My oh my, life has been absolutely hectic this year! In the past two months, my wife and I have moved to a new town and had a baby (who is absolutely adorable by the way), along with all the craziness that surrounds those events (and more than a few crazy moments that don't). Needless to say, drawing has had to take a back burner. Now that things have calmed down ever so slightly, I want to get back into things.

For the better part of five years, for some unknown reason, I've been unable to use my tablet to its full potential. I believe the house we were in had some form of radio interference that cause the pen to jump on screen, making inking and anything other than basic Photoshop painting impossible. I was able to use the tablet on the go (i.e. at work etc), so it wasn't the hardware itself. To make a long story short, at our new house this is no longer an issue. I am now free to explore digital inking again, something I was only scratching the surface of.

The picture below started off as a test, but I liked it enough to ink and color. This was done entirely digital, roughed/colored in Photoshop and inked in Illustrator. Feedback is always welcome!

Labels: fire, flames, robot, smoke

Part of the challenge of working on comics and art part time is coming up with a workflow that's relatively fast. Given less time (and energy) in the evening, going about things in the traditional roughs/pencils/inks/colors means can be daunting. What I've been trying to do is find ways to cut a few corners without compromising the visions I see in my mind.

These two sketches were done using mechanical pencil, and a few quick Photoshop tricks to simulate an ink pen. I'm going to try to color these soon and see what the end results are. Enjoy!

Labels: pencils, robot, sketches, teddy bear