Harley Quinn Tryout Page

Well, the contest is over, so I might as well post this, my Harley Quinn tryout page for DC Comics.

Batman Print Pencils

Making a new print, hopefully I will have it done in time for Detroit Fanfare 2013. HB lead on Strathmore 300 series bristol board.

MARKET PRICE page 3 Pencils

Page three of my short story "Market Price".

Market Price page 2 pencils

This one got messy - lots of drawing and redrawing!

Here is a page of pencils, from a short story I am writing and drawing. I love creepy, old Victorian houses and thought I'd have a go at drawing one. I ended up laying/writing out a six page short story around it. No photo tracing or Google Sketch Up shortcuts here, just old fashioned pencil on paper. Enjoy?

The Shadow!

Quick little turnaround of one of my favorites, THE SHADOW. I love how Wilfred Torres has been rendering the character on The Shadow: YEAR ONE.

Sample Pencils

I have had the opportunity to be involved with some very cool projects this year. Unfortunately, they are all still in various states of completion, which means that I can't share any of the art. So I came with some sample pages to share. Enjoy!

Before and After

Uncommon Thieves Page 2

More process pages. Less changes to this page than page one.

Uncommon Thieves

This is from a project I'm working on with writer Alex De-Gruchy. It's a monster comic that we co-created called Uncommon Thieves.

It is really is a dream project. Unfortunately, my endless compulsion to change and "correct" things can tend to get a little out of hand. Thankfully, I have Alex to bounce ideas off of. Here is my process for pencilling and inking page one. As you can see, there were many versions, even more than posted here. Anyway, enjoy!

And, finally, the inks!

The Vessel of Terror Page 5.3

Here is a page from Chapter 5 of "The Vessel of Terror", layouts, pencils and inks.

I drew the layouts on my Wacom Intous Tablet in Photoshop. Sometimes it's easier to draw layouts digitally because I make so many changes and do a lot of resizing. Once I have a layout I like, I resize it to 11x17 and use the Duotone option to make it a non-repro blue. Then I print them out on Bristol board and pencil over the layouts. Then I scan in the pencils, adjust whatever I need to in Photoshop and print them out on a fresh piece of Bristol board and ink over that. It sounds like a lot of work, but overall, my workflow is more productive.

As you can see, I flipped the last panel, to make the page flow a little better. Panel 2 was changed because I accidentally drew a close up of one character instead of the other. That's why it always pays to read the script!

Eye with Tentacles

The Blue Pencil Process

As I mentioned in the last post, I'm really loving my new Non-Repro Blue mechanical pencil. I've avoided using blue pencils before because I could only find the old fashioned kind that you have to sharpen. As the lead gets more rounded, the drawings turn to mush and it's hard to tell construction lines from contours. Anyway, this mechanical pencils works great and retains a nice clean line.

If I'm working with an inker, I'll go over the page again with a B graphite pencil. If I'm going to ink it, I go straight to inks. The best part about the non photo blue is that it doesn't show up when you scan it in as greyscale. So there is no need to erase the pages after you ink them. This also means that you can use markers without worrying about the loss of sharpness that comes with erasing. I've been using Japanese Kuretake markers a lot lately, ever since Jason Howard told me about them. They''re way more fluid and pointed them the Micron Pigmas or PITT pens. Really though, what's better than a fresh #102 nib, eh?

I still do most of my inking with the Winsor & Newton series 7 #2 brush watered down Speedball Super Black ink. Can't beat it.

Here is a page from "The Vessel of Terror" that shows the blue pencil process. First, I scan in the page in 24 bit color:




A little hard on the eyes, especially on a computer monitor, so I convert it to greyscale and send it to Magnus, the writer, and Alex, the editor, for approval:



Once it's approved, I ink it. No worries about erasing the page or smudging the graphite with my hand, thanks to the non-repro blue.

