Fainting Couch with Cats

A short post today. This is a new piece for the next batch for CILM. Ink on 11" x 17" Canson Bristol Board with colors in Photoshop. Hope everyone had a good Monday.

Plastic Man Saves Bettie Page - Process

I just finished this today and the person who commissioned it has allowed me to share the process. His ideas are always fun and I enjoy working on them. For those of you who are sensitive to bare breasts or do not approve or enjoy cheesecake artwork, this is not for you. See you tomorrow if you come back. Meanwhile if Tour B will follow me we will proceed. :)

The concept here is a newspaper photo showing Plastic Man saving Bettie Page from a thief who tried to steal her mink stole in a unnamed 1950s New York City nightclub. Below is the initial sketch I did. It was approved so I moved on to doing sketches of Bettie and Plastic Man.

After warm-up sketches, I did a tight pencil drawing of the piece. This is done in pencil on 8.5" x 11" copy paper. At this stage I have everything I need. But we both thought that Plastic Man's face wasn't shown enough with the bulging eyes, so we opted for the big grin look instead.
I then enlarged my pencil drawing in Photoshop to the actual size I would be doing the finished art, 16" x 20". I printed it out the image on two pieces of 11" x 17" paper on my Epson Photo 2200 printer. I taped the two pieces together and light boxed the line work onto a piece of 4-ply Strathmore Bristol Board. Then came the inking. I used a very watered down ink for this. Because it was to be in gray tones, like a newspaper photo, I didn't want the harsh black outlines. (The lines look a lot darker below because I had to adjust the contrast so you can see the pencils and the inks.) The inking was done with a brush.
I didn't outline the band in the background. I felt it would pull them into the foreground too much. Instead I established them with washes of gray. The washes of gray were done using watercolor. I feel I have a better control of the values with watercolor than I would with watered down ink. Below I am getting my darkest darks and my whitest whites (the paper) established. This way I get a clearer vision of the shades in between.
I continue working the grays to add more depth to the piece. The band is right were I want them in terms of value and the people coming down the stairs at the top right worked out too. I continue to build the darks until I am satisfied. With the piece done, I set some type on my iMac to fit the bottom area I left open. I print out the text and transfer it to the board with my light box using a black colored pencil.
I then sign the bottom right with my name and copyright. After it dries, I scan it and send the image in an email. If everything is good, I will put it between two pieces of masonite and ship it out.

Thanks for stopping by.

SALLY VOLT - SPACE JUNGLE GIRL!

Sally once again makes it to the blog. SALLY VOLT - SPACE JUNGLE GIRL is the creation of myself and writer J.C. Vaughn. She has been around for about 5 years but not much has been done with her. We see her as a sunday adventure strip that takes a wide variety of genres, tosses them into the blender and makes a nice frozen concoction for a summer day. J.C. has written about 15 episodes and sometime this month I will get started on the first one. I'm still playing around with the format of the originals but right now I am gearing up to do the strips on 16" x 20" boards. Inked, hand lettered and colored right on the originals. They will have the look of the old original sunday strips, minus the glue stains. Yeah, only big ideas here, folks. This piece is done in pencil on 11" x 17" Strathmore 500 series 2-ply Bristol Board.

Lost City of Lygosis - Inks

I posted this panel in it's pencil version back in April. I just finished the inks for the page this panel is on so I figured it would be a chance to compare. I can hardly wait to see what the colorist does with this.

PERILS ON PLANET X inks

Inked another page of POPX today and I thought I would share it here. Our hero is in his flight gear for the first time on this page. Yeah sure, he wore it on the first page of the first issue, but that was just a photo shoot, not an actual story page. :)

Hanging on by a thread

Like yesterday's post, this was a sketch I posted here a while back. Today I had the chance to tight up the drawing and paint it. This is done on 11" x  14" Strathmore 4 ply Bristol Board. The medium is watercolors with a bit of colored ink.

3 Second Rule

So I missed the fact that this year has 366 days, not 365. Today is actually my half-way point for the year of consecutive art posts. Cue the fanfare!

I posted the sketch and color comp for this piece a while back. It was titled 5 Second Rule. Now it's titled 3 Second Rule. Seems there is some debate about the exact time one has in which they can pick up dropped food and safely eat it. Today was incredibly productive: Designed 5 promotion pieces for a client, finished the pencils to the Plastic Man/Bettie Page commission (scanned and sent for approval) inked a page of PERILS ON PLANET X #2, and inked and digitally colored this piece for the next batch of art going to CILM. All in all, a good day. Thanks for dropping by. :)