To ink wash or not to ink wash....

You're seeing more and more of it.  I've tried it and my verdict is this.  Some people can do it and get the look they like, and others, myself included just love to cross-hatch way too much.  For me I guess it boils down to subjective standards of how you want the finished artwork to look.  I know when I got into drawing comics I just loved the insane cross hatching work guys were doing and knew that I wanted to emulate it in my own work.  The work done that way to me just looks uber sexy-even though on a complicated piece it can take a lot longer and may not even be noticed by anyone but me.  I love it so I do it.  More and more people who hire freelancers and artists to work on comics are wanting to see the ink wash style done and there is certainly nothing wrong with it.  I don't think it looks as good, but that is really only an opinion and to some it probably looks better that all those crazy lines.  For me I gotta stick with what I love in order to love what I'm putting out, so I'll just keep hatching.......It's never about the time spent, it's about looking at the finished work and simply loving it.....So do what you love guys!!!!  All the best!

D

Making sure Freelance doesn't just mean free...

    Guys I don't want to lecture or sound too heavy about this but it's something I see more and more as a freelancer. so I wanted to ar least comment on it and describe the way I deal with it.
      I've had it happen.  I've got friends who've had it happen.  Chances are you may have had it happen.  You run into a snake charmer who sells you some story about how they've got all the talent in the world as a writer, or are the next big indy publisher, and need someone to draw their comic for them, but the kick is they've got limited funds and can't really pay you what you are worth.  Right there is the telling point.  They are trying to test you out to see if you'll take less that you think you are worth.  There are exceptions to every rule kiddees but the answer is almost always sorry, no.  I have rates that I must adhere to that keep me doing my best work, which is all I want to put out.   I try to be as flexible as I can and I've even worked out deals with people to do piecemeal work as they can afford it, but do yourself a favor and stick to your rates.  Don't ever let someone else tell you that their financial bottom line is more important that yours.  After all without your art, their comic is just words on a page.  Remember where you stand in terms of how much work you do as opposed to a writer.   With services like Kickstarter and Kabbage it's easier than ever to get funding for projects. 
     Ok with that said it's tough to get money up front in the freelancing world so how do you protect yourself?  Well I like to use watermarks and also send low res images out for samples and never release a high res, un-watermarked image as a sample until I'm paid.  Yes people will try stuff like,' I can't make out the image clearly with that thing there', or 'can I get a higher res image to look at?'  Both are usually signs that they are fishing for free work to use.  It's sad but true if you believe the stories people tell these days you will inevitably get burned and the more trustworthy you are, the worse it will be.  Protect yourself, and treat transactions in a business-like manner and don't trust the charming guy who is suddenly your long lost best pal on the other end of the email until said guy coughs up the fee you agreed upon.  If you do you will suddenly stop hearing from him or her in the middle of a project and often times see your work pop up finished or colored by someone else in a manner that you aren't happy with and often times are powerless to stop.  People also use this trick to build fake portfolios to shop around.  It's happened to me and worse to other people I know.  None of which deserved it.  It really benefits nobody, as the people who are content to steal partially finished work and who have a string of dupes working for them are taking what would have been great work with soul in it and turning it into sample quality work that they can't see the flaws in, with no heart or soul.  Sad but true.  There are a lot of these folks out there and they all have a good story to tell, but I mean if you are going to work for free dust off that comic you wrote but haven't had time to work on and do something great with it in your free time.  Don't do someone else' work for them, especially if they aren't willing to pay you anything.  They don't deserve your artwork or your time.  Take the time and make yourself a watermark, and make sure to send optimized images out at 72 dpi for samples, trust me they show people what they need to know, no matter what they say.  Trust your gut on people but protect yourself so that they cannot take advantage of you.  I know how hard artists work, these people often times think it's easy for us and/or just don't care if we put in a full week/month of 14 hour days on their project.  Their goal is to get it done and spend little or nothing on the artwork.  If we all get wise and protect ourselves soon enough they won't have artists to exploit and these folks will go away in large part.  They don't appreciate art and therefore don't deserve your time or effort, and certainly not the art you slaved over and put all your heart and soul into.  It's a real problem these days but one that we can all deal with simply and methodically.  Best Wishes!

D

The importance of the pencil to me....

