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.