Jumbo deLuxe

And now for another quick look into the drawing process. From sketchbook, to bristol board, and finally the digital color version– one step short of the final comic strip without the graphics and lettering.

Sketchbook

I make layout drawings and concepts very quickly in my sketchbook where I try to think less about accuracy and correct perspective and more on getting nice arrangement and a correct amount of information. I sometimes regret that my final inks lack the energy, spontaneity and goofy detail of these early sketches. Every once in a while I dump some of the more acceptable stuff from my sketchbook to my flickr page, along with photos of my cats doing cute stuff, because that’s what the internet is really about.

Scanned in without any digital modification

The next phase is drawing on bristol board. I start with a light pencil sketch (I use 2h lead) and gradually work in the details and sometimes draw a grid for perspective. This one has pretty simple perspective so I just laid it in as I went along. I keep some scrap paper nearby to scribble ideas involving the layout, character blocking and facial expressions. I have a laptop and several usb jump drives loaded with reference images from the web, plus my own drawings of the characters and locations etc. I also keep a mirror nearby for reference in drawing facial expressions or hands. It usually takes between seven to ten hours to get all the drawings done for a single installment. This is especially the case when I’m making a crowd scene or an outdoor scene that has a lot of vehicles or architecture. To increase my comics output in the future, I’m considering making a story about a guy who sits alone all day in the desert. The inks are done with a variety of crow quill pens. More on this in a future blog post.

Adobe PhotoShop gets a workout when I clean up my inks and add color

Hooray for digital editing. I’m not the tidiest inker so PhotoShop gives me the opportunity to clean up my drawings and correct things like crooked lines and awkward facial expressions etc. Then there’s the color. I might have to make a separate blog post about this since it’s a fairly involved process using a lot of layers and making little corrections to the inks on the fly.

The final step is adding the text and the graphics and you end up with the strip that I posted in mid June. Again, this process might be worthy of an entire blog post.

See you soon!