That’s number four. Now to do the cleanup, layout and add the word bubbles.

Here’s the raw ink work on Rainmagic pages 2 and 3. I’m working a bit more on page 4 tonight.

I’m trying a couple of new things on these pages:

I’m trying to use more blacks. If you’ve seen Green Monk, you’ll know that it’s mostly linear. I want to create more shapes out of lights and darks. I’m finding I need to plan things out much more carefully in the penciling stage to get the lights and darks to balance out correctly.

I’m trying to figure out how to draw a dang forest. The most difficult stuff is the stuff in the mid-ground. It’s not close enough that I want to draw every little detail, but it’s not far away enough that I can just create a big mass and call it leaves.

I’m using a brush pen for all of this. The brush creates beautiful lines, but it requires more page turning to get the right angle. You also have to wait for it to dry, and oddly enough it puts more strain on my hand than using a micron. I think that because it does not have a rigid tip, I have to use my hand more for stability, and thus: hand-strain.

"I know Kung-Fu!"

That joke* is funny if you know the story.

*joke courtesy of Annie Dayton

If you watched this artcast the other day, you probably saw me working on this a bit. Anyway, here’s some of the ink work I’ve done for page 1 of Rainmagic. I’ve got the majority of pages 2 and 3 inked as well, but I want o finish them up a bit more before I post them. Still have to add in word bubbles and the title. I’ll probably also do some touch up. The figure in the mid-ground isn’t showing up enough (see if you can spot her!).

Well I finally decided to sit down and start inking Rainmagic. It was my first time inking a comic page with a brush, so I was a little nervous. I think it turned out okay. A couple of spots that were sketchy, but for the most part things went well. You can watch the full video below.

Stuff mentioned in the show:

Claire Wendling’s awesome art.

The Pentel Color Brush.

Here are the pencils for the first two pages of Rainmagic, the short I’m working on for the Sunstone comics anthology.

I’m trying to get accustomed to this larger format. As you can see it would be nice if I had a large format scanner. I also have totally obviated the usefulness of my blue line paper by using red pencil on page 2 (but I got it so I got to find some way to get rid of it). After working on Green Monk, I totally prefer using Borden and Riley Bleedproof paper . It’s cheaper, and I like the surface better. I’ll start working with it once I get rid of all of my old Bristol.

You can also tell that I re-worked the face about 5 times. Bristol is not so forgiving of so much indecision. I finally got wise and made this style sheet for the girl’s face.

Overall, I’m liking where this is going. You can see some video of me working on page 2 below (before my camera malfunction). I can’t wait to ink this stuff.