Jim Lee

This is my second try at the amazing Jim Lee. I approached this as another excercise in keeping life through loose linework. I'm not quite sure how I feel about how it came out. By the end of the page I could feel myself exerting more and more control. This resulting in a conflicting feel throughout the page. I might try this one again in the new year. Or maybe a different Jim Lee peice. All in all, I feel this is as good a peice as any to end the year on.

Thanks to all of you for checking out my inks in the year 2011. Let's make 2012 a better year year for all things comic book.

Happy New year to all. 

Jimbo Salgado II

Here is another by Jimbo Salgado. This was done mostly to amuse myself because I liked the image and Jimbo is just a blast to ink over. Maybe someday I'll be able to work with him in a official capacity. Till then, I'll keep having some fun with his pencils on my down time.

Jimbo Salgado

This one just looked like a ton of fun. Jimbo has some super kinetic penciling and I hope I kept that energy with the iks. I really love the way this turned out.

Tom Mandrake

To say that taking on Rick Veitch was a huge challenge is like saying It's easy to play a Beatles cover song in you band. It's easy to learn all the chords but, you have to get the feeling right or it just sounds horrible. Sample thing here. I had to get the feeling of the page right. It's not enough just to clean up th lines.

That being said, I think my largest hurdle to overcome was my tendancy to be overcontrolled with my lines and stiffening up the image. I feel pretty good aboutthe page and will probably try some more of this like in the future. It was to push me beyond my comfort zone.

Arthur Adams

Arthur Adams. Comic book Deity. Penciling god. Scary as hell to ink. He lays down exactly what he intends to be seen on the page. There is no mistaking his style for anything. Yet, it is easy to vary you lines just enough to make the page look like an imitation of Art Adams. It's like comic book surgery.

Well here is my last butchery, er, umm, I mean surgery attempt on his pencils. The scan was a little low res for my taste but, It was worth giving it a shot.I'm a little bit pleased with the outcome. I think. I'm never sure when it comes inking my heroes.

Greg Capullo

The first time I ever saw Greg Capullos work was in an antholgy book put out by Caliber comics called Gore Shriek. I was hooked. I folloed his carreer from there to X-Force and all the way to his current work. So when I say I had fun working on this page, it should be read as an understsatement. I had a complete blast.

Lately, my work has been getting feedback in one area particular, how stiff I make the pages feel after inking them. Sucking the life out of them, if you will. Now for an inker, hearing that is almost as bad as being called a tracer. This is the main reason I chose Greg Capullo to practice on. His work is so kinetic that any loss of energy can be immediately seen. Which forces me to keep the life in every line I throw. I realy feel like I loosened up with this bad boy and just let the pen fly. I must say it felt realy good to just let go of some of the control I usually exert in the inks.

Over all I feel the exercise was a success and will definetly try some more Capullo in teh future.

Marko Djurdjevic

First of all, Marko is truly one of the most talented artist working in the comics industry today. And normaly, I would not touch a peice like this because it was never meant to be inked. For some reason though, I felt the need to print this out in non repro blue and go for it. I treated it as a rough with me doing finishes. This just allowed me to get into the state of mind where I did not feel guilty for throwing inks on it.

When working on a page with pencil grey shading, I feel the most difficult part is deciding on how to render the peice and commiting to every line you lay down. This takes a tremendous amount of confidence in your anility to portey shades of grey with line weight, thickness and proximity to one another. Since I do not possess such a confidence in my anility at the present time, I experimented with a few different techniques. Some were successful and some less so.

Overall, I am pretty pleased with the way everything turned out and discovered a few things as well. I will definately go into my next attempt at Marko with more confidence and a clear plan of attack.

Keu Cha

Now back to my comfort zone with some Keu Cha pancils. Aaaahhhh, now I feel better about myself.

Rob Leifeld II

Here is another stab at Rob Leifeld. This came from my intense fixation with the Deadpool character. I've inked one other practice page featuring him but I just could not pass up having a go at Deadpool penicled by his creator, the ever popular Levi guy himself, The Rob Leifeld!

I do however have mixed feelings on the way it turned out. I feel like I should have gone adifferent route with the line weights of the background characters. Something to just push them back a little. Food for thought for the next time I try yo take this guy on.

John Romita Jr.

I finaly found the courage to tackle my all time favorite comic book penciler, John Romita Jr. Up until now I just felt like I did not have the chops to even attempt to do his work justice. Not that I am a master inker now or anything, but I am confident enough to go for it.