Motor City Comic Con

I'll be in Artists Alley at the Motor City Comic Con this weekend in Novi, MI. I'll have some singed and numbered prints for sale and also (hopefully) be doing some sketches for people. I'll also be showing some artwork from a new project that I'm working on which I haven't be able to post about yet.

Here is the latest page from The Vessel of Terror that I'm inking. A quiet scene on a Norwegian dock. The woman is modeled after Mad Men's Christina Hendricks because...well, why not?

Trick

I spent almost all of my “free” time in July working on a short story for Midnight Horizon. The script is by Alex De-Gruchy. It’s a Halloween themed “Tales from the Darkside” type story. I’ve lettered a couple comics for Alex in the past, but this is the first time I’ve illustrated anything for him.
I wasn’t able to really get to work on it until after July 4th and the deadline was August 1st. That means 3 weeks to pencil, ink and letter six pages and a cover, in addition to the 40-60 hours I spend a week working normally. And Wolfbait had a show, including a brand new 7-minute epic, (called either “The Dragon” or “Lusty” depending on who you ask) which we had to rehearse. Also July was a busy month for family stuff, including two birthdays, two funerals, and a visit from my brother in Chicago.

I worked in fits and starts, before and after work and all day on my days off. I knew I needed to warm up, so I started with what I considered to be the easiest and least dramatic pages. I wanted the first and last pages to look their best and figured that they would probably benefit from doing the middle pages first.
I began with page 3. I didn’t have the time to do detailed character sketches, so I worked out the kids and their costumes right on the page. I penciled roughly since I was inking it myself.








After I finished the pencils for pages 1-5, I sent scans to Alex, mostly to assure him that I actually was working on this thing. I struggled with the layout for page six, so I left it to deal with after the inking.


I started inking in the same order as I penciled. I used my usual inking set-up, 102 nib, #2 brush and Speedball Super Black ink. Most people mix it with the Higgins ink to get it a little thinner and clog less. I have to say that I love the Super Black on its’ own. It doesn’t fade when you erase the pencils and gives you such a striking, rich black. I make sure to rinse the nib/brush every once in a while to combat clogs. I also used a C-6 for some of the straight edges.









I did the lettering in Adobe Illustrator after I scanned in the pencils. I used Comicraft’s Wild and Crazy font for the dialogue because it’s one of the best looking and versatile fonts I have. Alex’s scripts are very specific about which words are in italics, bold, or bold italics, and this font has all of those. It also has alternate characters available when you hold the shift key. So, in a word like “Halloween”, I can use different “l”s and “e”s for variation. It makes it look less mechanical and closer to hand lettering. For the captions I used Comicraft’s Comic Crazy Roman font. I used a slight Roughen effect on the caption boxes.



Next, I penciled page six. The deadline was fast approaching, so I kind of rushed through it. I inked it the same day. However there were a few things I wasn’t happy with, specifically the head in panel two and all of panel 3. So I redrew them on a separate board and Photoshopped them in. Panel 4 and 5 called for a static background with characters moving around. I thought I would take a lesson from Dave Gibbons and draw the background only once and just slide it in behind the characters, like in animation.
I drew panel 5 with the background and just copied and pasted in behind Gary and Hal in panel 4. I bought a nice beleveled triangle right before I inked this, which made inking the straight edges a breeze. I also used a brand new 102 nib, which made the lines extra sharp.
The only problem was that the background from panel 5 didn’t extend far enough for panel 4. It stops at the window. So I copied it, flipped it horizontally and stitched it together.



Here is the cover. I wanted a simple image that could represent the story without having to spend precious time rendering it. It took about three hours to decide on the image and I inked it while watching an episode of STAR TREK, the original series. WABL shows it every night at 10:00. It was a great episode too, “Balance of Terror”, featuring the first appearance of the Romulans.

Pencils

Here are pencils for a comic I'm working on for "Watchdog Magazine". I'll upload inks and letters as I go. Enjoy.