TRUE COLORS PART ONE -PENCILS

Back in 2006, Len Strazewski contacted myself, Andrew Pepoy, Scott Beaderstadt, and others to draw stories for an anthology of stories that he wrote. I ended up drawing 2 stories, which have become 3 with at least one more on it's way.

The first story I drew was called True Colors and told the tale of a modern day psychic and business man who had stopped world domination when they were children. They come together again because the threat they thought they had stopped as kids has resurfaced.

The following are the pencils I did for this project:

After the pencils, I inked and colored the story, the art of which which will be seen in future posts.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS PART 11- FROM FINISHED PENCILS TO INKS

When it comes to my artwork, I can be very selfish. I am unwilling to ink over my finished pencils because I want to keep the original artwork as it is. So how do I ink it?

My first step is to finish the art in the pencil stage, putting as much detail in it as I possibly can.

This is the first page from Len Stazewski's Milos saga, 

which will be printed in an upcoming anthology.

Once the pencils are finished, I scan them into the computer. If they are being inked by someone else. I send them to the editor and wash my hands of them, eagerly awaiting the final printed comic. If I'm inking them myself, I convert the art digitally to non-photo blue and print it out on bristol board.

I then ink over that, so I end up with both a finished pencil copy as well as an inked copy. 

The inked page with letters by the great Willie Schubert

I do this mostly because I don't consider myself an inker, so if I mess up the page, I'll still have the original. Although I end up using more paper, the process works well for me.

INflUENCES PART 12

Today is Jeff Austin's birthday.

Jeff is the inker for the work I do for AC Comics and has worked on all but one of the stories that I've drawn for them. Jeff's work is very unique because he adds a lot of detail and brush strokes to the art.

This is a page from the one of the stories I did for AC Comics.

Here's the page with Jeff's inks.

When I saw how much Jeff was improving my artwork, I realized that I had to up my game. I started adding more detail and tried to imagine how he would approach a particular page. The end result has been better artwork on my end.

In addition to working for AC, Jeff has a blog that can be found HERE

FEMFORCE 151 ( November 2009)

The following are pencils I did for AC Comics' Femforce #151. The story was 7 pages of conversation  so it's not the most exciting thing I've ever drawn. The plot deals with the repercussions of Femforce #150 ( which I was unable to work on due to my redrawing of the King Kong trade paperback). The return of the once deceased Stardust and the blinding of Captain Paragon.

 RECOVERY is the lead story of the issue.

This issue had a feature that was very important to me. The flip side of the book featured my painted cover for Gargantarama #14 - the first painted cover I've done:

See my process for creating the cover HERE

Femforce #151 was published in January 2010, and can still be found online HERE

INFLUENCES PART 11

Mike Sobey is one of best commercial illustrators in the city of Chicago. I have learned a great deal in the past decade that I've worked with him at Steve Edsey & Sons. Mike's work consists mostly of advertising art, although he did illustrate some covers for Rick Lundeen's  self published graphic novels.

Mike has a number of distinct styles. The one in which I learned how to marker comps and paint from is his realistic tone-on-tone storyboards:

He also does event sites:

And a style called "loose line":

He employs, in his black and white work the "60/40 rule" What this means is that in order to have good balance in b/w, artwork has to be either 60% black & 40% white or vice versa. I try to keep this in mind when working on the b/w Femforce art:

Mike Sobey's artwork can be found HERE and HERE

THE CREATIVE PROCESS PART 10- ROUGH PENCILS

In my process of drawing, I usually do 3 sets of 3 pencils for each page. The first set of roughs is done by using my photo page as an underlay and drawing it backwards on vellum.

Example of backwards photo page. this particular story 

( printed in Femforce #152) had less photos and 

more comic booky action shots

After the first set of roughs, I flip the vellum over and use that as an underlay to create the second set of roughs. This second set serves to correct the mistakes of the first set. The second rough is then scanned and set to the editor for approval:

Once this rough is approved I go to finish:

The purpose of drawing the first rough backwards is that it's easier to correct mistakes on the second, so that when I get to the finished pencils all the problems have been fixed:

This is the first rough for the Stormy Tempest story

that appeared in Femforce #155. Something didn't seem right 

to me about the first panel.

This is the rough after the corrections were made.

This is the finished pencil page

Sometimes, the corrections don't get fixed in the second rough. When this happens, the final pencil is where the corrections must take place, or they stay in the printed artwork.

Here is a rough that, because of timing issues, went straight to ink 

at this stage without a final pencil. Take a look at the first

panel. The background is disproportionate to the foreground. 

As you can see, the tree is really large in comparison to the house. Unfortunately,

the finished printed page had this mistake in it.

Although the finished inked page had the proportion problem, I went back

and finished the pencils on the page. This is how it should have looked.

For me, rough pencils are an essential part of the process of drawing. It might seem like more work, but in the end, the pages look better because of it.

KONG: KING OF SKULL ISLAND #5

Kong: King Of Skull Island, was a 5 limited series that was published by Markosia. It was based on a book illustrated by Joe Devito and co-written by Brad Strickland.  The book was a sequel to the King Kong story, following the footsteps of Carl Denham's son, Vincent,  as he travels to Skull Island to locate his missing father. In the course of the story, we discover Kong's backstory. I had the pleasure of drawing issue #3, the second half of #4, and all of #5.

In the pages that follow, redrawn for the trade paperback, Kong fights the dinosaur Gaw in an epic, climatic battle:

The book, Kong: King Of Skull Island, by Joe Devito and Brad Strickland can be found HERE and the TPB ( that I drew) is HERE