I've certainly stated before that I almost always start a composition in an analog fashion.  Usually I start with a marker sketch or pencil drawing depending on what I'm working on and the way I plan to finish the piece.  Sometimes I just happen to be doodling when on the phone or in front of the TV, etc.  I wanted to relate the reason why and the relevance of such in this modern digital age of Wacom tablets, and cintiqs.  First of all I'll admit something.  I draw poorly on tablets, even on my intuos 4.  I've have many tablets and upgraded over the years trying to find the magic bullet, and finally came to the conclusion that it just isn't the tablet.  It's me.  I draw in long sweeping arcs with my arm, and very little with my wrist, aka I draw like a painter and not like someone writing.  With that said I realize that embracing the digital works for some, and I'll be the first to say that if it works for you, then you don't need to be reading this!  My drawing skills were learned largely while ignoring my teachers and spending my school days creating in notebooks intended for other purposes.  I'm rooted in the pencil, pen and paper world, and I'm cool with it.  I'm also much faster and more dynamic with a pencil in hand.  I simply can't hold my Wacom stylus right for how I draw.  I hold my pencil at it's very end and lightly sketch, refining and darkening lines as I go but rarely grip my pencil toward the tip until the very end of a drawing when I'm heavy into detailing.  Ok enough technical stuff.  There is an even more important reason I use the pencil rather than embracing all the wonderful digital tricks and such.  It's just that, I want to avoid the digital tricks and relying on them.  I know them.  I use them but I don't want them to become part of my style and be a slave to them.  Every time I screw up with a pencil guess what?  I have to erase, evaluate and do it over.  Do you know what effect that has on me?  It forces me to learn from every mistake and to improve henceforth.  Consequently my learning curve is better and faster simply by using a pencil and paper and allowing myself to mess up and correct things.  I know that you're thinking, 'Oh but that's so much work!'  My answer is simple.  You should not be thinking of drawing as work, period.  It's fun and even if you are a professional, the mindset that drawing is work, lends anxiety to your effort which ultimately hinders you and steers you toward comfortable places within your skill set, taking shortcuts, and settling for sub standard work.  You have to be fearless when it comes to your artwork, and unafraid to take chances or throw something out.  I mean come on, if you mess up, it's only a piece of paper and some time spent at your desk.  If you learned from the mistakes or came out the other end with a really kick ass drawing that you never would have thought possible, then you have lost nothing.  Time has to be irrelevant to you.  Besides every time you overcome challenges, you know that you've improved as an artist, and that is a great feeling, even after a long day of struggling with something hard.  It can be mentally taxing, but it can be ultimately rewarding to win at the end of the day as well.  I love the feeling of turning off my light at the end of the day and know that I struggled through, didn't accept defeat and nailed it in the end.  It gives me more confidence to approach the next day's artwork.  See what a pencil can do?  As always this is just my insight and what works for me.  I think the mindset can be applied to anyone's working style and it is indeed the mindset that matters.  For me the pencil and the analog is the way but for you just using fewer digital tricks might be the way to mastery.  If you understand the value of mistakes and working through them then you're already well on your way to being great.   Once again I hope my ramblings on technique and artistic mindset are helpful to you in finding your inner greatness.   Best Wishes and much love to all!

IIID

Clearly defining depth in your pencils

Whether communicating with an inker or just to keep track of them for yourself, having clearly defined foreground mid ground and back ground elements is a must for bringing your work to life, and of course communicating depth and space to your readers.  This is something that is very easy to overlook as the trend these days is to simply pack as much detail in to your panels and possible.  While this can work some of the time.  It's a bad idea to do all of your work this way.  You work a great deal harder and actually flatten out your drawings.  When it comes to detail, you have to know when to just 'leave it out'. The first person I saw who really relayed this idea to me effectively was Alvin Lee.  His work is so clean and economical in terms of line and detail that it's staggeringly beautiful to me.  I find it's harder to achieve than work that really has it all packed in there as it is easy to cover up fundamental errors with detail.  It's something I strive to master.  Really good manga artists are great at this type of work as well.  Always think level of detail, backgrounds have little, mid-grounds some, and foregrounds have tons. One simple, fairly mechanical, trick that has helped me though is the use of three different leads.  I use 2h, 4h and 6h Tombow mono's respectively for foreground, midground, and backgrounds.  Even though it's a bit of a hassle to use three leads, I find that it allows me to draw each area in my natural style, with little or no alteration in physical technique.  This allows more natural and flowing strokes in all areas of my work, and doesn't stifle my hand from trying to draw lightly or more heavily in various areas.  The reason I use Tombow's is also important.  All of their leads are virtually smudge-free and erase very clean which is great for peace of mind,  They are a bit pricey but well worth it.  I use regular pencils but I believe you can get mono lead for holders as well.  I use soft lead for sketching, layouts, or to work fast, but always finish my work in harder lead because soft lead blunts way too fast, and to strike clean lines with them you have to exert enough pressure to actually 'etch' the paper or board, which makes clean erasures impossible, so naturally I recommend getting used to harder leads for finished work.  If you really focus on seeing the depth in what your drawing and 'organize' the spaces within accordingly you will find that you pages instantly become more three dimensional and communicate so much more with your audience.  Best Wishes!

IIId

Simply the best chicken soup you ever had.....

Those that know me know well that I'm a prodigious home cook, not a chef by any rate just a guy who is passionate about cooking awesome food for his family and friends.  I do all of our cooking and love it!  It's honestly one of the best parts of my day, and being that we're now into autumn I wanted share something.  It's a different kind of art, as it does come in various guises right?  Smoked Chicken Soup with Fresh Parmesan, Asiago, and Romano.

It's easy to make, but admittedly a bit time consuming but well, well worth it.

