ON PROCESS... DEADPOOL VS RAPHAEL

The process of comicking is an ever changing one.  As we grow as artists we pick up new things and we let others go, and sometimes we go back to them later on and start the cycle all over again.

This is more or less what my process is looking like today.  This was a commission I just did of Raph and Deadpool clashing swords and sais.

ROUGH IN RED PENCIL

I'm using a red lead holder because it's easy for me to see and different enough from the black line I'm going to put down with ink that I don't get confused.  If I was going to go to final inks on this I would probably do a light blue underdrawing, because it's less distracting, and the original art page wouldn't look like such a mess when I'm finished.

DRAWING IN INK OVER ROUGH WITH AN ARTPEN

The Artpen is way more fluid than my G-pen, so it's still a really loose drawing. This is still my rough underdrawing, I'm just making some choices and finalizing some lines.  This is the equivalent to my "finished pencils".  

LIGHT TABLE FINAL LINE ART WITH A G-PEN

Then I use a light table and put my clean final art board over top of the Artpen rough, at this point I try to go slower and make more calculated choices with the G-pen.  I use the titanium G nibs and either Eon Vortex Ink or Deleter 4 Ink.  I use the Eon and the Deleter ink, because those are the only 2 that I've found that don't reactivate when you add water or alcohol.

COLORS WITH WATERCOLOR, AND FINAL BLACKS WITH A BRUSH-PEN

I do the colors before doing any blacks because I use cheaper ink to fill in the blacks, and it reactivates if water touches it making it bleed.  Right now I have Noodler's "The Heart of Darkness" in my brush-pen... it's super black and it's supposed to be waterproof and bulletproof but it's NOT.  It totally reactivates and bleeds ... which could be a cool effect if it's intentional, but it could also be very bad if you weren't expecting it.

At this point I'll just add some more variety of value, pushing some of the lights and darks, add some more rendering here and there and doing some clean-up with white.  And then BOOM, off to the Post Office and dropping this bad boy into the mail.

Hope this was fun to see and answered some questions.

If you have any other questions about tools or comicking or my process ask away in the comments and I'll try to do a post to answer them.

Best!

@interstateninja

*POOF*