Posts Tagged ‘inking’
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I recently had the chance to work on a page of artwork for my friend Brian Bradley for a work of his called “The Time…” It’s a pretty clever idea, with a number of different artists all working on it, including a few of my friends from Alpha-Omega. The page I offered is towards the end. Here’s the unlettered original, and the final version is linked on the site. I think what Brian did here was a clever idea in terms of mixed media/mixed artists and the end result is very unique.
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I did some drawings recently of a dragon for a contest at work. The idea is to submit a dragonboat logo design. I aimed for something with a 1980′s Saturday morning cartoon feel. Here’s the colored version, and the original linework (suitable for printing and coloring!)
Here’s a dragon image that I drew, inked and colored for a “Dragonboat” contest at my employer. I didn’t win, but I had fun doing the drawing. Sable brushes, scanned, then colored with Photoshop.
Whenever I color with Photoshop it makes me want to branch into doing December Sun in color, but problems are:
- I enjoy black and white
- I don’t often delineate my figures clearly: either my lines are broken, or they are “brushy” or cross-hatched and don’t lend themselves to easy coloring.
- I can never get flesh tones right.
- My goofy Gem monitor has issues and occasionally goes pinkish in coloration, so I’m never sure if my colors are completely accurate (not really an issue when working strictly in black and white.) I’m long overdue for a new monitor.
- If I go to color, it would be a downer to “downgrade” into black and white again. I’m speaking from my own experience: if I was reading a title that started in black and white, then went to color, I’d probably not be likely to want it to go back to black and white and gray-scale. So if I try color and get burned out, I’m sort of obligated to stick with it, right?
- Color just take a lot of time.
I’ve had a number of ideas for a December Sun Holiday issue that would be in color, but then I’m so used to doing the title in black and white, I’m just not sure if that would work. I’m also thinking of revisiting the “Manga Sun” idea, but that’s a whole new can of worms.
So I was reading about the “24 Hour Comic Day Challenge”, on Oct. 3, in which creators are challenged to create 24 consecutive pages of a comic book in the span of 24 hours. I look at something like this, and it just makes me sad, because with December Sun, I’m more of the time-frame of 24 pages in 24 months! (well, maybe not that bad, but close.)
I’ve often wondered (Rob is going off into muse mode now) what it would be like to be a full-time comic book artist. I mean, not having to work a “real” job, but instead able to just wake up and get to work drawing and inking. I wonder if it would take away the pleasure of the craft, having to do it for a living? Could you, in fact, get tired of drawing, and burned out of inking?
As it stands now, I draw, ink, and Photoshop-manipulate the pages in the evening as a way to unwind. I hate television and most movies these days, so comics make up one of my few hobbies (that, and this awful Tetris site… evil! Especially now that they have a beta of “Tetris Live”, with “weapons” and things to use in 6-player matches.)
24 hours to do 24 pages would be a joke for me. No way I could do that. But it’s a neat idea for those who have the time and resources.
Over at my other miscellaney blog I just posted the 5-pages of a comic I drew a few years ago, featuring a character by my friend Billy Leavell named “Ray Rocket”. I had permission to use his character as part of a challenge issue in the fanzine Alpha-Omega, that I’ve been a member of for nearly 9 years. I infused his character Ray Rocket with “Archie” characters (simply because I thought it would be interesting to try drawing some of them) as well as some oblique David Bowie references. It was a lot of fun, and a nice break from December Sun (sigh… I’m always finding excuses to take breaks from December Sun… I’ve got three, maybe four, side-projects going on right now, as a matter of fact.) Here are the pages: 1,2,3,4,5
While going through my art folder I came across a number of pages for Tzedek, a comic I illustrated a year or so ago for my friend Hale. I don’t think I’ve mentioned it here on the blog, but rather on the Geocities page. This is one of the panels.
I also enjoyed this project in that this was done with a brand-new Winsor/Newton Sable brush – I should change brushes more often, because the experience of breaking in a new brush is great… but at the same time, I like the familiarity of a brush that I’ve been using forever (I’m currently using a brush that is actually SNAPPED in half, but the brush still works so well, I’ve been sticking with it.)
Anyhow, more pages of Tzedek can be seen here. Hale did the coloring for these pages, as well as the lettering.
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