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!