I use a whole chicken, any size or type will do as long as it fits in your boiling pot of course.

I won't get too deep into this but I like to smoke the whole chicken beforehand.  You can do this on any charcoal grill with a lid-I've even used my little weber to do it!.  Keep the temp low and the heat indirect as you are really trying to cold smoke the chicken, to get all that smoky flavor but without cooking and consequently drying out the chicken.  I usually smoke as prodigiously as I can for 1/3 to half the alloted time it would take to smoke the whole bird to fully cooked.  (Don't worry there's an easy quick alternative I'll go into in the end if you feel that smoking a chicken is too daunting.)

From here get the chicken(whole into your now boiling pot of Lightly salted (don't oversalt the water-add your salt at the end-easy to add hard to take out sort of thing) water and boil it on medium heat until the chicken is falling off the bone tender-2-3 hours usually but sometimes it's faster.

Remove the chicken completely from the broth you just made, remove as much of the meat as you want to use, save/or discard the rest.  I have dogs so getting rid of the fat and whatever I don't want to use is a cinch.  Bones hit the trash of course.

Add 4-5 bay leaves to the broth as well as about 1 tsp pepper-any you desire-White, Black, Cayenne, doesn't matter.

Return the chicken to the broth and now add cut up onions(1-2 decent ones) crushed, or minced fresh garlic-to taste-, Cut up carrots, celery if you wish, and egg noodles-any type will work but I find that homeade ones really are much better.  If you have a pasta roller I say go for it!

If you like garden greens in soup you can add them during the last half of the boil with no problem-any variety will do.  I put fresh Kale in my soups all the time.  Spinach also works really well.

Boil until vegetables are done and noodles are nicely tender.

Dish out into bowls sprinkle quite liberally with the Fresh Parmesan, Asiago, and Romano blend-I mean any or all of these, or others will work.  This is just the way I do it because this is our favorite blend from the store.  ie-Manchego is great in this soup all by itself.  Don't be afraid to experiment.

Sprinkle a pinch of Kosher Salt into every bowl....

Eat Much!

Now for the easy alternative I mentioned:  If you are in a time pinch or just don't want to go through the smoking hassles, etc.  I have found that you can make the soup exactly as described-sans chicken smoking of course- and when you add the bay leaves add about 1- tbsp of liquid smoke extract to the broth-Honestly it comes out really good this way so don't be afraid to try it.

All in all and different way to have chicken soup but an incredibly enjoyable one that I really wanted to share.  If you come up with any variations on this you love, I'd love to hear about them.

Creative freedom can sometimes be more difficult

At present I'm working on two creator owned manga stories.  I'm glad that I have the time and freedom to finally get to them, because they are stories I've long wanted to tell.  In the midst of penciling said stories I've noticed something that I wanted to share.  The importance of 'locking' your story ahead of time.  Having the discipline to really treat writing as a separate craft ahead of executing the artwork and sticking to the storyline once pen'd.  This is something I definitely struggle with.  As I draw I'll see a new angle and start to deviate from my pre-written version.  Soon I end up on Nowhereland, or off on a disconnected tangent and have wasted a day or two penciling pages that have taken me far afield of where I should have been going.  Yes making changes to improve your story is fine in measured amounts, but make sure that before you start drawing that the basic structural foundation of your story is solid and will take the reader where you want them to go.  Trust me, if it isn't, you will end up wasting a lot of time changing and re-arranging things, and often to no avail.  Now, with the advent of Photoshop or GIMP, it's easy to re-composite pages and chop them up, move stuff around, etc after the fact, so really, draw it first the way you wrote it, and make changes later as needed.  I've found this to be a much more effective and productive strategy when working on my own stuff.  I mean we all want to shoot the moon and achieve greatness in our work, but drawing yourself into a disorganized corner will never get you anywhere except burnt out, frustrated, and lacking confidence in your efforts.  The way to avoid this is by inches.  Write a solid story, draw your layouts, finish your pencils, ink them suckas, tone or color, submit or publish.  No skipping steps or jumping ahead.  Shortcuts are always the long way around.  I think you'll find that by slowing down and being a bit more methodical that you actually speed up in the grand scheme of things sequential.  Best Wished and I hope this little bit of insight from my drawing table has been helpful.


IIID

Watch out for new previews of 'Miko' and 'Agency Black' coming soon!

The New 'Agency Black' coming soon

Yes I know we had that 8 page 'indy teaser' out like a year ago and then never went any farther with it, but actually I have been working away on it.   I did a complete rewrite and have reset the odometer to Zero.  Yup I just decided that I wanted to get deeper with the story and really explore the characters a bit more as well as add a whole bunch of twists and turns.  Well the new first issue is rolling right along and will be inked colored and lettered soon, I promise.  I think you'll agree it had to be done and I hope for the curious that it will have indeed been worth the wait.  Best Wishes to all.  I'll post some teasers, WIP's and such up here and a few other places as I roll them out.  Oh and we'll have related artwork up in the stores as well.

IIId