective is never too drastic in the Western sense. I try to destroy dimensionality and the vanishing point. But then I'll throw in something from a more surprising angle--like the rooftop view--just to shake things up. I don't follow any rules.

Too much text can bog down the story, so a good balance is needed. Frequently there are pages without text at all. And these are important because they make the reader slow down. When the text is absent, the reader takes time to look at the visuals. These are like the caesura in poetry. A place to breathe. If we look at Seth's "It's a Good Life If You Don't Weaken," for example, he really luxuriates in panels sans text. I also think it all depends on the style the writer/artists. She has her own inclination for how much text, and how much visual. I've seen comics with entire pages of textual narration right next to a full page of panel narration as in Posey Simmond's "Gemma Bovary," a modern day spoof on Flaubert's "Madame Bovary." The latter is a great piece of art and literature.

What I love about the comics medium is that it is entirely in tune with the creator's own vision. There are no hard and fast rules. The story is more important than the visuals. If the visuals are gorgeous and the story is boring, it's going to be a less than great piece of comic.

Click here to see more graphic novel pages and Belle's Youtube videos

Click here to see #4 post on the graphic novel process

I would love for you to see the art in this Youtube video. I explain the paintings from "Always Come Home to Me," winner of CALA Best Children's Book of 2008

Please stayed tuned for "Tools of the Comics Trade"! I'll show you all the stuff I use.