First I have to overcome the incredible pressure of not thinking, "What would Mr. Klaus Janson do?" Then put away the fan boy membership card and just look at this as a page to be inked.  Ok, I have my objectivity. Now how the hell do I tackle it?

First let's decide on the tools and commit. For the explosion and gradient on the pants. I needed a brush. This gave a certain kind of accidental feel to the line quality that is necessary for an explosion to feel credible. I wanted a different feel for the shading on the Hulks skin. So I went with my trusty Micron Pigma markers. I just seem to have a little more control with these.

Now, how thick do I want to go with my holding/contour lines. I didn't want to have a coloring book feel but JR Jr. screams for some big bold lines. So again I use the brush for the holding lines on Hulks body and the two big Skrull heads. I figured Microns would naturaly push everything else into the background.

I tend to be very controlled with how I throw my lines so I made a concious effort to loosen up with this page. I feel like I had a moderate amount of success with adapting my inking style with the looseness of the pencils. All in all I am very happy with the way the page turned out. I am definately going to seek out more John Romita Jr. pencils to work on.

Cesar Feliciano

Here are two pages from a new book I am working on called The Red Ten. Written by Tyler James and penciled by Cesar Feliciano. Cesar has the perfect blend of detail and roughness to where I know exactly what he intended while leaving me room to be an artist and really contribute to the page. I am 6 pages in and having a blast. Starting to find my groove, which is pretty quick since it usually takes me 10 to 15 pages to do that with any other penciler. I can only show these two pages for now now but we are on a quick pace schedule and should have this issue done in no time. Issue one was penciled and inked by Cesar himself and is available from

www.theredten.comixtribe.com

So stop by and check it out when you get a chance and now is the time to hop on board because everything only gets better from here.

Randy Green

More Buffy from Randy Green. This time with a little faith.

Roger Cruz

I came across three sequential pages by Roger Cruz and they really caught my eye. These pages were very busy, and I don't get a chance to challenge myself with these types of pages very often. So I figured I would go for it. I must say it was a bigger challenge than I thought it would be. I needed to go with much thinner lines than usual because of the average size of figures in each panel and I wanted room to play with line weights to separate planes. I also decided to stay away from templates and straight edges for this one. I think it would have given it a steril feeling and I needed to preserve the kinetic energy of the page. I still wanted fairly straight lines though. So I found myself throwing lines in a different manner than usual. I would pull away from my body very quickly and stop abruptly with the pen still touching the paper. This gave a neat little pool of ink at the end of the lines that just gave them a little character. Which is what I needed.

This was an extremely fun page to work on. There are a few missed opportunities here and there but I am pretty well pleased with the way it turned out. It usualy takes me a few pages to get in sinc with a penciler so I figure by the time I get to page three, I should have a good idea of how to tackle some Roger Cruz penciling. I put about seven hours into this page and used various sizes of Micron Pigma markers for all the line work and filled in the blacks with brush and ink.

Randy Green

I had an hour to kill and I'm a huge Buffy fan so I figured I would whip it out real quick. More a little somethin I did for myself than anything but I must say it felt very natural and comfortable inking over Randy Green.

Diego Bernard

I've worked over Diego Bernarad before on a book by the name of Mookeys. I loved his stuff then and when I saw this Rogue, I knew I still loved his work. Working on this just felt like coming home again. I spent the most time on the hair. Just trying to get a perfectly messy sleek look to it. All in all this was a lot of fun and I hope to workwith Diego in an actual published capacity again soon.

Brian Soriano

 I came across this on a colorists website. He put up a bunch of high res pencils for inkers to practice on. I ama StarWars nut so I had to work on the Rancor monster. It's a no brainer. This was a completely for fun peice and well, I had a ton o' fun with it. It took about two hour without filling in all the blacks. I think I am going to start filling in black on Photoshop to save time. Let's see how that works out.

Eric Basaldua Steampunk

This is my second Eric Basaldua page. I love, absolutely love steampunk stuff so when I saw this I nearly flipped my lid. Working on all the gears was fun as hell!

Rob Leifeld

When I was a kid I was among the hordes of kids at the comic shop racks during that first year of Image comics picking the newest issue of Youngblood. I, just like all the other kids around me wanted to make comics someday and maybe even work for Image comics. The difference was, that I never wanted to be Big Rob. I wanted to be Danny Miki. Say what you will about Leifelds work but you must admit, he has had some pretty awesome inkers grace his pencils with thier brushes. Let's name a few, the previously mentioned Danny Miki, Al Milgrom, Norm Rapmund, Bob Layton and more. Well now I wanted to be include din this list, even if it was only on my little blog page. I used a #1 round brush on this bad boy and had a good time doin it.

