Requiem Sonata chapter 3 pencils and inks

Hello! I've been drawing a lot lately and I need to share them on here more. Especially since this is the main site on my business card! Here are some non-spoilery pages of Requiem Sonata which I inked 18 pages of for Inktober!

My tools here are Zebra and Kuretake brush pens, Pentel Hybrid Technica pens in my Stillman and Birn Alpha sketchbook.

SPX Wrap Up and some Illustrations

Yoo! It's been half a month since I returned from SPX and I haven't updated cuz wow have I been working. Anyhow, SPX was a blast! I had a great time, I really want to go back next year. I hope it's a show I can keep returning to, but only time and my luck will tell. If you bought one of my books or got a commission from me, THANK YOU! You help make this feel like it's working! It is, but I can get sorta meh about how I do things after a while. But yes, I will share some of the art I did at the show and just some art I've done since.

Thanks!!

Curse of the Eel Ch4 Cover process

Here's another post for Curse of the Eel, this time for chapter 4's cover art. I'll go into a little detail about making this that I don't usually do on my other social media. Here we gooo! (I'll be at SPX on Sept. 19-20th at table J-13 so come by for books and laughs!)

These covers have been really easy to do. Relying on a simple layout set up has been the best thing, the books all feel related but have enough differences that they stand apart. I did struggle with this one though as the creature on the cover here is a mystery. It hasn't properly revealed itself in the comic itself, so even this is a clue to what it's going to be. I also wondered which character to put here, since the chapter doesn't focus on a new character, I decided to go with Connie but to raise her higher in the frame than in chapter 1, to show that she's getting better, even though things are getting worse. The hand lettering has also been really fun, although I hope I can keep it from being less confusing. This time it kinda was. You'll see in the inks.

I LOVE improvising. The greatest tool I've used since graduation has been that, and I do it a lot on these covers. My pencils used to be a lot tighter, it was me trying to really show people I knew how to draw, but what it also lead to was boring art. I was also taught to enlarge and trace over my thumbnails, but once again, it led to not fun results. I get why people do it, but to me, this isn't drawing, it's tracing. Same thing with inking over incredibly tight pencils, it's not drawing, it's tracing. I also wanna put forward that this isn't art theft tracing, what I mean is, when a step tells me exactly what to do in the next step with no room to play with the new method or tool, it just feels like work. I much prefer a loosely penciled page that I can have fun drawing with a brush and ink on. The results are a LOT better, and I'm finally understanding how to really shape forms with my brush. I've improved greatly in inking in a short time by being more loose, so I think there's merit to it. Draw how you want, that's what is most important. If it's not fun, don't do it.

There's not much to say on this stage, I'm not the best on coloring so having these preset and striking colors has been a godsend! I probably won't add more colors to them in the future, so I hope they're at least somewhat interesting to look at!

Thanks for reading!

Curse of the Eel Inks Ch4 page 8-13

More pages from Curse of the Eel chapter 4. I've inked thru 16, only 4 more to go and I can begin lettering the book! I'm really excited for SPX, I'll be at table J-13 if you can make it!

As usual, pages are inked with a Raphael 8404 #3 brush with FW Acrylic ink on Stillman and Birn beta paper

Curse of the Eel c4 p1-7 inks

Hello internet! Here are some pages of inks from the next chapter of Curse of the Eel. I've been working on this one again finally, and I'm really happy with how these are turning out. I switched to a new brush and I'm getting really great lines from it. I used a Raphael 8404 #3 brush, which is the same size as the last brush I was using, it's just not as battle worn. That brush lasted me about a year, that's pretty good I think. Anyhow, here are the inks. The paper is Stillman and Birn beta paper. It's the only paper I really trust to do pencils, inks, and watercolors on.

My plan is to have this chapter printed by SPX on Sept. 19-20, so wish me luck!

Curse of the Eel chapter 2 cover process

Sooo Curse of the Eel 2 has been done for a while, and originally I printed the chapter with chapter 1 because I thought it would make it easier to sell. Instead of selling 2 smaller books, you get one big fat book and I hoped to keep the price down by not having to print 2 covers and bind a second book when I could print them all in one. However, the printshop I was going thru was charging so much to print the book that it's just not feasible, plus the increased page count made the book so thick, it was hard to drive a staple thru. Ugh.

So I found a new printer! I'm getting test prints done now, so I'm hoping that this will make the book more affordable so i can sell them less, but splitting Eel 1 and 2 meant 2 needed its own cover. So I whipped this together yesterday! I say whipped because the thing I love about Eel is that I have a design scheme for the covers, so finding ways to make each cover interesting but following that same idea is super easy! I'll need these books because I'll be tabling at SPX next month! I'll post again when I know my table spot!

So here are the steps, pencils to inks to color for the 2nd chapter cover of Curse of the Eel!

Rare Drops: The Rough and Tough 'Rinth

Here is a taste of the second part of Rare Drops, where Arya and Lucio find out what it means to be tough. I still need to make a cover for this one, hopefully it'll be done by the end of the week.

I'm happy with the art on this one, especially the characters. I feel like I finally know how to draw them with some good expressive faces despite being so simply drawn. I hope people enjoy these comics. 

Rare Drops is my all ages fantasy comic series about Arya and Lucio, 2 young adventurers who make a living by going into dungeons, fighting monsters and collecting rare treasures. If you'd like to read the entire first part, click here: The Ice Cave.

Pearl, Steven Universe

Here's a drawing of Pearl from Steven Universe, a bit smaller than the Garnet drawing, but it was a fun little illustration. Pearl is actually the hardest to imagine in my style, her features are very different from how I draw faces and it became tricky to figure out the best way to translate them. I think this turned out well, although it'd be tricky to draw her again.

Watercolor, gouache and color pencil on Stillman and Birn beta paper.

Garnet: Steven Universe

Hello all! I just finished watching the first season of Steven Universe, and I totally get all the hype. It's a great show, so now i have excuse to draw the characters cuz I love their designs. It's also a really progressive show, which I think is important right now to teach kids to be tolerant of everyone and judge people by their character, not what they are.

This Garnet was done all in one go, took me about 4 hours to paint, an hour to sketch. The drawing is about 5 or 6 total paints, all on my usual Stillman and Birn paper. The tricky part was using the carmine, a new paint in my palette but with gouache to smooth things out, it turned out well, I think.

Sketchbook Update and secret item

Why hello! I generally draw in my sketchbooks but I rarely make a post that is just sketchbook images, things I've just played with or trying out ideas. So here's a post from one of my new sketchbooks.

The other thing is, all of these are done in a new product from Stillman and Birn. I'm not really allowed to talk about what it is but I can at least show the work I've been doing in them. It's gonna make sketching in public 100x easier, and it's just plain a cool new product. I can't wait to get my hands on a few more, I'm almost done filling this one up (I've only had it since mid-June).

So yes, there's a lot of stuff here but I hope you all like it!