I’ve finally gotten back into drawing this week. I’d dabbled here and there over the last couple months, but ended up setting it aside every time. This time, I’m sticking with it pretty well. I’ve got a fairly major project that I’m well into, and fully plan on finishing.
I’ve got the pencil work done, and finally got started inking it last night. Boy have my inking skills diminished over the years! Hard to believe I came damn close to inking professionally not that many years back.
(The long and short of that story is: I did some inking work for an independent/self-published comic many years back that was solicited, but the comic industry tanked and took the publisher with it, so it never saw the light of day. As an aside, the book was to have been an anthology (three or four stories per issue) and I was the writer on another of the stories, so I was almost a published artist and writer all those many years ago!)
Anyway, back on track… (I think, if I were a superhero, my name would be “Doctor Digression” *grin*)
What was I talking about? Oh, yeah… inking. My line work was pretty atrocious at times, I’ve really lost my touch. Only made worse by the fact that the paper I’m using isn’t coated well enough (it seems more geared for pencil sketches) so there was some bleeding here and there, especially where I had to press down harder to get a stronger line weight. Time to buy a pad of better paper before I move on to the next piece.
The base linework is done, tonight (hopefully) I will go in and do all the detail work with a smaller nib. (I suspect the larger nib I used last night was a bit old and contributed to my sloppiness a bit, so I guess I’ll find out tonight!) I should be able to finish that off tonight, then I can scan it into Photoshop, clean up some of the sloppy inking (especially the bleeding), and then start digitally coloring it. Hopefully it will all be done over the weekend so I can post the finished product soon!
If I can stick with it, I can use that as an excuse to buy one of these and shift to doing most (or all) of the process digitally! *smile*