Ivan Reis - Aquaman

Convention season is around the corner so it is time to start gearing up my portfolio. I plan on having a few pages in there from Ivan Reis. His pencils are just so strong and dynamic and he plays with texture quite a bit which I think is one of my strong suits. So I feel this is a good match. I am rather pleased with the way this page turned out. I was able to play with wood, water, scales, hair and slimey water monsters. What more can an inker ask for?

Ivan Reis

I have been a huge fan of Ivan Reis since I first saw his work on Lady Death. His work has only grown more dynamic in the years that followed. So when I saw the pencils to this page from The Blackest Night from DC, I had to try my hand at them.

This particular page was going to based on mood rather than dynamic action. So I really let the heavy blacks just cross each other when I would normal make a clear separation of masses. I also had alot of fun with the cross hatching on the sky creating a heavy type gradient. For the trees I would normaly draw every leaf with the pen but opted to go with a whimsical blotting technique with the brush. It just seemed to add more life to the trees and foliage.

This was a fun page too work on and it will surely lead to me inking over more Ivan Reis in the future.

Tim Vigil

Can it get more intimdating than this. Tim Vigil, the single greatest influence on me artisticly paying homage to Frank Frazetta who is arguably one of the greatest fantasy artist of all time with hi rendition of Frazettas most iconic character, The Death Dealer. Hmmmm. No I don't think so.

But this is the year where I am going to push myself to the limit of my inking ability and beyond. I am very pleased with the way this came out. I sat down fully intending to use brush because, well, because that's what Tim would do, but I decided to make it mine and use my usual tools of Micron Pigma markers. I figured it would give it a feel that is not just trying to mimic Tims inking style. I stayed away from the usual crosshatching that I love to use because I figured it would make the imahe stati. So to keep the fluidity of the peice I tried to maintain a left to right and right to left movement while throwing my lines.

Maybe someday Tim will see this and give some feedback on how he feels it turned out. Until then, I will seek out more of his pencils and give them my all.

Joe Mad II

I wanted to kick off the new year with a bang. So here is a tri-fold cover from The Ultimates 3 penciled by Joe Mad. Honestly, This one flew out of me pretty easily. Granted, some folks do not like my approach to inking Joe Mad, using thinner line work and crosshatching instead of the big fat outline people are used to seeing with his stuff, but I still feel I was true to the pencils and kept a very Mad! feel.

Happy 2012!