Time was I’d go through the trouble of redrawing a whole panel with a mistake in it, or at least do a patch or a frisket for a small revision.  I’ve covered up many asymmetrical faces and oversized hands this way, and boy did it take time.  Having to rescan single elements in, then meticulously pasting it via Photoshop like some digital crane operator was never something I looked forward to.

Digital drawing didn’t right away occur to me as the obvious solution.  I’ve been coloring with a mouse for as long as I can remember, and when my peers demanded I get a drawing tablet, it only ever hit me as a coloring tool.  Silly me.

It’s no giant leap, I know.  But now all my page and panel revisions are done digitally.  I erase stuff out and draw things in, all with the Wacom.  Only the correction phase has changed though, all the original art is still done traditionally.  And that retention  makes me happy for some strange reason.

About a week ago I completely adopted the habit of doing absolutely all my spot blacks in the computer.  It’s faster and much less messy, but I’m also left, for all intents and purposes, with an unfinished original page.  There is a balance to be struck here, and I haven’t found it yet.

The irony of being torn between a laborious and messy physical process versus a speedy and accurate ethereal one doesn’t escape me, but hey… comics versus art?

Here’s a page from JUDAH.  Immortal undead.  Fallen angels.  Shady dealings.  And of course, boobies.

With SOVENA RED #1 in the can, I recently pulled cover duty and got to experiment with coloring techniques — a playground I don’t get to visit often.  Here’s a closer look at the grayscales for some facial detail I tried my very best not to screw up.  Click?

Show you guys some pages soon.

Here’s a quick peek at what goes into my thumbnails before I take them to inked completion.  These are pages 15 to 17 from Rod Hannah’s SOVENA RED, of which I am nearing the first issue’s completion.

Hah! Made you look.  No, I’m not getting married yet.  I hear the first step to doing that is getting a girlfriend, but I haven’t had one in years.  Comics and art (the mean mistress!!!) have been eating up a lot of my time lately, so the social life has gone out the window.  This entry’s title isn’t totally inaccurate though, coz I’ve been spending a lot of time technically marrying my two stylistic influences into something I can call my own.  Or trying, at least.

Realistic vs Abstract/Cartoony.  Which is better?  Which sells?  Which makes for better storytelling?  It’s taken me this long to realize that the answer is neither.  Realistic adds a lot of believabilty to a scene, that’s a given, but the abstract style can pull off fantastic exaggerations in mood.  Mignola plays a delicate balance between the two and it works exquistely in Hellboy.  Realistic allows for your characters to be more relatable in whatever outlandish situation you put them in, but being able to rubberize their expressions and gestures makes for an incredibly broad spectrum of emotion and dynamism.  Stuart Immonen plays with this and kicks serious ass every time a new issue of Ultimate Spidey hits the stands.  Then I read it, cry in my bath tub, then slash my penis with a razorblade.

These are just two of the points as to why a stylistic marriage would come out awesome, and I’m pretty sure there are countless others.

Having said that, I’ve been trying my best two fuse the two sentimentalities into something I can call my own.  I’ve talked about this in a previous entry, Shapes, and I doubt I’ll stop talking about it anytime soon.  Been re-reading a lot of old MAD magazines to study Mort Drucker’s great caricature work.  Good stuff.

Anyway… here are last week’s dailies:

MONDAY: Kicked off Marvel week with my favorite X-Man, Nightcrawler.  He’s always been visually interesting and there’s never a shortage of cool poses to use on him.  Spooky and athletic, in my head he’s like Batman and Spidey combined.

TUESDAY: Nothing special to say about this piece.  I don’t read Captain America, and I’m not a WWII buff.  I just wanted to do a villain portrait.  Call it an M.O.

WEDNESDAY: Well I had to do something to counter Power Girl from last week, right? And Spider Woman is hands down the hottest superlady in Marvel right now.  Never mind that she’s a Skrull Queen bent on enslaving us, still teh hawt. I might’ve oversized her boobies though — complaints?

THURSDAY: Loki.  As a woman.  I know, I know.

FRIDAY: Fridays are always hectic for me coz that’s when I tend to fill my page quotas for the week, plus I do the podcast with my buddies.  So from now on, I’ll devote Fridays to pose studies and the like.  I’m sure you all can tell from looking at the logan sketch that my anatomy in the arm area could use a bit of work.  but yeah, doing things like this every once in a while will definitely help make my poses more dynamic and shit.

::: ::: ::: Tres Komikeros episode 11 ::: ::: :::

Lastly, any Zuda lovers in the house?  Even if you’re not, it’ll be good for you to head on over to their site and vote for my buddy Justin Jordan’s comic, Rumors of War.

He died on the battlefield, giving his life for God and Country. Johnny died a hero, but he didn’t stay dead. He’s been taken from his dying place to another world, another place, where a war has raged since the beginning of time. Resurrected for a fight that he can barely understand, much less hope to survive. Here, even death is no end to a soldier’s fight, the dead and dying returned to fight again and again. The Enemy is monstrous and the Ally is worse.