The catalyst for this desire to get back to paper and ink came with the end of Book 1 of Erfworld, the webcomic I’ve been working on for the past two years with my co-hort and writer Rob Balder. Book 1 is made up of 150 full color comic pages that I illustrated with Micron pens and colored in Photoshop. After 150 pages, I noticed that my drawing hand suffers from pain the longer I ink with the Microns. To alleviate this pain, I turned to inking with a brush. I’ve long read about professional inkers using brushes and dip pens to ink their work but whenever I tried either, the results were disastrous. Then I saw this video of Jeff Smith inking a panel with a brush and I got inspired!

I broke out an old brush that I had lying around and didn’t hate what I ended up with (sorry, bad camera phone pic).

I decided that I would totally convert and ink everything with a brush. I went to the local art store and picked up a proper sable hair brush for home and ordered a Pentel Pocket Brush Pen which uses synthetic bristles instead of a solid nylon tip so I could ink on the go. I figured, “why stop there?” I used to do a lot of ink wash work in college? Why not try some watercolor?

I feel like I’m relearning how to draw again which is actually quite exciting. Inking with Microns and coloring everything in Photoshop became too much of a grind. Starting over using a brush to ink make everything new and interesting. Now inking rocks and bricks is no longer something I dread. And I’m using washes to shade things before I throw on basic colors in Photoshop. Eventually, I want to do colors in watercolor. But that’s going to take some time and experimentation.

I’m looking forward to this learning process and I want to share what I’ve learned. I’m planning on doing some more video tutorials around more traditional techniques so keep an eye for that. Have no fear, Monster Cutie is going back to the drawing board! Literally!

If you’re anxious to see Jim draw something, skip over to Part 3. Jim goes through his routine starting with warm up sketches, laying out a scene, loose pencils, tight pencils, character design, and more. It’s been years since Jim worked for Marvel, but his methods are still relevant to today’s aspiring comic artists. Enjoy.

From twitter we have bcslaski from Amu’s World, hawkster from Applegeeks, rosscott from The System, pmbq from Unemployed Pandas, and BlondieCafFiend from Caf Fiends.

Since my twitter posts update my facebook feed, from facebook we have Beth, Bryan, Joe, Kyle, Shannon, and J. Andrew.

So, what’s your inking weapon of choice?

The sketch starts out very loose. I use a combination of brushes to build up texture all in gray scale. When I’ve worked the sketch to decent enough state, color is added on layers above the gray scale sketch. This workflow is similar to traditional water color and acrylic painters who use thin layers of color to build up their forms. To finish everything off, the sketch is flattened and color corrected. Highlights are worked in with the dodge tool. Color gradients are overlaid to tone the entire composition. That image gets flattened again and duplicated for the blur effect.