One of the things I would like to start doing more frequently are tutorials and general “how-I-work” posts. I figured that a guide to how I do my word balloons would be a good place to start. Every artist seems to have a slightly different method, and this is simply something I have developed over the years. I enjoy it mainly due to it’s flexibility.  While it certainly may not be for everyone, I hope it may at least show some people that paths aren’t as terrifying as they may seem.

josh

Added a paypal donation button and a strangegods wallpaper as a thank you! Just click on the link and donate any amount, if you feel so inclined, and you will then be redirected to the page to download the wallpaper.

Thank you for any support!

josh

I made an update in my twitter last week, and the site header now reflects it as well, but for anyone still unaware, Strangegods is now three days a week! A Monday, Wednesday and Friday schedule has been my goal for the past few months and I finally took the plunge. More random stupidty presented to you more often!

josh

It all started with Kris Straub posting his new Chainsawsuit comic and Scott Kurtz of PVP suggesting that someone re-draw it in an actual “comic book” style. I actually miss drawing in my more traditional style and so thought it would be fun to do a quick sketch. A couple of hours later I had a bit more than a sketch.

josh

I recently posted these on my twitter, but figured that it would be a good idea to repost them here.

For the unaware, my computer recently suffered a massive meltdown which forced me to ink and color the comic by hand for a couple weeks. My annoyance over the whole ordeal was quickly quieted by how much I actually enjoyed the new process.

I start out (like normal) by doing a quick pencil sketch on scrap paper. These are usually done very quickly, with virtually no erasing. At this point I’m just working out the positioning and layout, and stopping to erase actually breaks my flow. It doesn’t need to be perfect at this stage because  I’m just figuring out how things will look.

The next step is to lightbox the drawings onto a heavier paper stock to ink and color. This is the point where I decide which lines I want to keep.

All my old Rapidographs had dried out, so I inked this with Microns , and realized how much I loved those little pens. Most of the background detail was done in this step. This is not something that I would normally recommend, but after a while you get comfortably with inks and you know how much you can do in the actually inking stage. I wouldn’t do this with the foreground characters (usually), but I knew that I wanted a “loose” look for the background that I didn’t want to over think.

Finally I color with basic Windsor Newton watercolors, and some acrylics here and there. I made the mistake of not using watercolor paper with this (I simply wasn’t paying attention), and paid the price for it with some pretty bad warping. I hadn’t picked up an actual brush in years, and it was very refreshing to get back into it.

The whole process is actually pretty simple. Hopefully, I’ll do one of these for how I work in Photoshop.

josh