Digital Pencils again

Some more digital pencils for my Stretch of the Imagination project. I will hopefully start inking these pages in the next week.

Digital Pencils...

First time I'm working this process. I'm gonna rough in all my pencils digitally, then do the inking traditionally over top my monster lite-box. I'm going to knock out the rest of the pencils (6 more pages) before I move on to ink.

last update for the night...

and tomorrow I need to work on comic stuff. I will return to this painting after Thanksgiving.

really can't wait to finish and scan...

since some things just get washed out in the hand held photos I'm taking. Making progress though, from the time, I may not finish tonight... but it will get done.

still going

happy with some areas, other areas (the background) have a ways to go to make me happy. Still at it though. (this will teach me to do a color study in photoshop first)

underpainting done

Not a lot of difference from the last update, just finishing up my under-painting by blocking in the darker colors using a mix of burnt umber and paynes gray. I should update at least two more times today with the progress I make on this.

thought I forgot, didn't you?

I while ago I got started laying down pencils for a painting, and then I had to focus on a bunch of other stuff. Obviously I haven't gotten much further, but I have toned the paper and started laying in darks. I will be taking one of my days off next week to focus only on this, and should be able to mostly knock it out, so remember to check back.

My big ol' light table covered in in-progress and failed attempts... I should be using this guy next week also, and will have to clear it off.

My paint, pallet area for my painting.

Practice sketching

Honestly, until the last few weeks I never really inked with a brush to any large extent. My education in inking involved tech-pens. Since I decided I'm going to do "Stretch of the Imagination" largely in brush, Ive been practicing a bit.

This was done all in brush...

and this was me playing around with coloring it.


Now it's time for me to get to penciling pages.

Thumbnails: Part 2 the revenge

Here's some more thumbnails connecting to what I posted yesterday, plus a second 2 page comic that would lead into it. This time I'm going to be less talky-talky.









Now to get to doing some digital pencils.

My Process Step 002

Alright, I figure since I shared the first step of making this strip, I will do my best to keep folks updated in the process till the finish(this will also crack the whip on me getting this done).

This is the thumbnail stage. Since I'm basing this on an idea that I scribbled for myself, based loosely on myself, in this stage I tare apart, rearrange, expand and contract on the text. Dialogue is still up in the air, but space still has to be considered for the text to go.

Here are a couple of brush warm-ups, about 2.5"x1.5" I did at the start of this to get myself in the mood.


The actual thumbs are done in a mix of blue pencil and ball-point pen at 3"x4".
The first page of the comic is just there to set a bit of the fantasy element of the story and to establish the time of year and maybe implant a little bit of craving.


Since I avoided an establishing shot on the first page, I needed to set up the environment that the story would take place in. That's the only real pupose I set for this page.


I know in on the third page that I'm going to put down some narration where the dialogue is gonna wander around a bit, then return the reader to the story.


The fourth page is when fantasy and reality will begin to overtly mix.


I set some restrictions on what I can do on the page (firm belief in the idea that people become more creative when they need to find ways to work around limitations). The main rule for myself was that I would work in a twelve panel grid. No page so far actually uses twelve panels, but the grid format seems to fit a horizontal composition really well.

A bit more of this story to create, I'll post up the final few thumbs tomorrow.

Ink Sketch: Stretch of the Imagination

Doing some prep work for my "Stretch of the Imagination" idea. Since the stories I write will involve me, this includes the first self-portrait that I've done in a few years. The drawings in this picture were done with a brush pen(pentel black 101) and an Office Max gel pen 0.7. It feels good to get back to messy materials, but I have to remember to be carefull not to smear the ink as I work... especially with the gel pen.

Final One for the night

Last character sketch I'll be posting tonight... maybe not the last one I'll do, but it's time to get away from the computer for a bit.

and another

digital character sketch

decided to do my character designs for the characters of this story digitally, since I'll be working the entire project this way... and I really don't want any disconnect in my mind on the look of the thing.