Happy Halloween!
I sent the mods a message a while back asking about the community legality of posting practice inks. To clarify, I have been studying the art of comic inking for a while, and seriously applying myself to improving my skills over the last year (to the point where I have a gig w/ an independent publisher, huzzah!).
All the pencils I have been using for practice have been found on the internet, and are being used for the sole purpose of developing and showing off my 'skills', such as they are, as an inker. The original artist will of course be credited any time that I use their pencils as well as including an image of their original pencils. This would have been done in any case, because it's the bloody decent thing to do, but props to the S_D mod team for making that a requirement. It really shows (IMHO) that the people running our community care about comics, and it's not just a place to read comics for free.
Wall of text aside, below the cut there are images of Vampirella that I inked about a year ago, and a Hobgoblin piece that I did about 2 weeks ago. Both are, I feel, in the spirit of Halloween. To wrap, I include an image of Dracula by Jae Lee, to keep the post legal, and because I love the image.
This is Vampirella as drawn by Ed Tadeo, an excellent inker who has worked on a number of Marvel titles. He periodically posts some very nice pencils on his blog, this being one of them.
This is some detail from the same piece, mainly to show off how well that jacket turned out. As I said above, this is the first piece that I felt was really strong. Now it looks rather rough to me, and the mistakes jump out at me, but I'm still proud of it.
This is the original pencils by Ed Tadeo, I wish I could draw this well in a comic book style! Sadly my talents are currently more in charcoal, but I am working a bit on pencils as well. So much to learn, so little time!
I should take a moment to explain what I mean by 'practice inks' as opposed to 'portfolio inks', both being terms I am using to describe my own work. Practice is just that, something I am doing just for practice technique and not to add to my portflio. These are usually printed on regular printer paper in black and white, then inked over. If you zoom on the image enough, you can no doubt make out some of the lighter pencil lines. An actual portfolio piece would be done at 11x17 on at least 200 weight comic board in blue line, and when scanned or photocopied those blue lines (the original pencils) will no longer be visible.
Everything I am posting today that is my ink work falls in the 'practice' catagory.
Enough, on to...
This is a Hobgoblin commission that David Finch recently posted on his blog (along with a number of other pieces). Absolutely stunning work and such a joy to ink! I would happily spend hours a day inking Finch's pencils (and I have some days!), getting paid for doing so... that would really be a dream come true.
Lastly, as promised for legality - Dracula from the X-Men: Dracula Vs Apocalypse cover by Jae Lee (taken from his website).
I hope folks enjoyed these!
From time to time I'll be posting some of my practice work, and some other artwork on my IJ account, anyone is more than welcome to come by and check it out. I probably won't post too many of these here, since it's not quite what S_D is all about. However if I do get some of my work published you can be sure I'll be posting some pages here!!