Penciling and Inking
A closeup of panel seven. I wanted to show how sometimes I’ll draw off the side of the panel to make sure an arm is working right or something. You can also get a better look at the creepy horse.
Finished pencils for panel seven. This is about as tight as I ever pencil, since I’m inking the thing myself. I can do a bit of the drawing with the pens and save myself some time.
Almost the whole thing done at this point. I still have to put in backgrounds in panels nine, eleven, and twelve, and I have to draw a castle in panel thirteen that I haven’t started yet.
I went to sleep between the last picture and this one. I felt like starting the day by drawing a castle, so I pencilled and inked the last panel in a go.
Your cranium must be proteicntg some very valuable brains.
Stunning work!
What kind of ink and brush do you use?
I learned that pencilers who do their own inks use blue lead for the roughs–something I’ve tried myself–so that after inking, they just scan in greyscale and they save time on erasing/erasers. Is that something you’d recommend?
For this project I’ve just been using Pigma Micron pens (in the .03, .05, and .08 sizes) and a Pentel Pocket Brush Pen with Rapidograph Ultradraw ink.
I wrote this about four years ago or so; since then I’ve switched to a blue pencil and it is absolutely something I’d recommend. I use the Prismacolor Colerase pencil in light blue (which, oddly enough, disappears better than non-photo blue when I scan.)
Les. This looks great. What are the measurements of your actual panel borders? My best guess is an inch on the sides, an inch on the bottom and a half-inch on the top? Am I close? How wide are your gutters?
Also, when you scan with blue pencils these days, do you just scan as an RBG and remove the blue, or do you still scan in grayscale?