|
Did you ever see a page, or a scene in a comic book and you wished
you could have it to hang on your wall? It happens to me, too and
inspired a different sort of article, this month.
These days, my finances are such that I cannot afford to buy original
art from pros, so I have to make my own fun. It happened when I was
reading JLA/Avengers #3, recently. I saw this one panel on page 7,
where Captain America is looking in bewilderment at a picture on the
wall, it's a picture based on the cover from Justice League of America
#21, in the first JLA/JSA crossover.
Borrowed that from the Comic Book Database cover galleries, a handy
site to have bookmarked. In case you need it, here it is...
http://comicbookcovers.dyndns.org/
This is the comic page that inspired me. The relevant portion is
framed in yellow.
Looking at this, I notice that this is probably an inset piece
reduced from a larger picture. There may actually be a larger version
of this by George Perez that was photostated down and inserted into
the picture frame. The hair-fine linework is what makes me think that.
So, anyway, you can see I was working from a fairly small source. I
scanned this page and cropped out the frame I needed, and enlarged it
to print it out. You see, I wanted to get as close to Perez's layout
as possible, but I wanted to do it quickly and without a lot of
erasing and revision. Printing out the scan was the first step, blown
up to fit a standard printer page. From there it went straight to the
light box for a quick trace.
This is just to get layout and proportion. Then the trace went on the
light box, with a sheet of bristol board over it. From there I traced
the layout in blue pencil. If you're an artist and you don't know
about the blue pencil, let me just tell you that it is one of those
things that comes along, from time to time, and gives you real hope
for the future of the human race. How pencilers surviived without it,
back in the bad old days of plain old graphite is a mystery to me. But
seriously, it's very helpful.
Now, like a total dumbass, I forgot to make a scan of the finished
pencils. Suffice to say, I refined this blue pencil rough, until it
was ready to ink.
A word on inking. *&#!
I hate inking. I know I'm not as good an inker as I am a penciler and
it vexes me. Let me go on record here, inkers are the hardest-working,
least-appreciated people in comics. As much as I enjoy the "tracer"
jokes in Kevin Smith's "Chasing Amy", a good inker is anything but a
mere "tracer". Even an inker who sticks perfectly to the penciler's
original lines is worth his weight in HB pencil leads. The best inkers
actually add to the pencil art, they add depth and texture, mood and
style, they tie the art together, give it solidity. I need to find one
who doesn't mind working for glowing praise and empty promises!
From there, I started coloring. I lay in color fills to all the open
spaces, flat colors, not necessarily the colors that will eventually
be used in the finished piece. Once I have the flat colors in, I am
able to select all areas of that color and play with them. I do a
little shading with color, to give the bodies and faces form. I'm not
painting, here, I'm just trying to give some depth and shape to the
figures.
As I was coloring, I realized there were a few things I could do
better, like the symbol on Green Lantern's chest and Captain America's
Shield. There was just no need for black outlines on everything.
Now, all that remains is to take a trip to Kinko's and use their
color laser printer to make a print I can put on my wall. The color on
those things is really amazing.
Hope everyone has a great New Year. See you next time!
|
