I drew this for the topic "Soaked" over at Illustration Friday. While I'm not necessarily working on the topics as they come up, I am using them as motivation when I'm stumped artistically; picking and choosing the ones I like as I see fit. With this piece, I wanted to try and be a bit loose with my inks. I have a tendency to over think the final inks, so they become a bit more rigid than I'd like. I did this using only a brush pen.

I also really tried to simplify the coloring process, as it is the biggest bottleneck for me. This was done with mostly flat colors and the pencil tool. No fancy textures or photoshop tricks. I think it worked out quite nicely.

Labels: cowboy, Illustration Fridays, Monsters, rain, soaked

I find myself constantly trying to find a process to a finished product that isn't a culmination of tedious sub steps. Some of my comic work in the past has seen 2-3 near complete drawings (pencils, second pass at pencils, inks). I'd like to ideally get to a stage where I'm roughing in non-photo blue pencil, and simply applying ink. No erasing, no clean up. The problem of course is getting a line quality I enjoy without needing all the sub steps.

After some experimentation, I think I'm finally getting a hang of this Pentel brush pen. These were all done with the brush pen, either as new pieces (the first two), or over older pencils I'd never really done anything with (the last). As always, feedback is appreciated!

Labels: cowboy, ghosts, Monsters, robots, shoot out, soaked