Penciling and Inking
Now I’ve gone in and finished the backgrounds for the last few panels. It really makes the page look a lot better, doesn’t it? Next I’ve just got to erase the pencils.
Once I’ve erased the pencils, I’m pretty much done. Sometimes I just scan straight from this. But I’ve gotten obsessive about having the original pages look completely finished, (I’ve even had a gallery show of them, so it’s not really as crazy as it sounds) so I usually pull out a brush and some ink and fill in the blacks.
Ohh that makes it look all nice. Now all I have to do is scan it and I’m all done (except for the lettering and coloring which I’m not going to talk about here.)
And that’s what the final, scanned page looks like! Since I’m working at such a large size and I only have a letter-sized scanner, I have to scan each tier in two parts. So, eight scans and some time rebuilding and I’m ready to color! That’s covered elsewhere.
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?