Moving on with adding colours to the Inktober pieces. This was the second one I did I believe. It's a more realistic/futuristic/cybernetic take on my character Koru from my short comics story, "The Spirits & The Woods". I tried a new to me inking approach and was generally pleased with the way it turned out.

In terms of colours, I kept up trying more saturated colours, along with some coloured line work and more detailed lighting effects. Since this is all stuff I don't normally do, it took more noodling and I may have overworked things a bit. I normally try to stay conscious of that in order to keep things moving along at a decent clip, but since I experimented more during Inktober, I think the colours could use some experimentation too. Since new things are also scary, I probably did more second guessing than was needed, but I really need to shake up some routines and try to learn new ways of doing things.

Labels: cyborg, Fablewood, Inktober, Koru, Samurai

I was just experimenting with a quick picture on my lunch hour (pencils to finish -- 1 hour) using some brush presets that illustrator (and all round awesome artist) Ray Fenden created. I've always struggled with inking in Photoshop, and while these were probably the best I've seen, I think I've come to a conclusion: I kind of don't like inking digitally anymore.

I have spent a good chunk of time creating pictures using digital ink (mostly using Adobe Illustrator). From what I can tell, the only real way to simulate the freedom of pens/brushes is by using Manga Studio and a Cintiq (or equivalent -- please see Krishna's great write-up on the Yiynova MSP19U Tablet Monitor). To be honest, it's a huge investment for me at this point, and while I had a good time with (and am proud of) the work I produced in Illustrator, I find it actually slowed me down a bit. That seems like a rough trade off when it should really help to streamline the process.

All that being said, I may be just be having an off day, and will be back to digital inks again. We'll see!

Labels: brushes, digital inks, ghosts, process, Samurai

"Samurai" was this week's topic at Drawer Geeks. I haven't had any real time to draw anything just for myself (which is actually an awesome thing... more on that later), but I couldn't pass up Samurai! That being said, I tried quite a few new things in this one, some successes and some not so much. Interesting experiment none the less. Enjoy!

Labels: Drawer Geeks, Illustrator, Photoshop, Samurai