David Finch part II

Now that I am a little more comfortable with The style that is everything Finch, I wanted to tackle something a little more complex. I had some fun with it and put in about three hours on it. I think I like inking David Finch. It feels sort of...natural. Maybe someday he'll realize this as well and then , BAM! I'll be inking his stuff for real and not for portfolio peices. Someday...

David Finch

I never really felt my inking style would mesh well with Finch pencils so I never thought to try it. Then I figured I should be able to ink any pencil style. I mean, any inker worth his salt should be able to right? Versatility! That is the key. So I went for it. I wanted to start out on a simpler piece just so I could find the groove of his pencils.

I approached this with a lighter, looser hand than I normaly would, trying to prevent the stiff, super controlled lines I usually throw. I used a thicker base line as well. I think it gave me more of a choppy feel and the thicker pen tip kept me from becoming too obsessed with details and was able to see "the big picture" throughout. I was finished in just over two hours. It flew by pretty fast.

All in all, I am pretty pleased with the way this came out. I now feel I can become compatible with Finch, or any other penciling style for that matter. It's just a matter of know the pencilers intent and and following the pencils to their logical ink conclusion.

Michel Turner

Michel Turner has always been hit and miss with me but when I saw this I pretty much fell in love with it.Once I started it I fell into a groove pretty fast and 3 hours later it was done. I should have been sleeping but hey. One must sacrifice sleep for quality inks.

Surprisingly, The horse was the most fun to ink on the page. Over all, I am pretty pleased with the way this one turned out.

Marc Silvestri

I just wrapped up penciling, inking and lettering a ten page short for a Las Vegas anthology, so to celebrate, I decided to treat myself to just inking a fun page. Something for me.

In comes the Marc Silvestri  page you see to your left. I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out. I spent about 4 hours on it. I could feel it going faster than most pages I attempt to ink. I think it is because Silvestri pencils are so kinetic and full of life and movement that I was unable to be my super controlled, stiff self. I was really able to loosen up. Getting the fur of the tiger right was I think, the most consious effort I put into this one. The rest just kind of felt natural.

All in all, this was tons of fun and it loosened me up. I'm ready to get back to my assignments tomorrow and really get down on it!

Jim Lee

 I was working on a project with a tight deadline and lots personal changes happening in my life. It felt like every line I was laying down on anything was forced. I needed to get back on track.

I came across this Rogue pic while searching for inspiration and was instantly transported to a time in my youth when my heroes were the characters in the comics I was reading and not the creators. This felt good.

So I took a few hours to  break from my tight deadlines and go back in time. While I was inking this I was on total auto pilot and I don't think I made a single concious decision on it. Before I knew it, 3 hours had passed and I was staring at a fully inked page.

I know I am no Scott Williams but I am pretty happy with the way this turned out. I managed to keep Rogue in that statuesqe, iconic, larger than life kind of light. The Dinosaur kind falls into the waterfall and cliff. I'm not sure how to fix that but it presents a new challenge for me to overcome another day.

Joe Maduriera

A buddy of mine is a huge Joe Mad fan and was never really attractedto his work. One day he showed me this two page spread and I knew I had to go for it. It's a pretty busy page so I figured I would tackle it in planes. Closest to farthest. Twenty minutes in, I knew this approach would not work It's such a busy page and the Tiny Wasp all big and in front of Thor really played with my head. Usualy the figure or mass that is closest is the largest mass and would therefore get the thickest lines and variations. Not so here. I needed to make sure the Wasp still looked small, just very close to the camera. Which made me go somewhere I am not comfortabele. The wonderful world of halos.

I am not a fan of halos but like any other device an inker can use on a page, it has it's place and purpose. This was truly my first time experimenting with this technique and am still trying to find it's proper use. I think it was a successful beginning.

Then I the was all the different textures I was able to play with. Giving bricks, leather and sentient symbiotic space goo all need look like different surfaces. This area is one of my favorite playgrounds. To me,this is where you can make a page come to life. Making all the surfaces look anfeel real gives the page an anchor in reality and allows the reader to suspend disbelief and accept that a giant Venom monster is crashing through a wall chasing a thunder god.