It’s safe to say that I am a perfectionist. This post will make apparent the extent of my affliction. When I posted the final page 28, I promised to post these preliminary images and I described them as ’surprising’. What will be probably most surprising about them is how close they are to the final. Folks who have seen these and the final page together just shake their heads and often can’t pick out the differences. See if you can spot where I went ‘wrong’.

Since this second image is so near completion, I’m going to offer it up to the first person who makes a donation of over $35 using the link to the right. Normally any donation of over $25 gets a black and white drawing such as this but this one is bigger and therefore more expensive to ship. If more than one person donates, non winning donations will get a regular black and white sketch. Even at the higher rate, I promise these sketches pass my rigorous perfectionist criteria and are sure to please!

In other news, some new links have been posted to the links page. They include a link to ComicSpot, Sinus Camera, Pixel Rain, and a wonderful new webcomic, Desert Story, by Klos. These fine sites have already linked to me so when you’re done here, please visit them and show your support.Thanks, everyone!

So once I’ve got a final pencil drawing on vellum, I transfer it to the watercolor paper. I trace the image on the opposite side of the vellum and then rub this onto the paper. This is helpful because I can also check how the reverse of the drawing looks as I trace it. It’s like the old mirror trick to see if things still look ‘right’ except I do it by flipping the vellum. Okay, once I’ve got the drawing transfered onto the paper, I then go over it again to strengthen the lines before I begin to ink it.

The first areas that I ink are usually the ‘real-world’ areas that are going to be in black, white and greys. I use the Faber Castell line of Pitt artist brush pens to do these areas. Depending on how I would like to create the ’space’, I ink the things that I feel should be closest to the viewer in black first and then choose some of the darker greys to draw the outlines of other objects further in pictorial space. Once I’ve got all the objects outlined in their respective shades of grey and black, I begin to fill in the areas with the lighter greys to create the shadows. With this page I had all the images from the ‘real’ world inked and began to fill in the grey tones when I became a little unhappy with the way things were going. This often happens where I start to ink a page and find things that I think could be improved. Because I am using the Pitt pens, I have only a certain number of grey tones to choose from and I don’t always get it right the first time around. Images like the third ‘panel’ weren’t as effective as I thought they could be so I decided that I would try another approach on a second page. This first attempt starts out with the best intentions of being the final page but alas it ends up being a guinea pig and that’s why this first scan is a bit of a mess! I put this page aside and retransfer the drawing onto another piece of watercolor paper and start the whole inking process over again. Once I know that it’s not going to make it to the final round, I really am free to practice things before doing them on the second page. As soon as I have all the grayscale ‘frames’ inked and toned, I move onto the thought balloons. These areas are inked using a Pentel Pocket brush because the ink is not water soluble once it’s dry (I need to use watercolor over them) and the brush is great for fine line work as well as dry brushing over the paper texture. I’ll test out a few approaches on the first page and then eventually move onto the second, final inked page. Here’s what the second page looked like at this stage.

That’s better! You’ll notice that the balloon of the boy recoiling at the end is not inked at this stage. I thought I would wait until I had that ‘frame’ colored before I would go in with a black line. I knew that I wanted to have a spray of blood so I thought it best to ink around whatever paint spatter I got.

That pretty much covers the inking phase of things! The next step is to mask and color the thought balloon areas. Come back tomorrow for Step 4: Masks and Colors Part 1!