Today’s sketch isn’t really based on anything– not a feeling, not an emotion– nothing. It’s just a warm up in an attempt to crack off the rust of not doing any sequential pencil work for three months. I’m having a very hard time doing storytelling again after not doing so for so long. I’m the kind of person who NEEDS to keep active with my drawing to stay ‘lubricated’ (art-wise) and fluid when it comes to doing interior page work. And right now, things just are NOT coming to me like they used to. The UP SIDE is that after over a dozen years in the business of drawing comic books for a living, I no longer panic when this kind of ‘block’ sets in. I used to, years ago, totally lose it and declare things like “OK– well THAT’S IT– I OFFICIALLY can NOT DRAW ANY MORE..!” and “I might as well QUIT THE BUSINESS– I CAN’T DRAW!!!”. Fortunately, I’ve learned over the years that the only way to overcome the frustration and anxiety of things not coming easily is to just calmly sketch and sketch on the side until I’m in a groove.

So here’s the sketch with a little color slapped on for good measure……

Well, that’s it for today. I hope you all have a great weekend– and I hope MINE will be spent getting back in the groove and turning out some good SPIDER-MAN work!

This is Entry 120.

Mike

Today’s sketch is just something that had been running through my mind recently– so I got it out on paper yesterday as a warm-up. I really enjoy drawing ‘just ordinary’ folks from time to time because, frankly, it can tend to get tedious drawing SUPER FOLKS all the time. That’s why I had such a wonderful time sharing childhood memories of my time living in Germany here accompanied by sketches that were inspired by those experiences. I’d love to do a ‘slice of life’ comic some day– a romance or just a series about regular people. Maybe as an online strip. Anyway, I’m babbling without much to say– so I’ll just leave you with the sketch and call it a day.

OK… see you soon.

This is Entry 119.

Mike

I see that Marvel has released the image for the cover to the first issue of FRIENDLY NEIGHBOROOD SPIDER-MAN at their CUP O’ JOE panel at WIZARD WORLD PHILLY — but the colors are so saturated and garish in the jpeg at NEWSARAMA that I thought I’d put up the line art so you could get a clearer idea of the wonderful ink work that Karl Kesel did on the piece. I also nabbed the jpeg from NEWSARAMA and played with the color balances a little so that it didn’t glow quite so much. It’s a little on the yellow side now, but at least the image is a bit clearer.

OK… that’s it for today. This is Entry 118.

Mike

So right after posting yesterday’s entry, I decided to immediately wade into digitally inking the cover pencils. I had briefly played with the idea of coloring directly from the pencils…. and I MAY still do that, but I also wanted to have the option of having the piece inked if I wanted to go in THAT direction. For those of you not familiar with the process of ‘digital inking’, it entails darkening up the pencil lines of a particular piece with the ‘LEVELS’ function in Photoshop to get the graphite lines to look as close to ink lines as possible. It helps greatly if your pencils are very tight, and fortunately I’ve always been a tight penciler. Once the pencil lines are darkened to an acceptable degree, then using the ‘LASSO’ tool, go in and capture all the large areas that are supposed to be ‘inked in’ or ‘filled in with black’ as is done in traditional inking, and fill those areas in digitally with… well, black. It’s relatively quick and simple. Then the last thing to do is to use the ‘ERASER’ tool and go back and clean up any residual pencil smudges, line overlaps or tangents, etc. This takes longer than anything else. I’ve got a pretty good scanner, and it picks up every little defect in a drawing. So anyway, here’s the finished, digitally inked piece:

It’s not quite as smooth and polished looking as, say, something that Karl Kesel (Inking God that he is) would do on something of mine…. but for my purposes, it works just fine. I know that there’s an ongoing debate over whether digital inking is good or not, but in this day and age of digital technology, combined with the fact that the market is in such a state that time-wise and money-wise it’s more NECESSARY for individual creators to take these new tools in hand for creator-owned projects….. I fall on the side of digital inks. At least for MY stuff. ‘Cause, y’know… I’m selfish.

SPEAKING of the great Karl Kesel, though– here’s a cover image I nicked from THE PULSE (please forgive me!)– it’s from the LAST HERO STANDING miniseries coming this month from MARVEL. I did two covers for it, and this one I hadn’t seen yet. Not only did Karl do a stunning job with the inks– the colors are amazing as well. I don’t know who the colorist is (I don’t see his sig on the cover)– but I commend you, whoever you may be! I think it turned out beautifully, if I say so myself.

OK… that’s it for today.

This is Entry 117

Mike

Here are the pencils for the sketchbook cover. I added a few fanciful flying machines to the piece to give it a bit more ‘oomph’… a little more balance. From the initial sketch I posted last time, you can see that I was playing with the idea of also drawing in a grand alien city in the background, but after thinking about it, I decided not to make the piece SO busy. I wanted to keep it relatively simple, especially in light of the fact that I’m going to try to color it myself– IF, that is, I end up even doing a color cover. I’m still considering whether or not to print the sketchbook as one of those traditional ‘8 1/2 x 11 inch folded in half with a one-color cardstock cover’ sketchbooks that seem to be the norm these days. I have played with the idea of doing something more elaborate and having a 64 page prestige format book and maybe see if I could get IMAGE to agree to publish it….. but I haven’t decided. Now, the next step is to consider whether to digitally ink the piece, or IF I decide to color it, color it from the pencils alone.

So many things to consider…….

Anyway– here’s the pencil piece:

I suppose the next day or two will reveal what I decide to do. If you’ve got any comments/opinions of your own about it, feel free to leave them.

I’ve decided to keep a running count of my blog posts from now on, so that I don’t miss any more ‘anniversaries’ like the ‘100th post milestone’. So I’ll end each post with the number of that days post– starting with today’s: Entry 116

Mike